Abbie and the asilo

We started Abbie in the asilo here on September 12.  (The asilo is the Italian preschool.)  She went for a couple hours a day for the first week and now she usually goes from 8:30-12:30 or 1:30pm, depending on if she has ballet or not.  There is one other American boy, whom she is friends with, that goes to the asilo and all of the other kids and teachers are Italian (read: speak VERY little English, if any).
Mark and I originally thought Abbie would love asilo.  She’s always been a very social kiddo, and loves playing with her friends.  After her separation anxiety phase was over, she loved going to Bea’s house (her babysitter), she loved going to childcare during my meetings, she loved going to the nursery and children’s church on Sunday’s and she loved getting together with our friends in the squadron.  I could leave her with anyone and she wouldn’t have any issues.  And since her language skills are so advanced for her age, we thought she wouldn’t have any issues picking up Italian.
I don’t know what the deal is, but Abbie does not like going to the asilo at all.  In fact, almost 2 months later and she still cries almost every time we drop her off and the first thing she says in the morning is that she doesn’t want to go to school.  We’ll ask her what she did at school and she always says “I don’t know.”  She doesn’t know her teachers names and she doesn’t know any of the other kids names, except for her American friend.

I think part of the problem is that Abbie is a smart little cookie and so she knows that she doesn’t understand what everyone else is saying and they don’t understand her, and she is very frustrated by that.  She’s not the happy-go-lucky/ just follow along type kid.  She wants to know what’s going on, and when it’s going on, and why it’s going on, etc.  Usually when we pick her up, she’s perfectly happy and she’s outside playing with other kiddos (not just her American friend).  For a while, she was okay with going to the asilo, but lately she’s been pretty upset when I drop her off.  It could have to do with the fact that her grandparents have been here for the past 3 weeks, but this week she didn’t even want to go to children’s church and she’s always gotten super excited when we tell her she gets to go there.
Mark and I are worried about the situation.  We don’t want to turn her off from school or from learning environments and we don’t want her to be continually frustrated with going to school, but we also don’t want to just give up either.  Honestly, I think the break from me is good for her, along with the socializing, and I know she’ll pick up Italian if she’s there long enough.  But if going to school is causing her more stress than it is doing her any good, then maybe it’s not worth it, especially if it’s going to effect her long term thoughts on school.
It’s frustrating for us, because we don’t know what to do to help her.  We don’t speak enough Italian to help teach her, although maybe we should start trying to teach her some and learn some ourselves in the process.  Or maybe I should try to get her in to an Italian tutor so she is a little bit more comfortable with the language.  Maybe I should try to set up a play date with one of the little girls in her class so she can get to know someone a little bit better, even if she doesn’t speak the same language.
What would you do if you were in our situation?  We only have 4 to 4.5 months left in Italy.  So do we keep with it and try to get her to stick it out in the asilo or do we take her out of asilo and try to teach her at home?

Salzburg, Austria Day 3

On our last day in Salzburg, we wanted to check out Hellbrunn Palace.  We had passed a pretty lake on our way to the hotel and I wanted to get pictures of it, so we took a long route to the palace, which was still only about 20 minutes.

Apparently this lake is popular with photographers because I encountered 2-3 of them while I was taking my pictures.  That God Mark is very patient with my picture taking and is more than happy to stop every 2 minutes for me to get out to take photos.

After my 20 mins of taking pictures, we headed to Hellbrunn Palace.  The palace was built in 1613-1619 and was only meant to be a day residence for the Archbishop that built it, so there are no bedrooms in the palace.

We decided to go on the trick fountain tour, which was fun for everyone.  Apparently the person that designed the palace was a bit of a jokester and he liked to play practical jokes on his guests.  The tour was a lot of fun, and it was fun seeing people on the tour get surprised by the water fountains.  There was an old lady that walked out of a grotto area that got sprayed by water coming out of statues and pots for plants, and other people got sprayed by water while they were inside a little building watching a water display.  Water shot out at their legs from under a bench.  But the end of the tour, everyone was hesitant to get near everything and the tour guide warned us to stay back on one of them because we had kiddos.  It was fun and I recommend the tour if you are ever at Hellbrunn Palace.

I love this photo.  I saw this web while we were on the tour and got COMPLETELY distracted trying to get a picture of it.  I like the way it turned out.

After the tour, we wandered around the palace grounds some, which completely cemented my idea that fall is THE best time to travel.  It was beautiful!

Do you recognize this?  It is what the “I am 16 going on 17” song was sung in in The Sound of Music.  In actuality, they made a bigger version of this one in Hollywood, but that’s what it was modeled after.  It is now on the palace grounds, along with a playground and a zoo.

Abbie really wanted to go to the park for a little bit so we let her play for a while.  The park was really nice, and it was a beautiful day.  She had fun.

We had a great time in Salzburg, even though we didn’t see half of what I would have liked to see.  As I usually say, I would love to go back someday, but I also wish we had spent more time there during our tour in Italy since it is so close!

Salzburg, Austria Day 2

My parents, Abbie, Ben and I headed to old town Salzburg on day 2.  Mark had to stay back to do master’s homework.  Boo.  The weather was pretty good – in the high 50’s/low 60’s and sunny. 
We headed to Mozartplatz first, and Abbie ran around the fountain that Maria splashed in at the beginning of the Sound of Music.

The splashing fountain is actually in Residenzplatz, right next to the Salzburg Dom church, which we also went in to.

We bought a water painting of Salzburg and then CD’s from a classical guitarist outside the church and then we went to St. Peter’s Cemetery, which they called the catacombs, but they aren’t like the underground catacombs we saw in Rome.  The catacombs here are the ones that the VonTrapp family hid behind at the end of the movie, although those ones were recreated in Hollywood.  They were made after the ones in this cemetery though.  It really was beautiful and every grave had it’s own little flower garden on it.  This is the oldest cemetery in Salzburg and is also known as “Petersfriedhof”.

Next we headed up to Hohensalzburg Castle, and the views were AMAZING!

This castle is one of the largest medieval fortresses in Europe and construction began on it in 1077.  It is built on top of the Festungsberg mountain and was used as military barracks in the 19th century.  It also held prisoners during WWI.

(Spires of St. Peter’s Abbey)

After we toured the castle and the marionette museum, we headed back down to the old town and grabbed some lunch.  I should have taken pictures of it but I didn’t, but it was some potato skillet dish that was topped with an egg.  It was really good and it warmed us all up.

As we were walking back to the car, we passed a guy doing a marionette act.  Abbie wasn’t too sure about the guy and she didn’t really want to get that close to him to give him the money.  My mom tried to convince her to put the money in his hand, but she wasn’t having any of it.  She gave everyone standing around watching her a good laugh though.  She didn’t mind posing with the Mozart ghost though.

We headed back to the hotel to try to take naps (unsuccesfully) and to pick up Mark who was done working on his paper.  We went to Mirabell gardens where they filmed the Do Re Mi song in the Sound of Music.

Maria and the kids danced around this fountain, bounced up and down these steps and ran through the garden archway.  It was hilarious because everywhere you looked there were people acting out various parts of the song.  Too funny!

When we were done touring Mirabell Gardens, we decided to find something to eat, which, as usual, took as a good 30+ mins to find a place.  We chose wrong this time however.  We ate at some nasty Chinese place that really wasn’t good at all.  Bummer.  But again, during our long walk around Salzburg trying to find a place to eat, I got a few good shots.



We went to Hellbrunn Palace for our last day in Salzburg.  More on that soon!