Italy Abroad!

Parent Cafe
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<p>We’re back!</p>

<p>I’m sure my wife will chime in to talk about our trip to Florence, so I think now I’ll just post about my d’s study abroad experience thus far.</p>

<p>She’s half-way through. It seems her Italian really is pretty fluent now. I used her as a translator with friends at a meeting we had in Spilamberto, and they all complimented her on her language skills, and asked them to translate a quarterly newsletter from English into Italian. Her host family really speaks very, very little English, and so she has to speak Italian to survive. All her classes are in Italian, all her papers are written in Italian, and she can now really get around most everywhere. Plays in the university orchestra - there are two other “foreign” students, from Austria. Didn’t like our fractured attempts at pronunciation, and seemed pretty upset with our ordering of “calzone” to rhyme with “Malzone”, as in Frank Malzone of the Boston Red Sox 1955-1965.</p>

<p>Classes are all good, though her university class in Medieval/Renaissance Theater was held in a building under construction, so between the noise level and speed of the professor’s rattling on, she said she had to sit on the edge of her seat the entire time.</p>

<p>The location of the program can’t be beat. It is literally on the Piazza de Signoria, 50 feet away from where the Bonfire of the Vanities was held, and where Savanarola was burnt at the stake, and about 150 feet from where the copy of Michelangelo’s David now stands (the original was moved to the Academica in the 1880s.) While she knows the bus system pretty well, she lives across the Arno on the Oltrarno side, within 15 minutes walk of everywhere she needs to be. In October, the program celebrated its 75th anniversary in Florence, with alums from all over the world attending - she met a few from the class of 1948, who were there the first year the program reopened after WWII.</p>

<p>The program people have been great, from setting up a meeting with the orchestra conductor, to helping us with hotel reservations when my wife became ill. Both of the main folks came to the office to meet us when we were in town, even though they are on break. When we left, d. went off by boat to Athens, and then will spend a week in Crete, before returning.</p>

<p>The College has a program of fellowships for students who wish to remain in Italy for 6-8 weeks after their final exams. D. is planning to apply for one, related to 12th Century pilgrimage songs in northern Italy (I think she is planning to walk some of the routes, and write about the experience, while learning the music.) Upon her return, she is planning to apply for a paid scholarship which is actually a student-faculty research position where together they participate in a year-long series of seminars:</p>

<p><a href=“http://www.smith.edu/kahninstitute/fellowships.html[/url]”>http://www.smith.edu/kahninstitute/fellowships.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>Her spring is going to be packed. I know the program has a trip to Sicily planned; she has a good friend in Prague (they hope to go off together to Vienna), and we have mutual friends at a research institute at Oxford whom she hopes to go visit.</p>

<p>If I sound a little jealous, it is because I am - oh,to be young again! (and to be given the financial support to do what she is doing.) We (and she) will be grateful for a very long time.</p>

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<p>I enjoyed reading of your D’s experiences. Sounds truly wonderful. My daughter just returned from her semester in Florence which she classified as “amazing.” I tuned into when you wrote: “oh,to be young again!” because I thought the SAME thing when she returned. She had traveled throughout Italy every week on many trips with her program (by the way, she also went to Sicily like your D is going) and she traveled on her own to many places outside of Italy. She even skied and watched the World Cup race before she returned home. While we got to visit her which was great, I think like you do how great it is to be able to do all that she gets to do. She just showed us her huge number of photos from her past four months. A great young life these kids are having!</p>

<p>I hope your trip there has been special.</p>

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<p>Welcome Home, mini and Ellen! I hope that your trip was all that you had hoped it would be!</p>

<p>Your daughter’s experiences sound fabulous, mini! My son has not had study abroad experience yet, but he is hoping to perhaps do a semester in Belgium, where they have an essential equivalent of the CDC. He’s pretty excited by the prospect!</p>

<p>Hope all is well with Ellen, and I’ll be looking forward to an update! ~b.</p>

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<p>Mini, some of us are very jealous! Did you happen to bring us back any presents? :)</p>

