This family lives about 200 yards from the Baltic Sea. The wife is Colombian (though she is now an Italian citizen) and the husband is Italian. They are here in Gdansk for his job. They have been here for 18 months and will be going home to Italy permanently this summer. They have three children (Maria Camilla is Trey's buddy).
I arrived and there were eight of us there for lunch (one arrived later and was not in the picture). I had met most of them at the school. I was introduced to the others. Then Claudia started bringing out the food. There were appetizers, and then a pasta dish, and a salad, and a lasagna, and a zucchini casserole, and a potato dish. And then there was dessert! It looked like she had been cooking for days. It was delicious homemade Italian food and I left there stuffed!
The afternoon flew by as we all sat around the table and chatted about life. I really enjoyed getting to know these women today. Some of the discussions included how one was worried about this kid or that kid, what cute things the kids did, what naughty things the kids did to get in trouble. It could have been a group of moms anywhere.
One of these ladies made me laugh right out loud. She is Polish and has her little girl in the International school so that she learns English well. The mom has studied English for 12 years. She speaks very well, though she does not think so. At one point she said to me, "I just love to listen to you talk." It struck me as so funny. I don't think anyone has ever said that to me before (not even Myles)! She went on to say that she loves the American accent and she prefers it to the English accent. She wanted me to explain why apple and apron do not have the same 'a' sound. That is a very good question with no good answer!
We left there when it was time for them to pick up their kids from school. It is so nice to have connections and to find people who are in similar situations.
By the time I got home, Myles and the kids were a little stir crazy. So we ended up heading out to a hypermart type store that we had heard people talk about. We need to get some snow boots for this quickly approaching winter. The store is a fair distance from where we live and we have to take a tram and a bus to get there. So we get on the tram and then realize that we are on the wrong one! So we get on the right one that takes us to the bus stop. We wait and wait and wait at the bus stop and no bus ever comes! So finally a different bus comes. We don't know where it goes but we get on it anyway. It ends up at a mall that is near our house that we have been to several times. We stop there, have some pizza for dinner in the food court and walk around for a bit. We found some snow boots for Myles and Ben on sale, got some lody (ice cream) and came on home. All's well that ends well!
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