As previously stated, Thursday was a complete wash. I still have no idea what really happened Thursday except that Rob came over to stay the weekend and we had cold pizza because he wanted to take Felix to the park right after I cooked but before eating. He won't be making that mistake again! We also finally got around to putting the first of the family photos on the fridge... you like? If you want to be on my fridge, send me a picture!! :)
Friday morning we got up early, I made the boys eggs while Rob watched in terror expecting the house to explode at any moment. I'm pretty sure this was when I set off the smoke alarm... naturally, because Rob's convinced we're all going to go up in flames because of the gas stove. Breakfast was good and not burned, then we jetted for the bus stop. For us, it takes two buses and tons of waiting to get from the apartment to the school. The city bus (AIM - great name, huh?) takes us from Torri to Ederle, then the post mass transit system takes us from Ederle to Villagio where all of the primary schools are. Today Felix gets registered for school!!!!! Not that I'm excited or anything... First, let it be known that as far as the greater Vicenza area is concerned, Americans are in a hurry and Italians are not. We all have somewhere to be, of course, just some of us are much more interested in getting there quickly than others. I already tend to fall a little more into that Italian category and Rob definitely falls into the American category. Felix... well, he's in a world of his own as most 9 year old boys are. Bus #1 arrives only about five minutes late, which seems to be the standard so far. Once on post, we learn that the next shuttle bus won't be around for about 30 minutes, so we meander into the 24 hour shoppette to spend a little time, get a coffee, giant tea... things of that nature. Then we sit and wait for bus #2, which is 10 minutes late. At the school, we are ushered into the office of the registrar who sorts through our paperwork pretty quickly, then hands us off to Felix's new guidance counselor who will be our tour guide for the next 45 minutes. Yes, it took us 45 minutes to do everything with her... the tour itself was only about 15 of it, but it certainly felt like forever to me and I'm sure Rob wasn't too thrilled either. Felix, on the other hand, was a wealth of general and personal information. It was awesome how he put our personal lives out there for absolutely everyone to enjoy. I have to admit, despite my general discomfort with his overshare, he didn't actually give away anything that wasn't either obvious or already on paperwork we'd turned in. All that remains now is for him to learn and apply the filter. No big deal, we all go through it at some point, right? We did learn that the school (like many in the states) is designed to imitate local traffic patterns... there are roundabouts in the hallway intersections. Yes, we all found that interesting. It is otherwise a very "normal" small-town school: it is attached to the middle school by way of cafeteria downstairs and library upstairs. It's brand new and nice and Felix is ecstatic about it. At one point during the trip, he looked at me and said, "mom, I think I'm gonna LOVE it here" then continued on. I felt like crying... that's about the best thing I could've heard. He's been very unhappy with school since we got to NC and none of us were sad to say goodbye to the place, but I was a little worried that he might carry over the negatives to this new school. Apparently not, thank God!
Upon leaving the school (finally!) we learned that it would be just over an hour until the next bus came because the mass transit bus takes a 90 minute break in the middle of the day (along with two 30 minute breaks, one mid-morning and one mid-afternoon... lovely thing to drive a 10 mile circle 5 times a day). I wracked my brain to come up with something that could possibly keep my boys from losing their minds while we waited for transportation. AHA!!! Mary lives here... maybe we can go meet up with her and hang out for awhile until the bus comes back around. I gave her a call and she said definitely come over - her husband was going through a bunch of TA-50 and that meant Rob would have someone to chat with and not be bored. Felix is pretty easily entertained and since Mary's no stranger to hanging out with kids, it was great. It turned out even better for us because Mary volunteered to take us back to post and took us to one of the main places we needed to go for housing on the way. We got some much needed stuff for the apartment, then got to post without having to wait forever for the guaranteed-to-be-late bus. On post we did a little more shopping... you really can't ever have enough food in the house when there are boys involved! Then back to the AIM stop and back to the apartment. We have thus far been unable to make the tv work. Luckily, Felix is still trying to catch up with the time change and is tired relatively early, so bedtime is pretty easy right now.