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<p>Welcome home Mini and Ellen,
Hope you are all doing well. Your D’s semester in Italy sounds absolutely fabulous. “Youth is wasted on the young.” They just son’t realize it yet. I hope that Ellen is doing as well as possible and look forward to more details.</p>

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<p>Uhhh - Jealous? YEAH!!! She’s living my retirement.</p>

<p>Welcome home. Happy New Year. Hope you’re doing well.</p>

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<p>Amen.</p>

<p>I suspect that your daughter fully appreciates, and is grateful for, the opportunity.</p>

<p>Glad to hear that you guys had a wonderful trip and love reading about your daughter’s busy Italian life.</p>

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<p>Bring back some nice Italian Prunes and find a fountain that hits what you at aim at?</p>

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<p>Ellen here,
The time in Italy was wonderful, but the travel was way too long esp. the trip home. Renting an apartment was very useful and I recomend it. We made most of our own meals, we had a grocery store next door and the farmers market 3 blocks away. It saved us lots of money and David likes to cook. The grocery store was like a rabbit warren, lots of small rooms leading to other small rooms, and the great food choices. We ate out the end of the trip when we were staying in a hotel and had some great meals and some less than great meals. On Christmas day we found a place where our D can get her fix of curry when she wants and it was very good. </p>

<p>The museums where lovely and we only made our 16 year old go to the Academy (the David). She skipped the rest of them but did go on other sightseeing trips. I skipped some in favor of naps. We did lots of walking, Florence is a very walkable city and we had mostly nice weather. David took lots of pictures. </p>

<p>We didn’t make it to Venice but we did go to Sienna and Modena. We have friends near Modena so we visited them overnight. Venice will have to be another trip. Maybe before D comes home depending on my treatment schedule and when I do surgery. </p>

<p>I am hanging in there, I had my 3rd chemo 2 days after we got home and I have spent most of the last 2 days sleeping on the coach. A mixture of chemo and jet lag.
Happy new year
Ellen</p>

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<p>Ellen, I am very happy for you that you got to make this trip and it sounds so special. By the way, when we went last month to visit our D in Florence, we also did a side trip to Sienna with our her. Anyway, I know you are back to the treatments and I hope you take it easy and take care of yourself and let others wait on you. Am sending positive vibes your way for a bright recovery.</p>

<p>It is so great that you got to go. I was thinking about that yesterday because my D who was in Florence is home now and she went to visit her best friend yesterday (from HS) who was to have spent the entire year in France studying abroad. She came home at Thanksgiving permanently (lost the credits by the way but apparently was a semester ahead in credits so it is OK) because her mom is battling the same as you and has been for some time (even before her D went abroad) and the situation warranted the daughter coming home and staying. So, I am grateful that you are able to visit your D and your D can stay over in Italy.</p>

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<p>Hi David and Ellen,</p>

<p>Welcome back. Sounds as if you had a great time catching up with your D.</p>

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<p>David, here.</p>

<p>We did get to talk with our Italian friends at length, and gathered some impressions of the country in our semi-tourist mode and talking with d. as well. First of all, there is great prosperity, at least north of Rome. There is pretty much full employment, and companies and shops are desperate for workers, which bids up wages (and costs of services.) Supermarket foods, except for meat, are generally cheaper in Italy than here (and they grow virtually all their own fruits and vegetables), but meals out cost substantially more, even outside the main tourist haunts, reflecting labor costs.</p>

<p>There is universal health insurance, mostly paid for through taxes, some in co-pays. Besides providing health care for everyone, it acts as a form of income redistribution toward the southern poorer half of the country, making it possible for new businesses to open, and attracting doctors and other health care workers. (Yes, you read that correctly: Italians believe that the higher taxes they pay for health and social services are good for business.) When we tell them about how health insurance works in the U.S., they are absolutely shocked (and generally launch into a diatribe about how the U.S. can pay for the occupation, but not care for its own peope. No - this didn’t come from me - no prompting necessary!)</p>

<p>Most of the northern Italians I spoke with believe that their primary schools are good, their secondary ones poor. Colleges courses are being lengthened to conform to European Union standards. There are no (or very few) private colleges or universities, and my d. tells me that it is virtually unheard of for students to attend university outside of their home areas, regardless of reputation in particular subjects. This is because university costs are very low if one attends locally. There are no college residents; folks either live at home, or in cheap apartments surrounding the university (in Florence, north of Santa Croce).</p>

