04.21.08
Posted in Ancona
at 5:25 am
Get the Flash Player to see this player.
The boys and I headed out to see the Ancona soccer team play yesterday. Ancona is series C, which isn’t so great. But they are in second place and have a good shot at moving up next year. This was my first soccer game, and was looking forward to cheering on the home team.
We sat in curva nord - the cheap seats. It was filled with mostly younger men who used the opportunity to shout and sing for three hours. A few guys down front sort of led the “singing” but it seemed to also be spontaneous. I had a blast trying to decipher what they all meant, and the boys loved to giggle when they heard a cuss word. And there were LOTS.
I was amazed at how quickly the crowd could turn on the players. One minute the fans rush down to pound on the glass after the Anconetani score. The next, they’re screaming insults at the player’s mother. One minute they’re singing “Ancona, we’ll follow you anywhere!” The next, they’re calling for the player to get booted from the team. They’re a fickle bunch!
The game, sadly, ended in a tie. It’s one of the things I really don’t like about soccer. Who wants to leave the stadium without a winner? Nobody’s happy!
Permalink
04.18.08
Posted in Ancona, culture, finances
at 5:17 am
In fashion concious Italy, it’s hard to find a place to get a cheap haircut. I’m a “Great Clips” kind of guy in the US. I just want the hair to be shorter, and look somewhat like I didn’t cut it myself. I decided I was tired of paying €20 ($31) for a haircut, and a while back decided to try this barber whose shop is about a block away on my street.
And I met Sergio, an 82 year old Anconetano with a two-chair barber shop (but the second chair only holds the used drape cloths from the day).
He charges €6, moves as fast as an 82 year old can, and entertains me with stories about the war and “kids these days.” He uses an old fashioned straight razor to trim the hairs on your neck. His clippers look almost as old as he is. He’s left me in the chair, hair half cut, so he can go home and take his blood pressure medicine. There is hair from decades ago in every nook and cranny that his broom doesn’t reach. His nervousness about the immigration boom in Italy shows when he asks me in all seriousness “where they bury Chinese people when they die?”.
You can’t beat the price he charges. But for a foreigner like me, I can’t beat the language and cultural lessons I get when I’m in the chair.
Permalink
04.16.08
Posted in Ancona, culture, family, kids
at 11:41 am
I ran across a surprising statistic the other day. We’ve long known that our family size of five made us more than a little unusual here in Ancona. Now we have a handy graphic to prove it, published by the city of Ancona. So in a couple of months when the new baby is born, we’ll join the other 420 families with more than five people present in the home. Only 420 in a city of over 100,000! At our kids’ schools, the majority of people have one, two kids at the most. The national average is 1.2 kids per family.
But it’s not just statistics that show how children are viewed by some here. I had a conversation the other day with a woman a bit older than me. She was married with one kid and marveled at how young I am and how many kids we have (we get that a lot). And then she said to me that if she had it to do all over again, she wouldn’t have had any children. She told me her son tries her patience, and “if she knew then what she knows now…”
I was kind of shocked. Granted, there have been days when the kids are grating on my nerves. But to wish that they had never been born?!
I’m trying to figure out where this comes from. Some of it, at least in people I have talked with that “regret” having kids, is just plain selfishness. Some of it comes from an inability to provide every single thing the child could ever want, especially as the family grows. But other than those two things, I’m stumped. I love my kids! I have learned so much about myself, and they bless my socks off! It breaks my heart to hear people (one time, in front of their child) lament ever having kids.
Don’t you see that children are God’s best gift?
the fruit of the womb his generous legacy?
- Psalm 127:3 (MSG)
Permalink
01.05.08
Posted in Ancona
at 6:18 pm
Get the Flash Player to see this player.
Ancona is a port town, and in the winter we get a lot of fog. One of my favorite sounds is the fog horn (growing up in the Midwest, a fog horn is a pretty new concept). Click play above and about 17 seconds into the recording, you’ll hear three soft beeps. It’s this amazing, almost spooky sound that reverberates through the valley in the center of Ancona. A dense fog makes it even more mysterious. It sort of blends in with the background and yet you still know that it’s there. It really is one of my favorite quirks about living in Ancona.
Permalink