Adventures in Language Acquisition

Sarah Bringhurst Familia
I don’t study Italian a whole lot lately. In college most semesters I spent a good twenty hours a week studying various languages. Even on my mission, we had an hour set aside each day for language study. But that was all before I became the homeschooling mother of two preschoolers (with no dishwasher, dryer, or Trader Joe’s). Excuses, excuses. I know.
So last week I decided to turn over a new leaf, the leaf called Livemocha, which I mentioned a few days ago. I can communicate with people pretty well, and understand just about everything, but I conservatively started myself out in Italian 201, which describes itself as “For students who are comfortable enough to ask a few questions and follow simple conversations.”
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Confessions

Sarah Bringhurst Familia

You know I stalk you, don’t you? Writers love readers. To the point of distraction. Because without a reader, does a writer even really exist? I mean, if I talk to myself in the forest and none of the trees are listening, do I even make a sound . . . ?

So yes, I stalk you. And what makes it even more tantalizing is that I can’t stalk you quite directly. It’s true, unfortunately. I can’t peer through my webcam into yours to see your face as you read my blog. But there are other things I want to see almost as much as that.… Read more

The Firm

Sarah Bringhurst Familia

So, we weren’t a very good fit for the whole Corporate America thing. I guess maybe we should have tried somewhere less brutal than Southern California. We just weren’t into the hour commute (both ways!), the fierce competition with colleagues, and the boss who told Tony, “I know you’re into your family. I want someone who’s into his job” (translation: you need to take your work home every evening and weekend if you value your job).


Fast forward to this summer, when we were in Ireland, doing contract work. Out of the blue, the fantastic Italian mayor who granted Tony Italian citizenship (yes, that’s included in the job description of a mayor in Italy) contacted us and said he wanted to fly Tony to Italy to interview for a job in his company.… Read more

The Chestnut Festival

Sarah Bringhurst Familia

We’ve been unconsciously looking forward to this for a long time, I think. Almost exactly two years ago we were getting ready to go to the Chestnut Festival in Cuneo. We were also getting ready for what was supposed to be a three-month trip to the United States. We had several reasons for making that trip. Our U.S.-based business needed some serious attention. I had two brothers getting married and a sister going on a mission. And I was having some visa difficulties that could most easily be resolved by a lengthy absence from Italy.


But there were reasons not to make the trip too.
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Philippines, Part 2: Do You Know How to Xoom?

Sarah Bringhurst Familia

During this Friday series we’re going back in time to our 2005 trip to the Philippines. Last Friday, Tony and I were smug and happy in the Manila airport, having just survived a 14-hour plane flight with a two-month-old baby. Now it was time to find lodgings. I had considered various guidebooks for our trip, and finally settled on The Rough Guide to the Philippines, since I was still envisioning us as the savvy backpacker type. An illusion soon to be mud-drenched and ripped to shreds.

Philippines, Part 1: Have Baby, Will Travel
Philippines, Part 2: Do You Know How to XOOM?… Read more

Want some Italian with your doughnut?

Sarah Bringhurst Familia

A couple of years ago, I signed up for a new social media site with a twist: it was set up to help users teach each other new languages. The idea isn’t exactly new. People have been using chat rooms to practice their language skills with strangers for years. In fact, the first and only time I ever entered a chat room, it was to practice my Arabic shortly after returning home from a study abroad in Syria. I was immediately overwhelmed by Arab men, shamelessly hitting on me and hinting around about green cards. It was so uncomfortably close to actually being in an Arab country as a single American female that I soon left, deciding I’d have to practice my quickly atrophying Arabic language skills somewhere else.… Read more

How to Eat in a Foreign Country Without Going Crazy

Sarah Bringhurst Familia

I love kneading bread. There is nothing like the magic of pounding that sticky, lumpy mass of flour and water into a silky, smooth, obedient ball of dough. If only all of life’s sticky problems could be so quickly transformed into valuable assets. Luckily (for me), moving often, especially internationally, does expand (if sometimes painfully) one’s toolbox for solving problems. And nowhere is this more apparent than in our food choices. Different foods are just easier to find in some places than others. And if you don’t want to spend a fortune shopping at an international grocery store for foods imported from much too far away, it behooves you to learn to eat like the locals.… Read more

Snow on the Bisalta

Sarah Bringhurst Familia

Yesterday the wind blew in and whirled the changing leaves through the air like schools of fish. And by the end of the day, there was a light dusting of snow on “our” mountain, the Bisalta. It’s an unmistakable mountain with a funny little nick cut out of the top, and it appears on a good portion of the logos of businesses in the area, as well as in other random places.


Piemonte, the region of Italy where we live, has eight mountain ranges. Our town rests on the bank of a river that carves a little valley out of some of these mountains.
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Homeschooling with the Romans

Sarah Bringhurst Familia

Once again, with moving and other things, my grand ideas for homeschooling have fallen a little by the wayside. Luckily, Axa spends lots of time every day practicing writing, and they both roam the yard studying the plants and animals in it with as much detail as little scientists. Charlotte would be happy that I’m not put together enough to do all the academics I would like to do with my two little under-sixes.

They’re also beginning to use quite a few Italian words. I don’t even know where they’ve heard some of these words. One of their favorite activities in the car is to quiz each other about Italian vocabulary.… Read more

Impressions of Turin 2

Sarah Bringhurst Familia

Yes, we spent Saturday in Turin again. We parked directly underneath the Piazza Vittorio Veneto. The piazza is one of the most beautiful Italian inventions. The closest English equivalent would be a town square or marketplace, which would indeed be a fair description of a piazza in a little Italian village like the one where we live (although in Southern California they would use the Spanish word plaza, or even actually the Italian piazza, but what they would mean is a glorified strip mall). A piazza in a large Italian city is a glorious open area in the heart of the city.… Read more