Auchan and Laurie as Show-n-Tell

We woke up to beautiful sunshine today. Katrina was feeling better after several days of battling a cold, but she chose to sleep in a bit so I walked Brandon to school. He was very excited about today since Aunt Laurie would be visiting later to read poetry to the class.

Laurie and I drove Katrina to work around 11am then headed to Auchan. Laurie wanted to see what Italian grocery stores were like. We walked around the mall when we first arrived. She was impressed with the quality of the store window displays and the presentation of the stores. They don't crowd too much in and they are very particular about presentation.

Once we circled the mall, we entered Auchan and wandered the aisles one by one. We ended up being there for almost 3 hours! I even found some new and interesting items! Everyday is a learning experience here in Italy.

After stocking on up a few groceries and some items Laurie wanted to take home, we rushed back to the apartment to put the refridgerated groceries away before heading to the Internation School. Brandon would have been upset if we had been late.

We signed the visitors log and waited for someone to come get us. Brandon came down the hall. He was all smiles and very excited. Ms. Partridge told us later that he had been counting down all day long.

Brandon introduced his Aunt Laurie then she talked a little about herself. Then, each of the children introduced themselves, tell us where they were born and how many languages they spoke. Wow! They are SO cute with all their international accents. The funny part is, most of them have a bit of an British accent when they speak English, since most of the staff is British. Almost all the kids spoke (or were learning) at least two languages. Most spoke 2-3 languages. Some spoke as many as 6 or 7 languages. Amazing. It really makes me think the United States should do more teach our children to be bi or multilingual.

Laurie then read two poems written by Shel Silverstein and two poems that the children picked from a book in the classroom. The kids really enjoyed them and had some great thoughts about the poems.






Aunt Laurie visits Brandon's International School classroom.

Aunt Laurie made Brandon's day. He was so happy and excited and proud of his aunt.

This evening Aunt Laurie made a lasagna dish from one of my cookbooks while I drove to ST to pickup Katrina. This was followed by Katrina and Laurie doing a little packing for their two night sister trip to Verona and Padova.