With no time to ourselves and every moment taken to visit with my cousins and my aunt, it's been impossible to write. Coincidentally, there are few pictures to show for these three days.
We got into a kind of rhythm, if not to say routine: waking around 8 am, eating a breakfast of caffe latte with cookies (or hot milk with corn flakes, followed by cookies, for the girls), someone taking us out to see some thing or another, returning to a full lunch with my aunt, followed by another tour, and ending with a late dinner. Our days wrapped up, for all four of us, around 11 pm.
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Some context to my family here: my aunt Lina is my father's younger brother's widow. She lives in the house in which she raised her two boys, Federico and Nicola. The older of the two is unmarried and lives with his mom, though he owns his own house a few kilometres away. It is common for unmarried adult children to continue to live with their parents, and in fact, even when married, one of the children will live with the aging parent(s), either by having their spouse move into their childhood home or by taking in their parents into their new home.
Zia Lina is from Naples, so a good deal of the food she makes for us is Neopolitan. And she's a great cook, so we have been eating very well. We haven't told my family here that we're vegetarian; the linguistic and cultural chasm is too great for us to attempt to explain. Everyone is therefore rather pleasantly surprised at our girls and how they would rather eat artichokes, broccoli and Brussels sprouts than touch their meat. And I've been very proud of how polite they have been about strange foods, especially the meats. They have not once made a bad face or spit something out or refused to try something. There have been a few times where they couldn't finish their plate - invariably something with meat - but otherwise it has gone very smoothly. It helps that there is pizza, pasta and yummy veggies to go around.
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In these three days we visited Santhia, a small town close to where my aunt lives; Vercelli, the main city in the area; Burcina, a park in the hills where we went for a walk along paths to admire the blooming trees; Viverone to walk along a little lake. We ate pizza at my aunt's brother's restaurant. We watched the Eurocup final game with Nico and Federica, and saw Milan's Inter team win 2-0 against Bayard Munich of
Germany. We paid our respects at my uncle's grave, where Maia left a little stone she found at the house, as a memento of her visit.
There were a few tense moments, as there is always likely to be with family: each one has an idea of what will make us happy, they then make plans for us, or at least strongly suggest one thing or the other, and it invariably conflicts with what the others had in mind. And without meaning to, they put us in the middle of ancient family quibbles. I think we managed to wade our way through successfully, but it took a little bit of diplomatic work - not an easy task at the best of times, never mind in a third language.
Tomorrow we are off to Valle d'Aosta, Italy's smallest region. Solanne
has been asking for nearly a week, since we arrived in Piemonte and saw the Alps in the distance, when we would get to see the snow. She will get her wish soon.
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