At least there is still the laptop for watching movies. This, of course, makes Rob even more determined to fix the tv problem tomorrow, so I guess we'll give it a shot!
Friday morning we got up early, I made the boys eggs while Rob watched in terror expecting the house to explode at any moment. I'm pretty sure this was when I set off the smoke alarm... naturally, because Rob's convinced we're all going to go up in flames because of the gas stove. Breakfast was good and not burned, then we jetted for the bus stop. For us, it takes two buses and tons of waiting to get from the apartment to the school. The city bus (AIM - great name, huh?) takes us from Torri to Ederle, then the post mass transit system takes us from Ederle to Villagio where all of the primary schools are. Today Felix gets registered for school!!!!! Not that I'm excited or anything... First, let it be known that as far as the greater Vicenza area is concerned, Americans are in a hurry and Italians are not. We all have somewhere to be, of course, just some of us are much more interested in getting there quickly than others. I already tend to fall a little more into that Italian category and Rob definitely falls into the American category. Felix... well, he's in a world of his own as most 9 year old boys are. Bus #1 arrives only about five minutes late, which seems to be the standard so far. Once on post, we learn that the next shuttle bus won't be around for about 30 minutes, so we meander into the 24 hour shoppette to spend a little time, get a coffee, giant tea... things of that nature. Then we sit and wait for bus #2, which is 10 minutes late. At the school, we are ushered into the office of the registrar who sorts through our paperwork pretty quickly, then hands us off to Felix's new guidance counselor who will be our tour guide for the next 45 minutes. Yes, it took us 45 minutes to do everything with her... the tour itself was only about 15 of it, but it certainly felt like forever to me and I'm sure Rob wasn't too thrilled either. Felix, on the other hand, was a wealth of general and personal information. It was awesome how he put our personal lives out there for absolutely everyone to enjoy. I have to admit, despite my general discomfort with his overshare, he didn't actually give away anything that wasn't either obvious or already on paperwork we'd turned in. All that remains now is for him to learn and apply the filter. No big deal, we all go through it at some point, right? We did learn that the school (like many in the states) is designed to imitate local traffic patterns... there are roundabouts in the hallway intersections. Yes, we all found that interesting. It is otherwise a very "normal" small-town school: it is attached to the middle school by way of cafeteria downstairs and library upstairs. It's brand new and nice and Felix is ecstatic about it. At one point during the trip, he looked at me and said, "mom, I think I'm gonna LOVE it here" then continued on. I felt like crying... that's about the best thing I could've heard. He's been very unhappy with school since we got to NC and none of us were sad to say goodbye to the place, but I was a little worried that he might carry over the negatives to this new school. Apparently not, thank God!
Upon leaving the school (finally!) we learned that it would be just over an hour until the next bus came because the mass transit bus takes a 90 minute break in the middle of the day (along with two 30 minute breaks, one mid-morning and one mid-afternoon... lovely thing to drive a 10 mile circle 5 times a day). I wracked my brain to come up with something that could possibly keep my boys from losing their minds while we waited for transportation. AHA!!! Mary lives here... maybe we can go meet up with her and hang out for awhile until the bus comes back around. I gave her a call and she said definitely come over - her husband was going through a bunch of TA-50 and that meant Rob would have someone to chat with and not be bored. Felix is pretty easily entertained and since Mary's no stranger to hanging out with kids, it was great. It turned out even better for us because Mary volunteered to take us back to post and took us to one of the main places we needed to go for housing on the way. We got some much needed stuff for the apartment, then got to post without having to wait forever for the guaranteed-to-be-late bus. On post we did a little more shopping... you really can't ever have enough food in the house when there are boys involved! Then back to the AIM stop and back to the apartment. We have thus far been unable to make the tv work. Luckily, Felix is still trying to catch up with the time change and is tired relatively early, so bedtime is pretty easy right now.
At least there is still the laptop for watching movies. This, of course, makes Rob even more determined to fix the tv problem tomorrow, so I guess we'll give it a shot!
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