Our First Week in Varese, Italy

Well, it has been a different than expected first week here in Italy.

The girls did great on the flight over. Elise made friends with another passenger who gave her the tip that if you sleep following dinner you pretty much wake up there. She decided to take her advice and found it true. Alana, on the other hand, decided to see what it was like to pull an all-nighter. I hung out with Alana trying to get her to sleep to no avail. She did quite well and did finally sleep on the flight from Amsterdam to Milan. The flight was not even half full so Brie and Ron found an open row and snoozed for a chunk of time.

We are staying in a 3 bedroom – 2 bath apartment. It is rather large and is within a gated complex. The girls are very lucky to have a small enclosed space to play outside. They were busy exploring for at least an hour one afternoon. The girls are sharing a room and love staying up talking for endless hours. Do they ever get tired? Their answer is a resounding “NO”. There is a large kitchen, which most of you know how happy that makes me. However; I have found having a large kitchen and laundry facility is not all it is cracked up to be if you do not have enough electricity to run them. The girls have learned how lucky we are to always have power and they have come up with a number of creative activities to keep them busy…shadow puppets from the outside light, plays with props, etc.

For our first afternoon (Mon.) we hit the supermarket to buy a few necessity items. One being milk. Now that the girls have taste tested each of the different colored boxes of milk they have made their preference selection. Elise likes the green box which is pretty much a skim. Alana likes the red box which is the whole milk version. Brie unfortunately has not decided on any at this point. She has boycotted milk and pretty much all drinks for the first several days. Finally Ron brought home some liquid formula that she drank down once. She is not convinced, but since she is still having wet diapers I can not be concerned as I recall Elise going through the same thing her first trip. She is eating great and so we continue to find foods with a lot of liquids to try to keep her hydrated. What kid would refuse a Popsicle? Brie, I guess, and since the electricity goes out often Elise and Alana were the big winners on the package of popsicles. I think they both ate 4 each.

We decided to venture out the first day (Tues.) while Ron was at work. I bundled everyone up and headed for the busy streets of Varese. The sidewalks are tight, if any, so imagine the fun of keeping 2 walking kids and a stroller from getting hit by the cars speeding by. The girls have done a great job of learning to stay close to the buildings or whatever they can to avoid an Italian driver from taking them out. We had a lot of fun finding things that are the same and different from the US. I know the girls really enjoyed the 2 kid stores we went into. They had fun browsing the numerous costumes on display for Carnivale, which is to take place in just a few weeks. It is similar to Halloween, where the kids dress up but they parade around the piazza rather than go door to door.

That evening we met Tiemen and his family for dinner at a local pizzeria. The girls ate awesome and loved getting dessert. Elise chose a cream custard with fresh berries and Alana went right for a chocolate cake with cream and cherries.

It was another nice day (Wed.) so we headed to the Commune di Varese. They have wonderful brick paths throughout the hills which lead to several playgrounds and fountains. The girls were ecstatic to run until their hearts content.

The last 2 days (Thurs. and Fri.) were very low keep since Brie came down with a 102 fever and we got a ton of snow today according to Italian standards. I think it was 3-4 inches of heavy wet snow. I was really looking forward to spending quality time with the girls with no interruptions from the many volunteer activities I do usually, but wow 2 days in an apartment with little to no toys has been a great opportunity for us to come up with many fun and new activities of entertainment besides reading and doing school work. We have made robot puzzles, table decorations from post-its, and dressed up in sheets.

It is the weekend and we are trying to decide where to head and a bottle of wine is calling my name, so I better sign off. Hopefully we will be able to attach a few photos of our apartment and the surrounding area including the Commune de Varese.