Life: Idiotropic

Two of Luci's closest friends are sweet Italian girls that go to her school and I've been fortunate enough to become friends with one of the mothers whose willing to use her English a little more.

I think that's one of the mixed blessing things about living here. There truly are some amazing opportunities being in a multinational community like this one where we can share friendship and cultures with people from Turkey, Greece, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Belgium, Canada, The Netherlands, France, and, of course, Germany. The difficult thing then becomes the language. As many things exist that can transcend that language barrier, a there are a lot of things that rely on the use of words. I've been fortunate with the use of my Spanish language skills to get to know and become friends with several wonderful Spanish women here, but not all the communities are as open or speak English as well (and I certainly can't learn all of their languages). We really are limited in our friendships to those that we can communicate with.

Marica, Martina's mom, is very nice and one of the few Italian women who has been very willing to try to speak English, and so we've enjoyed visiting with her family and felt very honored to be invited to Martina's birthday party today. We were the only non-Italians there.

It was held at Pee Wee's, a favorite party location among many preschool parents of all nationalities. It an enormous room full of climbing things, slides, and every piece of Little Tikes type plastic available. Kids love to take off and explore the ball pits, slides, and myriad of climbing things. Parents love to sit with the endless cup of tar-like coffee knowing that the worst thing likely to happen to their kids, is the complete blackening of the bottom of their socks by the end of the afternoon.

The Italians were all very warm and friendly and even Marica's mom, visiting from Italy, talked to me in her broken English, but we understood each other and where English failed, Spanish worked.

The kids never care what language is used. They just play. Luci ran off with Martina and Federica. Everyone was happy. Then about 20 minutes later Martina and Federica ran back crying and talking quickly to their mom's, shaking their hands as they talked in true Italian style. It was amusing in that it was so typical of kids. Talking over each other to tell their side of the story and arguing over what the other had said. I didn't need to understand Italian to understand what was going on and the one word that did ring out loud and clear was Luci. They were fighting over who got to play with Luci.

Anyway, it was a nice party. We stayed for three hours while the kids did bumper cars and played. The cake was German and all the toys were American. The one unique Italian thing was the Asti toast that is traditional after the cake is cut. The kids were done with the sweets and the adults all enjoyed a toast with Asti. It's a very nice tradition that I enjoy and will probably adopt for my girl's parties as well - something a little nice for the adults.

Even Tiara likes the bumper cars. I don't like the smell of rubber that surrounds that part of Pee Wee's, but it doesn't seem to bother the kids who clamber to ride them again and again. Arianna's a pretty good driver. Luci will have to learn to enjoy public transportation.