<p>Religion. There isn’t much of it. We went to the Duomo (the Cathedral) for midnight mass on Christmas, and, while there were I’d guess 2,000 people, it was well less than half full. The Cardinal gave a homily on family, stressing the need for Italians to have more babies! He complained that the schools were closing due to lack of enrollment, and that single children were lonely. (Note: according to my d., who was translating, he only cared about ITALIAN babies, not those of immigrants, etc.) Ah, the wonders of birth control, universally available abortion, etc. A good friend of ours simply said, “no one gets married anymore”, and indeed, as we walked around the fashion center of Florence, with hundreds and hundreds of stores, we saw exactly one very tiny bridal shop. Most of the old churches are now just open for tourists, and the local and national government has a fund to keep them in repair. So while most Italians are nominally Catholic, in the north at least, it is very nominal. In all the working churches I saw, I never saw a single person go into a confessional, and even during Christmas Mass, the number of individuals taking communion was a very small fraction.</p>

<p>All local and regional governmental offices seem to fly three flags - Italy, the European Union, and the United Nations. On December 22nd, the little town we visited (Spilamberto) had “Gandhi Day”, where the mayor named the two main streets after Gandhi and Martin Luther King.</p>

<p>Police services seemed to be there mostly for decoration (my d. has funny stories about their being two police departments in Florence, working various areas on alternate days.) They don’t carry guns, and actually have to make a formal written request to get one out of the lockers at the police department. Crime rates are said to be low, with the usual number of pickpocket and burglary incidents. With rare exceptions, one doesn’t read about crime in the newspaper, or see it on the tv news. Most Italians don’t keep guns in their homes. </p>

<p>There is a substantial African population in Florence. Many African males seem employed in the evening in selling knock-off leather goods to tourists. (I expect they work in factories in the day time.) The police hassle them a bit, but rather than arrest the sellers, they go after the buyers, with fines up to $10,000. We never saw a Black African working in a store, and outside of Florence, we didn’t see any. Many Muslim folks have opened kebab shops. </p>

<p>I think middle class folks generally live in smaller houses than Americans. Their cars definitely are smaller (my younger d. had me going around taking car pictures.) In Florence itself, cars are absolutely unnecessary - public transport is great, and virtually everywhere is walkable. The train service between cities is relatively inexpensive, and very efficient. </p>

<p>Cafes turn into bars at night. There is some alcoholism. Also tourist alcohol trade - well-to-do English students fly in for the weekend, get totally smashed, and fly out. D. says public drunkenness is heavily frowned upon, and relationships with the student-tourist drinkers can be frayed. I know from my previous trip and professional work that there is drug use as well; besides marijuana/hashish, heroin from Afghanistan, and there are many methadone clinics.</p>

<p>I’m sure I’ll think of more later.</p>

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<p>Western Europe has a serious population problem. Birthrates are well below the level needed to sustain the population at the current levels (2.1 children per woman). The indigenous European populations are declining rapidly in size at the same time that a disenfranchised, largely Islamic, immigrant population is expanding rapidly.</p>

<p>Professor Kurth at Swarthmore has written extensively about the political implications of this. Unlike the United States, which can largely ignore the Islamic vote (under 1% of our population), the size of the Islamic vote in Europe (5% and growing) means that politicians are increasingly forced to cater to Islamic interests. </p>

<p>Of more immediate concern, Europe is much more at risk for radical Islamic terrorism than is the United States. Imagine if the Mexican immigrant community in the US was actively engaged in promoting terrorism. That’s the problem that Europe faces.</p>

<p><a href=“http://www.fpri.org/orbis/5003/kurth.europeidentity.pdf[/url]”>http://www.fpri.org/orbis/5003/kurth.europeidentity.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

