melted smoosh

um, hi. we are on the last full day of our 14-day voluntary self-quarantine after returning to the US from Rome. and as we have spent the past two weeks hunkered down without stepping outside, relying on our fantastic friends and family to deliver groceries to us, we have watched the insanity continue to mount around us. it's hard to believe that my post about Lenten observances in Italy was written within this same month, let alone in the same year. like pretty much everybody else i know, our world has been turned upside down by the COVID-19 virus and it's difficult to imagine a time when we didn't know it was coming. but we didn't. at least, we didn't anticipate how directly it would impact our lives. i remember specifically the day that i first heard the NPR Up First news summary podcast mentioning the outbreak in Wuhan. the podcast was released on January 21, and described "international concern" over this new virus. i listened to it on Friday, J...

one of the best parts of living in a foreign country is embracing their cultural traditions. of course, this means temporarily letting go of some of our own familiar customs, like neighborhood trick-or-treating on Halloween. here in Rome, the kids may dress up on Halloween itself and do a trick-or-treat activity at school, but there's nowhere near the excitement and community participation that there is in the US, and certainly no All Saint's Day parties for the girls to attend. this has been a major disappointment for them since we moved here, but this year, the Carnevale festivities more than made up for it! Carnevale in Rome is not as elaborate as it is in Venice or Brazil; it's mostly focused on the kids, who are seen walking about the city in costume for weeks in January and February. Cecilia's preschool class had a special Carnevale party the week before Martedi Grasso (Fat Tuesday), when they all dressed up and then walked down to the local park to play and thr...

photo credit: Rebecca! ( Naples, day 1 here ) the next day started bright and early with fresh cornetti and fruit dropped off by our AirBnB host, so we could enjoy breakfast on the balcony. pretty incredible weather for late October!  unfortunately, the next part of the morning was not quite as idyllic. we planned to take the regional train to Pompeii ... and so had pretty much the entire population of Naples. we crammed on the train, shoulder to shoulder, back to back, with sweaty strangers, trying to keep hands on the stroller and wearing our backpacks on the front to discourage pickpockets. with various delays and inexplicable stops along the line, it took over an hour for us to arrive. finally, we arrived at our stop and tumbled out, grateful to be breathing the fresh air!  fueling up before getting slathered in sunscreen the entrance to the excavation site Greta stealing a page from the other tourists' playbook last year, we had visited the ancient ruins of Ostia Antica n...