GOD HELP THE CHILD – Toni Morrison

This book can be read on many levels : feminine point of view, racism,couple relationship, mother/daughter relationship...it provides many stimuli for reflection.

This book is about relationships, it starts with one falling apart, seems to be something normal, a simple book for girl with a broken relationship. The reader waits for some dis-adventures and a sweet big love as a happy ending but...

After two pages you can get that the language is rough and there are too much colloquial words for a romantic fiction.

And then, by reading, you get that as reader you are aware of everything, the writer lets you know the thoughts of each character, she gives you the illusion of being the writer herself.  The reader knows more than the characters, because they do not understand what is happening to themselves. The main one, Bride, after the break is quite discombobulated. Her body is slowly changing and going back to her childhood. Her mind, that initially was going super fast toward a rich and sparkling future is jumping back and forth. The reader is guided, not nicely, in front of a past life where violence and abuse were seen through child’s eye, astonished and ingenuous eyes that try to explain situations they can not understand.

Bride has a Post Traumatic Stress “Attitude”, it's more than a disease, it's a sort of mood. She does not have a solid background of love (maternal love) to help her to cope with the difficulties she tripped on.

She is unconsciously searching for what she knows, and what she knows best is to be abandoned, left because of her skin, her being the wrong one.

She is filling her life with beauty, richness and luxury to compensate for the lack of caring love.

The fact that her body is magically going back to her childhood stops her mind from thinking rationally. Her mind that initially was going super fast toward a rich sparkling future is now jumping back randomly remembering memories.

The Author accompanies you inside Bride's thoughts, you can feel how scared she is, how puzzled and shocked, but at the same time you (ommiscent reader) can see the solution and the first instinct is to ask the character why they do not change their behavior, why they do not follow another path...

The writer lets you feel the Bride’s frustrating situation, she is impotent and you are impotent as well.

It's like a “beat romance” but the road is Bride's life and the trip is in her past, while you are traveling you can see how difficult it  was to be black at that time (unfortunately not so ancient) in America.

When you read the thoughts of the persecutor you immediately get how people think: nothing is related to others; when we do something we persecute our goals, no matter how it makes other people suffer. What people do are things and those things can affect other lives, we do not care, because we do not know.

This is a book about motherhood seen through childhood eyes. The main character is progressively becoming a child meanwhile she is becoming a mother. The real cruel mother, her mother, has no remorse: she has done her best for those  times with those believes...

The style is crude and perfectly adheres to the contents. The solution of letting the reader to put himself in the character's shoes is super smart...Ken Follet's style, totally different plot, definitely less commercial.

ONE DAY– David Nicholls

This book is almost in every part hilarious and funny, but it is a reflection of the real life.

This book is about a special relationship, it starts describing the first meeting between the main characters. They are two high school (college) students, a boy and a girl, they are in Edinburgh but they have big dreams, they want to live in a bigger city, considering Edinburgh provincial.

The first encounter is around their graduation, Dexter comes from a rich family, he is the dreamer, Emma comes from a poor family, she is a good-student, and a dreamer as well. They started a weird relationships: sex at the very beginning and friendship based on solid shared values for all the second part of the book.

The title “One day” is perfect to describe the style of the narration. The Author opens a window onto the characters' lives every 15th of July, for many years. Emma and Dexter seem to be a winning team from the first chapters, all their friends know it but they live separate lives: Dexter travels a lot, Emma works a lot (Lower class work in a restaurant); Dexter has a lot of relationships and occasional lovers, Emma is strictly concentrated on making a life with a small income she has no time for dreams or a love life; Emma writes long letters to Dexter, he writes back short postcards...

We know what is happening between them thanks to the 15th of July, sometimes they meet, sometimes they talk on the phone, once they go on holiday together. That holiday in Greece is the revelation for the reader. Even if you know that they are probably in love from the beginning you are never sure, but during the holiday the author writes the thoughts of the couple: they desire each other but they resist the temptation with the intent of protecting their friendship.

