Barcelona

There are some pictures of Barcelona [we visited Barcelona over Thanksgiving break]. I hope you like it. Barcelona is pretty. [Above: Danielle navigates the Barcelona subway system].

[Above: Danielle by rabbits for sale on Las Ramblas]

This is shrimp from a market.

Silly Teachers in Rome

They make you write very neatly. They make you color very neatly, even if you are a person in preschool. And they don't even have kindergarten in Rome. We have an English class but all we are doing is "the tree," "the mushroom." "the grass," "the leaves." And we have a religion class. They teach you stuff like "God made the Earth." I like school a lot because you have recess and a lot of other fun stuff. Fun stuff like "non tocare per terra" ["Don't touch the ground"--a game the kids like to play at recess].

Pony riding lessons in Rome

There is a ranch in Rome that has ponies and "horses."It is a huge ranch. And there are some cows and dogs that live on the ranch, and some goats, roosters, chickens, pigs, bunnies and ducks.
[Top: Entrance to the Roma River Ranch, a little bit of Americana along the shores of the Tiber. Below: Playing with a horse at the ranch]
[Admiring the farm animals at the Roma River Ranch with Michele]
There are also lessons for bigger kids that get to ride on real horses but they are better than Lulu (Lucia) and me because they are older. We ride ponies. I had my first lesson on Tuesday because the other Tuesdays were rainy [and the lessons were canceled].
[Brushing the ponies down before a ride]

Before that we went on Saturday and they did not have enough ponies so we walked with them along the river.
[Below: Accompanying the ponies and riders alongside the Tiber River]
[Video below: Daniela and Michele talking to the cow.] The following week we saw them milk the cow.

Happy Birthday

[Below: Danielle's Halloween-themed 7th birthday was yesterday in the rectory of our neighborhood church, Santa Maria of Trastevere]

It was my birthday party yesterday. It was very fun. A lot of people were witches. There were also a lot of skeletons.
The party was mostly full of boys and the boys were going crazy. They were going crazy by running around and chasing each other. I ran around. I chased Candy Ghost and I got chased a little bit by a couple kids. [Below: Candy Ghost getting swarmed by the kids snatching the candies taped to his sheet].

I ate a lot of candies--I ate eyeballs, and spider legs and especially candy corns [sent to us by our wonderful Evanston neighbor Gayle]. There was a lot of food to eat. There was a spider game and we didn't get to play it. I got to do the pinata and I got lots of candy (mmmmmmm!)
We got to do face paint [Below: Loyola University Rome student, Claire, was our face painter]
[Below: video of Danielle blowing out the candles on her cake]


The end of the party was really fun. And after it was finished, there was a lot to do. We cleaned up a lot of stuff. [Below: A picture of us trudging home with our party gear after the party.]

Best Gelato in the World in San Gimignano

This is San Gimignano.

There was a gelato store at a piazza that had a pizza store there, too. After we had pizza we went to the gelato place.

Florence

Florence is nice because I think it has many things that are cool. Some of them are that the people are nice and they say "ciao." And some things are that they have a lot of people (more in Rome). I didn't like that sometimes if we were going somewhere there would be a loooooooooong line. But it eventually goes down. It is worth waiting in line because the museum there is great. And inside was Botticelli's "Birth of Venus."

I like Istanbul

Istanbul is great because the people there are so nice. Because they say "Good morning" (in English) and "Good night" (in English) and "Good evening" (in English). And I like that the people also give you free stuff (like food and Evil Eyes and Turkish Delights).

[Below: Danielle with display of "Evil Eyes," which actually serve to protect you from the Evil Eye]
(Below: Freshly made rolls of Turkish Delight. Yum!)

Winterland wonder

Glitter Graphics



This picture is from my computer and I added some stuff.

Cat love

Many thanks for Maria who taught me Blingee!

Istanbul

Turkey is really fun because there are so many cats. We saw many cats. People there were very nice, so we had a lot of fun. I liked that the people who owned restaurants would come up and say "Would you like to see our menu? Would you like to eat here?" and other stuff. In Turkey we saw birds, too, and fed them.

[Above: Kittens residing in a Turkish square; Below: A contented cat living in the Istanbul bazaar][Above: Cat napping on an Islamic grave in an Istanbul cemetery; Below: Another Istanbul shop cat]
[Below: Feeding the birds outside Istanbul University]

Danielle's letter to Obama

Dear Mr. Obama,

I know it is kind of kiddish, but you should go on www.pbskids.org and then go on Eekocreature to find out how to save the world. You can make a creature out of many other creatures and you get points so you can unlock other creatures. They ask you questions about nature like "These people are drilling for oil even though it is a park-land" and you have to answer correctly if this is a good or bad idea. If you don't answer correctly and you have points, you lose some. So this way you will learn what to do to save the environment.

Love,

People who think you're good ("Thumbs ups" gesture), who have moved to Italy for a little while....like me, Danielle

Birthday Party in the Country

We went to a birthday party for three kids, Chiara, Lulu and Michele. It was in the countryside [at one of the family's weekend villas]. There was a clown who was very funny. I liked that he did funny stuff for kids. He did some funny games like the invisible ball where you have to throw it in this bag and it might hit his face or his eyes. I liked also that he did this one thing where he did "happy birthday to you" pretending that it was a horn and went "Happy birthday to you BONK."
Birthdays here are different because they don't have pinatas. They had one because they made it and it was the first time for Italians to do it so we didn't have blindfolds.

They had a sparkler on the cake that sparkled if you burnt it and the cake was really good. Mmmm! I liked that they had fun candles that were different colors and that there were three cakes, one cake for each kid. each kid had one piece of one of the cakes and we got to use a pinata.
And I liked that they had cats. They had a couple kittens and then a couple cats.


This is a gingerbread cookie. I know that you know what it is, but in Italy they taste different. So it is not an original gingerbread cookie that has kinds of candy everywhere. It is not just like that. It tastes a little bit like something that your grand-ma would bake. Or something that's really delicious because your grand-ma bakes really delicious stuff, I hope.

[the kids at the party]
[The parents relaxing at the villa while the kids enjoy the clown]
[The view from the villa]

Papier Mache

We went to the papier mache place where kids could make paper mache. It was very fun. I made a rooster and I started to make a giraffe when I had to go. [Here is the finished giraffe--completed on a subsequent visit]

More Rome cats

Can you find the cats? One of them is very hard. [This archaeological site, at Largo Argentina in the heart of Rome, is reputed to be where Julius Caesar was killed. Today it is not only an historic ruin but a cat sanctuary. -KMA]





















[The sign in this shot underscores that it is illegal to abandon cats here.-KMA]




[There is an underground, volunteer-run cat shelter in one corner of this site, where stray cats are sterilized and put up for adoption, as shown in the image below. As the volunteers explained to us, the cats are legal, the volunteers are the squatters! -KMA]

Uncle Greg's Visit

Uncle Greg visited us. He gave me a rat--he gave it a nickname "Raticus" and I gave it a name "Ratty." Doesn't it sound good to you? I took Raticus to school one day. I was allowed to play with Raticus at school. Uncle Greg's visit was a lot of fun. This is a picture of me and my Uncle Greg.