Time, AS Roma and the American Overseas School of Rome

Wow, did I misjudge my amount of free time!  Many people have reached out individually to ask “Whatcha doing?”.  Thank you for thinking of us. I’m just going to purge the common questions.   This will be a doosy as it won’t be organized as I’d like. And you probably won’t get through it in one sitting.  Here it goes….

What have we been up to? 

Life. Adjusting. Working to stay busy. Learning. Homework. Travel. Researching. Finding routines. Enjoying our visitors/guests (Thank you Sunshine, Shannon, Oskar Tom and Doug).

I’ll take a step back and start with some people’s question, “What are you doing there?”

AS ROMA

After Darcy’s success with the German National (Soccer) Team and last year’s World Cup in Brazil, he’s been offered some jobs. None which he entertained until someone called scouting for AS Roma. The position is Performance Director, laying out the methodology and overseeing the training and medical staff. A position Darcy was ready for and a step forward in his career.  Those talks happened in January and before we knew it, we found ourselves in Rome checking out schools and apartments.  Darcy left for the job in the season break and arrived end of May. The kids and I were in no rush. Rome is hotter than hell in summer. Even the Italians leave for August.  We arrived Sept. 1, in time for school.

Experiencing Darcy’s schedule under FC Bayern (2008-2010), I often felt like a single parent in a foreign country. The kids were young then (ages 6 and 4) and for anyone that follows football on continents like S. America and Europe – football is the #1 religion. There is no “I’d like to take a mental health day please.”  Or, “I’d like to take this week off to go on holiday”. You’ll be fired.  Staff and players schedules are dictated by the league’s schedule, and it’s a long season. Players report early July, start games in August, get 2 weeks at xmas then resume until end of May.  That’s actually 6 weeks off a year. Not bad, but it’s a grueling schedule mixed with a lot of travel and NO WEEKENDS OFF!  This time I knew what I was signing up for (or at least I thought I knew). I thought long and hard knowing Darcy’s new position would probably demand more hours of him, but the kids are older and easier.  I have to admit I wasn't prepared for 14-16 hour days, 7 days a week (no joke), sprinkled with nights away due to travel.  Fortunately I’m building a good support through the International School (AOSR) and another family who’s here under the same circumstances, The Lippie Family.    So in a nutshell, We’ve been here 7 weeks and Darcy has only had 4 days off.   Someone asked me if I was going to work while I was here.  HA!  The answer is “No”. First off, I don’t have a work visa and secondly, I’m a single parent with an awesome life partner who I consult constantly with.  I don’t say this as a complaint or resentment. I say this because it helps me process why I might be tired, or overwhelmed. Huge shout out to my friends who are single parenting AND working. I applaud you. I’m proud of Darcy. He loves what he does. He’s good at it. He’s got an exciting job and there’s great perks we get to enjoy. My full time job is working to raise 2 individuals in this foreign country with hopes they grown up to make some positive impact, if to only one individual, in this crazy-ass world.  And it is a crazy-ass world!

A little background on the club: An American/Italian investor bought the club a few years ago after noticing that the team was slowly slipping down the ranks in European football. The games stopped selling out and the enthusiasm just wasn’t there. As an investor of American professional teams, he understands the money and marketing potential in a successful club. He felt a team like ROME should be a powerhouse like FC Barcelona, Manchester United, FC Bayern, etc. So he bought the team and started pumping serious money into upgrades and improvements.  The performance, training and medical side of things were on that list and blue prints for a multi-million dollar stadium are in the works. But it’s Italy. Nothing happens on time. Stadium is supposed to be finished in 2 years. Some think that’s wishful thinking. Time will tell.

First 6 Weeks:

So what have I been up to?   Ahhh…. where to start.  The last month has been about furnishing the flat, language school, finding daily routines and our new normal. Hard to explain how long it would take to furnish a flat, but when I only have a few hours of time to dedicate to this, it takes a while. We still don’t have a couch or a tabled I ordered 4 weeks ago. Not to mention, I don’t know where to find things (of course I seek suggestions), there’s no such thing as a “Target”.  And getting to these places is not always easy. Rome's infrastructure is 110% opposite of Phoenix, Arizona.  This city is so old, there are no straight roads and a 3-lane road can quickly turn into a small, one-way, cobblestone Roman alley within ¼ km. No joke.  Even the car’s navigation will throw up it’s hands and say, “Shit – I have no idea how to get you there. You’re on your own girl. Good luck!”.   So building in time for getting lost, traffic (which is horrible) and finding parking (which is hard to find in the city), doesn’t leave a lot of time for browsing.  Don’t get me started on the drivers in this city! Topic for another day. I only go to places with a hard list of things to find. It’s like a scavenger hunt EVERY time. The language barriers are like clues. .  Sometimes I walk out of there with nothing because I’m out of time and I have to get the kids from school.  I've also realized that in all of our lives, whether we’ve moved a lot or not, we accumulated things over multiple years.   But in our case, we showed up with nothing but clothes. We brought nothing and left everything in our Truckee house. So things like sheets, forks, light bulbs, place mats, pencils, sugar, scissors, blow dryer, towels…  I’ve spent many days of the last month with a small list, low expectations and a chunk of time to seek and find what we need for every day living.   Sprinkle that with Italian lessons, school volunteering, getting to the gym, walking the dog daily (1hr), and domestic duties (daily trips to market, washing clothes in a very small washing machine, air drying, etc.), my day gets swallowed up very fast.    Oh, and lets not forget computer time for research and follow up with people’s suggestions/recommendations.   With any language barrier, it feels like I’m operating at about 60% capacity.  Similar to when I’m sick and I just can’t think or move as fast.  While I feel great, I’m moving at the same pace as someone with a touch of the flu.  It's all good - I'm just learning to slow down and let go of control. 

