Budding Artists and Actors (with an aside about driving in Italy)

As we mentioned in the last post, the kids have been taking art lessons and acting lessons in Florence each Saturday.  Florence is about an hour away by car.

(An aside: we have leased a car for our time in Italy.

This is our car - a brand new Citroen C4 Grand Picasso, something you won't see at all in the USA.  I think the closest comparable car in the US would be a Mazda5.

Despite the reports of crazy drivers in Italy, I've been pleasantly surprised.  The style of driving certainly is different, but once you know what to expect, it isn't crazy.  A couple of the major differences:

-- If you're making a left turn or pulling out of a side street or driveway, don't bother to wait for a break in the traffic.  Make your own break in the traffic.  Just pull far enough out than other cars can't go around you.  So they stop and let you in.  It is as easy as that.  And no one will honk or make obscene gestures at you, who has just butted in -- I guess they know that they do the same thing.  This works for pedestrians crossing the street, too.  By the way, this is standard operating procedure in Boston, too, except for the part about not honking or making obscene gestures.

-- You can also parallel park perpendicularly.  As with busy, congested cities the world over, parking in Italy is at a premium.  This is especially true because the cities here were built hundreds (or even thousands) of years ago.  If there is a space but it isn't quite big enough to parallel park your car, go ahead and pull into this space perpendicularly to the curb instead.  This works only if you're not going to be there too long.  So what if the tail of you car sticks out into traffic?  Traffic will go around you.  It is a similar situation with double parking, too.

We didn't have any pictures of regular cars perpendicular parking, but we did have one of this little, cute, electric 3-wheeler. 

Lots of scooters and Smart Car sized cars, too.  Here is the only electric car charging station we've seen.

--  On the highways and major inter-town roads, the police monitor speed electronically remotely (think red-light cameras tied to radar detectors).  I guess, though, the public wasn't ready for complete Big Brother traffic control because each of these electronic checkpoints has a big sign saying "Electronic Speed Checkpoint" and a sign about 1/4 mile before it saying ""Electronic Speed Checkpoint Coming Up."  So, naturally, drive as fast as you want, slow down as you pass the checkpoint, then speed up again.  Surprisingly, people don't drive superfast or very aggressively.

This sign tells you that speed is being monitored electronically and remotely (and that there will be a checkpoint in about 1/2 mile).

This sign marks the actual spot where speed in checked (see the silver box behind the sign).  Right before each sign you see brake lights come on in front of you as people slow down to the speed limit before speeding up again and going on their way.

So, as long as your GPS doesn't send you the wrong way down one way streets (as ours has a couple times) or through ZTL's (Zona de Trafico Limitado -- city centers that are limited to only residents or even only residents with license plates that end with certain digits), you won't have any trouble at all.

So, back to the classes.  When we got here we looked around for activities for the kids so they could have fun, learn something (other than the homeschooling, that we are continuing with great success, if I do say so myself) and have a chance to meet other kids.  Unfortunately, options were pretty limited (read: couldn't find any) in Siena so we had to look farther afield.  Hence the weekly trips to Florence (we knew we'd be going to Florence a bunch of times anyway because it is a beautiful city with so much great stuff to see).

Luckily, the classes have met our goals, in various measures, on all fronts. (Ari has written a blog to give more details, so I'll just give the parents' view. Here's a link to  Ari's blog entry including a video of the skit the kids performed.) The art classes were with a terrific teacher named Marco.  The kids made wonderful bas-relief sculptures out of cement.  Not what would be our first choice for artwork to lug across Europe and the Atlantic -- especially with airlines strictly monitoring luggage weight limits -- but it was something new, interesting and fun.  In their spare time while waiting for the plaster and cement to dry, they were able to work on some drawing.

Luckily for Ari and Ellie, the lessons were virtually private.  There was usually only one or two other kids there at the same time, and except for one girl, they were different kids each week.  It didn't matter -- usually the kids were so engrossed in their artwork, they didn't chat much with the others.  (Another aside - We did meet a very nice Israeli family through the art class and we really hit it off.  The father is a classics professor at Stanford who has the hard job of being the visiting professor from the "home office" at Stanford's Florence campus for this term.  We made it a point to try to go out for gelato with them each time we were in Florence. And, by the way, in our unofficial tasting contest, gelato is the best ice cream in the world and Florence has the best gelato.  Ari's favorite is a Ciocolato Messicano -- Mexican Chocolate.  It is a deep chocolate with just enough red pepper mixed in to make you want some of the cold creaminess of gelato -- it is a vicious cycle.)

Here are the kids with Marco, the art teacher.

Ari working on his clay bas-relief

Ellie working on her flamingo

Here's Ellie's flamingo bas-relief made of clay

Here's Ari's completed shark made of cement and then painted

Ari did some sketching while waiting for his shark to dry.  He was sketching a statue of a lady's head....pretty good!

Here we are with our new friends at Vivoli, our hands-down winner for gelato in Florence.

Here are Ellie and Ari eating gelato with our little friends, Darya and Tamara (again).  Actually, this picture was taken at a gelateria in Siena, when they came to visit our town one day...

Here's a picture of the kids on the narrow, winding stairway up to the top of the tower in the town square...It was a lot of stairs (the sign said 400) and the view from the top was pretty incredible.

The view of the duomo from the top of the tower...

...and a view of Il Campo

The girls really hit it off...Ellie will miss them!

The acting lessons, were something completely different.  This was a group of 12-15 kids ranging from 5 to 12 years old.  As far as I know, the kids (at least our kids) had never done any real acting. But they really enjoyed doing the improv and other acting exercises.  They even learned all about the traditional Comedia d'Arte characters, wrote some scripts and character developments.  The teachers made it educational and fun and it didn't hurt that, each week, they raved about what great actors Ari and Ellie are and how fearless they are.  Any time they needed a volunteer, up our kids would jump -- it seemed Ari especially enjoyed playing female characters and Ellie enjoyed playing men.  Should we be reading something into this?

The kids really enjoyed the acting classes and are really bummed about missing the last two sessions of the  class.  But we're heading to Venice for Carnival this weekend...hopefully we'll have a chance to wear those masks while we're there!

Here's the whole acting group with masks...

and without...The ladies in the back were the teachers.  Thanks ladies!!  You really put together a great program!

Crazy comedia dell'arte -type masks