Today was Noah's first school field trip: grape stomping at a local vineyard. Remember that I Love Lucy episode? ...visualize 40 kids doing the same thing but with plastic bags over their shoes. The tour included a walk through the vineyard, visiting the farm animals, the stomping, and the sampling (freshly squeezed grape juice for kids and wine for adults!).Everything was perfect until the drive home when I kept getting phone calls from the Carabinieri speaking in rapid Italian. Heart racing and thinking of all of the terrible things they might be trying to tell me; trying to stay focused on the school bus I was following back to school, and cursing myself for not studying Italian more diligently! I eventually figured out that they had my wallet which must have fallen out during our lunch break at a local park. I turned around and headed back to the small town to retrieve my wallet which resulted in another series of comical exchanges. The police officer didn't know any English and he quickly realized my pitiful Italian was not going to work. Turns out his wife knows English so he kept calling her on his cell phone to translate. I was very lucky. A kind Sicilian soul returned it without taking a dime or a Euro.
Only in Italy, well, maybe in Napa too! How fun! To live in Italy must be a dream!
Holy crap- wine sampling as a chaperone on a field trip. On the field trip I went on with JAM's class last week, I got to eat my own PB&J sandwich squeezed in a school bus seat with another child who wasn't even my own son. I pick your trip, please!!
:)
Excluding the wallet it sounds like a great field trip. Thank goodness for the officers wife!
I can just picture 20 pairs of plastic bagged feet stomping. That I Love Lucy episode and the one in the candy factory were my favorites. What did Noah think of the experience?? I agree with morninglight mama that is is pretty amazing that you got to drink wine on a school field trip.
(I am saying this in my whining/ wine-ing voice)
I WANNA GO ON THAT FIELD TRIP!
oh, i hope the parents get to return for their own field trip. sounds so wonderful and one of the definite perks of living in Italy. wonderful about your wallet. i left mine at ikea in belgium the first week we were here. i was *shocked* that it had been returned and was being held for me at the customer service desk.
Ah! The wallet is the best part! Yet another Sicily-is-all-mafia-and-crime myth is debunked!
fortunate in many ways :)
Post a Comment