Where we live:

We live in the international area of town.  There’s about 4-5 different international schools in the northwest part of Rome.  We live a 10 minute walk from school and wow is our life so different than our little town of Truckee.  We live in a comfortable 2000 sqft flat with ¾ wrap around deck that mostly faces trees, bushes (rare here and a bonus given where we came from).  Our apartment complex is nice with good security (a must). It’s got a soccer pitch, plenty of parking and is fortunately manicured without garbage or graffiti, (which awaits us right outside the gates). We are fortunate given how much culture shock we have on other fronts.  Rome isn’t big on violent crime, but huge on petty theft and cyber hacking. Our visa was compromised the 2^nd week we were here. Our door is 4” thick and has 6 dead bolts.  Our windows have iron curtains that roll down at night. Feels like dooms day. I hate “locking” ourselves in at night. But similar to how I felt about air conditioning in Phoenix (at first I hated it but it became a necessity later), it’s our new normal. We don’t leave anything visible on our car seats.   Some of you may be chuckling because this is how you’ve always lived, but we came from a place where we only locked our doors if we were afraid the bears might get in.  Otherwise, house and car doors were always unlocked because we were so used to coming and going all day.   My purse was a grocery sack that I could leave in the front seat of my unlocked car because who would want someones crap sitting in a grocery bag? But in Rome they’ll break in for your pack of gum.  We came here because we wanted our kids to see how other parts of the world operate. I keep saying (to remind myself), “If this was going to be the same as Truckee, we wouldn’t be here” and we often ask the kids, “Okay, you need to go in with little expectations and a big open mindset”.   It seems to help. We’ll see what their therapy bill is at age 25.

SCHOOL

American Overseas School of Rome (AOSR), as I mentioned is only a 10 min. walk up the street.  We’re pleased we chose this school. Much of our home location was decided on the convenience/proximity to the apartment so that I don’t have to keep driving to/from and risk being late from traffic.  There are days I walk up and down “The Cassia” (our street name is Via Cassia) 3 times because the kids have different schedules.  AOSR is made up of 600 students, K-12.  1/3 American kids, 1/3 Italian kids, and 1/3 made up of 43 other nationalities.  The teachers are a mix of Italian, English or American.   The families are here for multitude of reasons, but mostly governmental agencies such as embassy, diplomats, United Nationals, World Health Organization (WHO), or NATO.  The Italian parents see it for better, more opportunity in life either in or outside of Italy. The school has high security with armed guards for a multitude of political reasons.  They run security drills regularly with the kids and so far we’re very pleased with the education the kids are receiving. Just by circumstance, I’m becoming good friends with the spouses of the elementary and upper class principles.  They are always good for a laugh or a recommendation or advice.  Having this International support isn’t something I had in Munich. Instead we threw the kids into a German kindergarten, so this all makes it that much easier to volunteer at the school and be part of the kid’s education community.  Every American that is here understands the anxiety and isolation of relocation, so people often reach out to ask, “how are you doing?".   It’s real nice

