A Little Bit of Italy and Conneticut

When the daughter was a Senior in high school she came home one day all excited. Mom, she said, the Italian club at school is sponsoring a boys high school hockey team from Italy and they are looking for families to host a hockey player. Now mind you ny daughter didn't even take Italian, she took Spanish in high school. So the next thing she tells me is that she volunteered our home and she really didn't have a chance to ask me first and she just knew it would be ok because, THESE BOYS DON'T SPEAK ENGLISH AND HER GRANDPARENTS DO. Well, he isn't going to stay with her grandparents, he staying with us. So we went to all the meetings that lead up to the event and learned all that we could about the visit. It would be during a Christmas break so the daugher would be home and she promised to keep him occupied. I took time off from work because part of the plan was that the host families wuld be responsible for hetting these boys to the tournaments. It really would have made more sense for them to stay with families that had hockey players, but I think it was suppose to be an Italian learning experience. Well it was quite an experience. My parents were at our house when he arrived and communication was difficult even with them trying knowing the language, you know how dialecs are. Hew as from the Alps region of Italy in a little town which now I cannot remember the name. He showed us on a postcard that he brought along with him. He literally lived in a ski resort, it was absoultely beautiful. His father was a hockey coach for a major leauge team in Italy. We fed him our Italian food, which I am sure was nothing like his, dialecs and food are a lot alike, it depends on what part of the country you are from. My mother's family is from Rome and my father's familyo from Naples. All in all it was a great experience. We wanted to know if he wanted to take our daughter back with him for a visit. He said "no", she could go and he would stay here. We live not far from the Capital of New York, Albany and the city of Albany inviited the team to their First Night Celebration on New Year's Eve and they inclulded the host families, so that was fun. We went to all his hockey games, as did my daughter as she promised. We also took him to a couple of family and friends parties held during that holiday week. We use to get e mails from him now and then and it has been 10 years since he was here and I just got a Facebook essage from him so we have connected again.

Today I get done with work at 1:00 pm. It is a beautiful day here in the Great Northeast. I want to plant my annuals but the garden shops don't even have them in stock yet. So I will go home and get my baby fix. My neighbors granddaughter just had a baby girl and I love to go over and visit for a bit and I get to hold the baby, feed the baby then put her down and leave. That's the way to have a baby at my age.