They both live in London, but they have separate lives, swinging up and down with luck in alternate moments. They meet sometimes but Dexter is now “famous” as TV presenter, he is posh and drunk most of the time, his life is going very badly and his mother is seriously sick. Emma is angry with him because he is a different, horrible person now. She is still modest, a teacher with some time to write and realize (partially her dream). They have different relationships again, Dexter is almost married and saved from a bad destiny by a rich and pretty girl, Emma is a  writer for teens, she quits teaching after a love story with her (married) principal, she is wealthy now ...and they meet again. The reader is waiting for the love story... but no! All this plot is revealed with a sparkling style, you can't stop reading, it's intriguing. “Envy was just the tax you paid on success”, Dexter said when he met Emma and they fight, she left him in the restaurant, really angry again. After nice descriptions of two ordinary lives (always on that day), they met and finally start that super relation you are waiting from the beginning! Wonderful love life with high and low moments, projects, successes and frustrations...but life is life and sometimes it's too hard for normal people.

Italian class

It all starts with a coffee!
 It's not a joke: every Italian class (for adults) starts at eight in the morning and the students take turn to make the coffe for the others. It's a ritual that gives us the possibility to use everyday language.
"Do you want a coffee?"
"Sugar?" "Yes, please/ No, thanks."
"How many spoons?"...
We meet twice a week, the lessons are customized and adapted to the needs of the students. They are alpine guides, so we talk a lot about mountains and equipment.
They do study grammar as well, but the main goal is to communicate, so they have homework once a week.

After every lesson students received on viber the recording of the new words and the new expressions they have learnt in the morning.

Learning a new language can be difficoult, expecially if you do not have time to study: but everyone has to move around the city, has to do houseworks...and  all those activities can be done listening!
If you listen to what you have learnt during the lesson it's so easy to memorize everything!
We often play game together, playing offers the occasion to talk, and in this class the only language spoken is Italian!
So... students are going to learn even if they do not want!

Keep your language

Speaking two languages ​​offers our brain the possibility of thinking in different ways. Whatever the languages are, knowing more than one obliges the memory to build a larger archive, richer than when only one is spoken. The idioms and habits related to the different languages ​​are expressions of different ways of being and different expressions of the self: knowing more than one language offers different possibilities of expression. When you live abroad you run the risk of losing the habits of the country of origin, among these there is also the language. Often children speak the language they speak at school and it is easy to make English the language of the family, even if one of the spouses is Italian. 

This is why the "Italian play group" was born, open to all children from three to five years old who have Italian father or mother. It is an informal moment managed on a voluntary basis organized by an Italian teacher but supported by all the participating families. There are four children and we meet every week at the home of one of the participants. 

he activities and games are mainly in the garden and are the same activities and games of the Italian kindergarten.

We sing songs, we play with recycled materials, we listen to stories,

 we draw and we  have snacks together:

 everything is done always speaking in Italian.

Shopping in Singapore

Everything you do in Singapore is nice and easy...shopping as well.
Inside the malls, if there are not real flowers or plants, there are murals that give the illusion of being outdoors, in a park. 

Streets and a temple surronded by trees

You leave the hotel and dive into wide streets like Italian highways but with wide sidewalks that seems to have just been swept.
The order and the cleaness of the streets make you think of a unreal and uninhabitated place, but this is not the case: during the rush hours everything comes alive and many people move (neatly, of course) on the sidewalks.

Skyscrapers anb old buildings with flower beds

Each road is accompanied by green and constantly cured flower beds: very easy to see workers dressed us miners, complete with boots against injuries...that mow the lawn! This is in stark contrast to the Nepalese workers who dig the streets using the pick, with the helmet on their heads and flip flops on their feet!

Big lady's head

Big lady's feet

Everything is big and airy, the monument to the lady who does the shopping is four stories high!