On a separate but same topic – Anders and Hahna’s world have been rocked!  Anders (13yrs old / 7^th grade) really hit his stride last year at home. His passion for skiing on the mountain with his friends is an exceptional relationship not to be duplicated. Certainly not here even with the closest mountain 1 ½ hrs away.  Darcy and I had to think hard about this because he’s at the age where he can go ski off with his friends for 6 hours, then still want to meet up with them at Woodward for a 2 hour trampoline session. Seeing him so happy with his friends, getting fresh air, laughing and being so physically active – away from screens, tv’s, iphones and the pressure of being a teenager – it was awesome.  Then he fell in love with lacrosse in the spring. It’s all he wanted to do. Similar to skiing, he never wanted to miss a practice, even when he almost cut his finger off from a wood splitter and the doc gave him sideline orders - he wouldn't miss a practice. It was great to see him love something so much. That’s all we want for our kids –  to find something they love doing. So now we've pulled the carpet out from underneath him. Big time. He did not want to come to Rome and many tears were shed (rightfully so) the months leading up to our departure.   So here we are now, 2 months later, I’m happy to report he’s doing great. Fortunately the class sizes are small and he’s made friends fast. He’s got friends from all over the world, including American kids that have hardly lived in America.  He’s getting a geography lesson first hand.  He’s learning so much about cultures just by his peers.  Including the Italian kids – which he’s also learning why there are stereo types and why there are conflicts in different cultures.  It’s fascinating for me to watch and learn through the eyes of a child. Of course I’m always asking questions about his day and fortunately it opens up dialogue. He could do a comedy skit on how Italians play football, their hand gestures and the drama on the field. He’s experienced it all.   His classes are 80 minutes long so he skate boards to school 30 minutes early to “burn energy” playing soccer before he has to sit for so long. It’s good he realizes he needs this outlet. He’s also becoming known as the “kid who skate boards” because kids/parents see him skating to/from school up and down “The Cassia”.   The sidewalks are shit here, so his skateboarding has actually gotten better because he’s had to adapt.  I took him to a skate park that wasn’t great, but since it was so much better then the sidewalk, it was like butter to him.   He also tried rugby for the first time. Knowing that an Italian league was going to be the only way to go, (AOSR has after school programs, which is awesome, but not as committed/competitive).  Anders loved it.  He was so sore the next day – but a good laugh for us all. We crossed our fingers the whole time hoping he’d hang in there. He said he had no idea what the coach was saying, but he jumped in and copied what the other kids were doing. Great lessons and character building.  He’ll practice 4x week + Saturday games. He’s all in! Yay! Hope he continues to enjoy it.

Hahna is also doing great, but it’s been a bit tougher for her. Fortunately she handles challenges well.  For anyone that knows Hahna (age 11/grade 5), she’s a true tom-boy. The kids in our Truckee community have grown up not knowing her any different. The boys have never treated her different from the other boys, always accepting of her (and her best friend, Charlotte), as one of them. It’s been much tougher here. Right off the bat everyone thought she was a boy (not too much of a surprise). She took a bold stance after the teacher asked, “Does anyone want to share something with the class that they probably don’t know about you?”.   She stood up and said, “Yeah, most people think I’m a boy, but I’m actually a girl”.  She said it was then followed by awkward silence and she got really embarrassed.  One would think the air would clear after that, but instead the boys stopped accepting her because she wasn’t a boy and the girls stopped accepting her because she’s not like them.  We all know how mean girls can be, and this opened the flood gates for one girl (I’ll call her “Alice”).   Alice decided she’d make Hahna her target for popularity. Of course mama bear wanted to put her fist in the back of Alice’s throat, but instead I made the painful decision of staying in the shadow trying to support and coach Hahna through this tough time.  Sometimes I’m too close to the issue, so Darcy’s simple words of “Hahna, remember to stay true to who you are” was perfect enough.  Over time Alice’s true colors are showing and Hahna has made some very nice friends, two in particular; Ina and Leiya.  Fortunately too, Hahna loves her teacher who’s full of humor and good character, Ms. Rumsby. She’s from England so Hahna loves to talk about her with an English accent. Hahna does well academically, so my heart melted when (during the tough time) her teacher said to me, “I want you to know how much I love having Hahna in class. She’s a true gift and I’m very sincere in saying that. I love that girl.”  I didn’t want to cry in front of her, so I said thank you and walked off to cry by myself.  Having my kid be bullied has to be one of the most heart breaking things as a parent.  Fortunately Alice’s karma has/is catching up with her. Hahna is happy at school and doing great now.  She misses her friends terribly, but we try and keep her busy. Her after school activities include soccer, hip-hop and pottery. 

One of the downsides of an international school in a big city is that most families are spread out all over the city. Sleep overs don’t happen much and to say, “Hey, I’m going to go see what Noah’s up to", definitely doesn’t happen. Our neighborhood in Truckee was full of kids playing in the street and lazy dogs sleeping in the driveways. Not here. We really miss this part of home.  Our success will be based on staying busy with little time to sit around and sulk about what we’re missing.  That’s not to say we don’t accept or allow our moments. I’m on facebook sporadically and it’s great to see what everyone is up to.  I know Anders was sad last night after connecting with friends on Instagram. He misses Garett, he misses Noah, he misses Heath, Tyler… He misses all his friends. Hahna misses Charlotte and Beck… Of course I miss my friends… We miss Halloween. I’ll be missing my mom’s 70^th birthday in a few weeks. We make sacrifices in being so far away, we take risks in the relationships we put on hold, we turn old routines into memories. We continue to live in an exciting, state of discomfort. There’s no doubt this experience is changing us in ways we don’t know yet.

Thanks for reading.

Inger

ps- I've got some great photos of a lot of fun stuff we've done. Stay tuned as I figure out the way I want to post them.