It’s Sunday and I’m sitting at home with my family. i couldn’t be happier. The anticipation of Christmas is in the air. I’ve downloaded a bunch of songs that I love for Christmas and it makes the mood warm. My husband and children and I have been sitting around the living room table drawing pictures for the last couple of hours. We have the fire on and the cat is in her little round red bed in a dream like state.
I’ve been thinking alot about the upcoming holidays and people who are by themselves. To be honest I’m a bit worried. I think about what it means to be alone during the holiday times and how important it is to have your family around you. My two boys were playing with their dad on the couch and I was beaming with joy thinking how it is the simple things in life that give us the greatest pleasure.
I have a habit on the computer of checking two sites. The first is facebook to see what my friends and family are up to and the second is this site. I put the word ‘blog’ in the title because otherwise Google wont be able to recognize this. When I check on my blog and see the number of hits steadily rising up from 100 to 330 in the last week, I wonder who is reading this. I have a feature on my computer called stats that tells me how you were referred to me. Mostly my visitors are coming from facebook, from my blogroll and wordpress forum.
Thank you for visiting and welcome to my blog. I’m happy to have you visit. Like I was saying I’m worried about people being alone for the holidays. The main reason I moved to Italy was because it represents the family still united. It is true. In Italy, family values are still high. We eat together as a family. Our social life revolves around visiting other families and just hanging out with them. We have a emphasis on food, wine and conversation. Italians luckily have found a way to consume wine in moderation – for the most part.
Please if you are facing the idea of spending the holidays alone, make active plans to assure you spend the holidays with friends or family. It’s important. Do it.
If you are lucky enough to be surrounded by a loving family, count your blessings, hug your children. One of books I read recently was Leo Buscaglia’s Living Loving and Learning that focused on how important it is to hug. He started a class at UCLA called Love. What a free thinker, I admire him. I can recommend it if you haven’t yet read it.
Last night I went out with my class to the center of the city to the theater to see a play about Italy’s history. It was horrible. I hate to say that but I went with 22 9th graders, about five of their parents and another teacher. The theme was about Garibaldi as Italy is currently celebrating 150 years of unity. It’s hard to define. The two actors read alot about Foscolo, Liberation, Unity, Napolean and the Resurgence in the 1700s.
I’ll set the scene for you: Imagine 22 kids front two rows in a small theater that perhaps holds 200 people in a semi-circle with about eight rows of chairs. The kids were all excited to go out on a Saturday evening with their friends.
To their surprise, two actors actually READ about 40 pages of Italian History. I had a hard time staying awake as it was way past my bedtime. I didn’t mean to but I did laugh when watching my poor students heads bob as they tried to stay awake, poor kids. When the show ended at 11p, there was a huge round of applause. I think it was because they were glad it was over. The kids were so disappointed, they asked for a refund because they had paid to have another history lesson when they have plenty of history at school. Some of you parents might not agree with me but that is my opinion.
That is my news for this week. Thanks so much for visiting and reading. I’m trying to keep the content real and personal. I hope you have enjoyed this. Please feel free to leave a comment and have a great week. Julie