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<p>Countries are different from each other, which is where I think Professor Kurtz broadly misses the boat (I think he needs to actually spend some time in Europe.) In England, many Islamic immigrants come from Pakistan, India, and Afghanistan, often from within conservative Muslim circles, a tiny portion of whom might be terrorist risks. In Italy, in contrast, the vast majority are secularists - from Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, and Libya - often well-educated, and many of whom immigrated BECAUSE of the democratic traditions. In France, immigrants from Tunisia, Algeria, and Morocco have been speaking French since birth, rarely have any ties to conservative Islam (there are some Iranians who do) and came looking for work. In Germany, there is hodgepodge, including liberal Iranians, but the main group is made up of highly secularized Turks coming from a country with strict secularist rule since 1918.</p>

<p>Once they learn how to manage it, immigration is not a problem, but a solution. Italian politicians have learned that not only do they NOT have to cater to Catholic interests, they are more likely to get elected by openly opposing them. Pace Professor Kurtz, the vast majority of the current population of Europe sees Christian social thought as the problem, not the solution.</p>

<p>Italian cooking show on the Food Network yesterday. They were making C(M)alzones. ;)</p>

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<p>great to hear about your sojourn to Italy. Aside… Gabriel Garcia Marquez says Sienna is the most beautiful city square on the planet…and it is special. Ellen, may a long New Years weekend of rest revive you after jet lag and more chemo. Although your daughter (like many of our kids) enjoys splendid options for the coming weeks, in my heart, I believe one day she, too, will grow up to be a parent who will also sacrifice and plan so that her own offspring can have the opportunity to get out and see this wonderful and complex world during their educational years. And isn’t it grand to see an American student mastering a foreign language. enjoying your commentaries on the culture and current population</p>

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<p>Do you ever give sources for your assertions?</p>

<p>You and your comrades have a ways to go before “Christian social thought” is eradicated completely ;):</p>

<p><a href=“http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/4243727.stm[/url]”>http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/4243727.stm&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

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<p>I did - specifically, the election of Italian politicians campaigning on anti-Catholic Church platforms.</p>

<p>You did, too. Shall I quote what you posted?</p>

<p>Italy: “Although the baptism rate is traditionally high, Catholic congregations have been falling, birth rates shrinking and numbers taking religious orders have also decreased.”</p>

<p>Spain: “among the most devout European countries, Spain has seen the power and authority of the Church wane. Opinion polls suggest that nearly half of Spaniards now rarely go to Mass.”</p>

<p>Even Poland! “But despite the immense popularity of Polish-born Pope John Paul II, the Church now faces new challenges: attendance is falling in urban areas even though an overwhelming majority still describe themselves as Catholics.”</p>

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<p>Yes, I know, but rumors of its death in the world-at-large are vastly overblown.
Not quite time for rejoicing yet!</p>

<p>P.S. Extremely interesting article that idad posted above.</p>

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<p>Well, as I said, the vast majority, and not in the world, but in Europe. Which Christian social thought would you like to discuss in terms of Europe (and Italy specifically) - abortion rights? birth control? or gay marriage? Of course, Jesus didn’t have anything to say about any of these (other than his lack of support for the traditional family, Luke 14-26). At any rate, part of the point of Kurtz’s article was the waning of Christian social thought in Europe (which I think is no doubt correct); the open question is whether that is a good thing or not? Looking at Europe in the 35 years I have been backing-and-forthing, I think it has been overwhelmingly to the good. Others may differ.</p>

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<p>Not as interesting as James Kurth’s proposed direction for dealing with Islamic terrorism:</p>

<p><a href=“http://www.amconmag.com/2005/2005_09_26/cover.html[/url]”>http://www.amconmag.com/2005/2005_09_26/cover.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>He argues that the United States should foster Sunni verus Shia strife in the Middle East.</p>

<p>Specifically, he recommends “cut and run” in Iraq, but only after we assist the Shia and the Kurds in totally crushing the Sunnis and carving Iraq into two governing regions.</p>

<p>His theory is that strong Shia regions in Iran and Iraq would be so threatening to the Sunni terror-enabling states (Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Egypt, etc.) that they would be forced to turn their attention away from the West and towards their traditional intramural religious turf wars battles. In other words, use the Shia/Sunni hatred (they’ve been killing each other since before there was a United States) to our foreign policy advantage, just as Nixon’s approach to China fostered a split in “the communist bloc”.</p>