Big lady

Mural with bike

The park-mural that simulates the day outdoor keeps a real bicycle!
To reach two different malls looking for kids' clothes, we had to take the metro.

Shoes dep

Who gave us the directions explained that it would be only one stop: very simple (for them, of course). Actually, once we understood that to be sure of the indications we had to write them, (they speak English very well, but with a strong Asian accent), it was really easy to reach our destination.

Fake food

From there, to choose among the many shops, which were the right ones for us, it was another matter.
Restaurants in the mall are super: you can find all sort of food. Sometimes can be difficult to understand what to eat according with the menu...No problem: you can see all the dishes on a shelf!

Escape from Kathmandu again

April again, time to get away from the dust and chaos, time to buy clothes for the child who grows ... direction Singapore! 
Going to the airport I could not resist to take a picture at the sidewalk markets, just before leaving. 

Kathmandu outside the airport

I knew that Singapore would be different, it is known as the Swiss of Asia, and there is definetly a reason for this. Everything is clean and tidy, traffic is regular and pubblic buses seems to be more than private cars.
Apart from the amount of people with Asian features around the city; and the wet heat that surrounds everything, you could be anywhere in the Western World: in a big city in northern Europe, in the States or in Canada.  
                             

Casual view of Singapore

                           It's a modern city with a strong government determinates to advance progress at all costs. A lot of  behaviors are forbidden: the funniest one is to chew.

You can not buy a single chewing gum in Singapore, and if you have your own one, you can not chew it. That is why the streets are so clean.

Mirrors and flowers in the metro

The metro's floor is as clear as a dancing ball, and the corridors have even flourished. 

 Useless to mention that the trains are perfectly on time and that there are instructions written everywhere... "Offer your sit", "keep your bag with you", "do not eat", "do not drink", "do not slounch", no, the last one was not written but it could be. Al least, even tired, you would not assume a relaxed attitude in such a perfect living room..oops metro!

Skyscrapers grow in the park

When you get a cab you know in advance how much the fare is, who is your driver and when you will reach your destination. Sitting comfortably on a leather seat, you listen contemporary music to a definetly acceptable volume, if the driver eats or drinks you do not hear any noise and the air inside the taxi has the smell of chemical deodorant. Every street, every neighborhood has a number of trees that makes you think you're in a park, even if you walk along the sidewalk or if you drive a four lane road.

And there are a lot of malls, there is a whole district for shopping!

Kathmandu

If you look up in Kathmandu, you see... the mountains?
Yes, if you are on a rooftop, in a rare day when the sky is crystal clear and the pollution is not so bad. 
No, if you look up in Kathmandu you will see electric cables. Many, whole skeins. Sometimes they are so heavy that they fall down and walking on the sidewalk becames dangerous. 

Operai al lavoro

  The wires are only one of the many dangers encountered by the brave pedestrians, along with stubborn cows, crazy bikers, cars everywhere.


The other day I was happy because I saw so many workers on the road, they had ladders and cars, they were well equipped and people stopped to watch that they finally removed a bit of useless wires.
But...
Look at the same street the day after.

Marciapiede dopo i lavori

No more workers, no more ladders, no more cars and a lot of cables! This time not only in the sky but everywhere.

Trappole per pedoni

Strada dopo lavori

   These strands are black and rigid ropes, they are difficult to climb over and they tend to roll up to the legs because thy are cut into long pieces. Yesterday,  little wise cow got stuck!

Anything can happen along the streets of Kathmandu!

Here In the pictures there is the calm giant, strolling around. I took these pictures this morning (Monday). He is a natural truck, slow and strong, careless of traffic and noise.
In addition to the usual chaos of the horns, this morning there was also the incessant noise of a siren that caught my attention, for I stopped and I could see Ganesh in flesh and blood moving slowly. 
As I was taking pictures, I realized that 

Ganesh che avanza imperioso

an ambulance was waiting behind the elephant.   After a few minutes the driver gave up, turning of the siren.

  

Ambulanza bloccata