mccollaum fam

2009-11-24T23:43:00.001-08:00

Hi Everybody! Sorry we've dropped off the blogging planet. I'm just always too behind to get it done. However, a few days ago I was informed by the blogspot people that they were going to cancel my blog due to inactivity. The ultimate insult! Now Pete has backup! (He's always hounding me to blog our trips!) So anyway, I went back and found a word file that Jessie wrote on our trip to Sweden last summer, so I'll post that one. Also while flying back from Morocco, I wrote in my journal my experiences there and also our experiences during another trip to Germany that the family took. I'll try to get those on quickly, but not necissarily in the correct order. In the meantime I thought I'd post this really pathetic apology so that the blogspot people wouldn't cancel my blog! : ) I'll post the others soon! Love, Denise

The Monkey Train

2009-05-20T02:19:00.001-07:00

Peter forgot to add one of the most interesting 30 seconds of our trip to Bari. They call it the Monkey train....Da da da Daa! Sounds crazy right? It was! We were told by friends to bring plenty of peanuts for this event so we came prepared. What we weren't prepared for was the huge long line to get on. Well, line is not quite the right word for it, for there is no such thing in Italy, it was more like a huge mass of aggressive people pushing against each other for 45 minutes. We were finally herded on to, or rather IN to this "train" which was actually several cages linked together on wheels which could drive into the monkey's habitat and stop. Once inside we utilized some little pipes which you could feed peanuts through, allowing the train to safely attract throngs of monkeys without any possibility of a monkey attack. My video begins at this point, and the rest of the video speaks for itself. At some point all the monkeys jump off the train, possibly because they have been tazered, I mean trained to do so. They were very aggressive cute little things, probably due to the fact that they know they have only 30 seconds to shove and push their way to those peanuts. In fact, these lower primates' behavior was much like the behavior of the chaotic, unruly crowd trying to push their way onto the train. Maybe we really did evolve from monkeys!

Notice the little baby monkey hanging onto his mother? Oh, how cute! And there's this monkey next to Nicole that actually gets his whole arm through a little hole in the back. Sorry the video is so spastic, but it reflects the general atmosphere of the ride! I really couldn't tell what I was capturing since the sunlight was so bright, contrasting with the shadow of our completely surrounded train. Watch Pete and I simultaneously trying to help all the kids shove peanuts through the pipes as fast as possible, adding to the general upheaval!

Our trip to Bari, by Peter

2009-04-25T05:07:00.000-07:00

Hey we're back, this time we're posting the "Bari safari." We all had about a week off from school so we decided to go to the Bari safari, we got there late at night so we spent the night at a hotel. The next day we went on the safari, a drive through zoo. The first sign of animal life was a big-horned-sheep every one got a big kick out of that!! Then we went to the lions den, there the park rangers showed off by getting out of the car pretending to direct traffic, so still in the cat family we went to see the tigers, we went 2 times around so we could get a better look and got to see a cat fight (except me because I was in the back looking at the other tiger.) Nobody was directing traffic in their pen...They looked really vicious!After that we went through black bear lake. It wasn't to cool (bears are too lazy.) And then the Elephants, they had canals around were they were so they couldn't get out, but we did find out that elephants like tangerines!! Then came the giraffes, every one loved that. If I could do it again I definetly would. So here is proof that we had part of a giraff in our car!!!

This is Lenny, he is a camel. He earns his living by walking around a zoo asking people for food.

We met Lenny at the zoo, he liked us very much.

He liked our food a lot too

Infact he was very upset when we left!

He continued following our car once he figured out that no one else had food as good as ours. So we gave him some more food!!

And we took a fantastic picture together before we left!!

Brussels, Belgium for Valentines Day

2009-02-22T10:13:00.000-08:00

Ok, so I had a conference that I had to go to in Brussels on the 12 of February. Because travel out of Naples is difficult for connections, I have to travel the day before and cannot return until the day after. I went to this same conference a year ago and was impressed with the city center how gorgeous it was. So, I went to Denise and told her that I wanted her to go with me and I would take some leave after the conference so that we could spend a little bit of time there.

Now she told me no, she couldn't, the kids are in school, her callings make her irreplacable at church and the living room is dirty, the laundry isn't done and Paul is terrible so no baby sitter would sit for him.

So, I bought a ticket and told her she could either go, or we could throw it away. Once I put it like that, she found a way to clean the living room, get the kids to school, we drugged Paul (just kidding, of course for you no humor kind of people), did the laundry and found our way to the airport the morning of the 11th. What you see in this first picture is Denise in the window of our room, overlooking the tower in the Gran Place of Brussels. We had a gorgeous view only a couple of hundred yards from the city center.

So, after my conference we took a tour of the city. It was COLD!!! At least when you're from Naples, Italy it was cold. Temps were hovering around freezing and it was raining or sleeting a fair amount of the time. Nevertheless, we had a great time and came home on Valentines Day. It was a nice break.

Here is Denise in the Gran Place at night.

And here is Denise touching the guy's statue who was killed for resisting something from someone and now it is good luck to touch the statue. What's up with that???? What good luck did he have??

Here is the little old man out playing his violin in the cold for Denise. It sounded good.

And at the Atomium, made by Belgium when they hosted the worlds fair, some time. It some kind of atom enlarged twenty bizzilion times. To most people it seems big, but Denise and I handled the size quite readily.

Here is Denise in the antique district, which could be a blog in and of itself....but I will spare you the pain of seeing a beautiful Luis the 14th dresser for 27,000 Euro (add 30% for dollars).

And finally, if you dance, you have to pay the fiddler!

And last of all, here I am high-fiving my old buddy and mentor, Don Quixote!

See you all later!

Croatia, Albania and Macedonia

2009-02-22T09:25:00.000-08:00

Well, since all of my attempts at peer pressure to get the rest of the family to update the blog have been a dismal failure, I am going to have to start doing this myself! In the meantime, since from the family trip, Venice never got posted and Jessica and mine and Gerald's (our friends from Poland) trip to Auschwitz never got posted, I am going to depend on you readers to help me put pressure on the family to keep us posting. We really have a lot happening that is worth posting.

With that said, I have recently made a couple of trips where I forgot to bring the camera and one where I did remember. So, here is my update.

CROATIA.

I went to Croatia for ten days last October. I quite liked Croatia and look forward to going back.

Well, I went to post some pictures, but can't find them, I will find them this week and put them up. It was fun, I was doing an evaluation of thier forces and had a lot of fun. The food was great and people were quite friendly. We were kind of out in the sticks, but in a quite reasonable, new hotel and the cost of the hotel, plus a big breakfast every morning and a large dinner every night, averaged about 28 euros a day. Nice! Also, they have a number of National Parks, which I was able to go to one which was quite gorgeous. You just have to watch for the minefields, a little nasty reminder of this little spat that they had with Serbia a few years ago!

Albania.

I did a quick trip to Albania here in January. It was nice as I got to travel with our four star in a Gulfstream III. I can only tell you that is the way to travel. Since I was going with the four star, we would just go get on the plane here at the military airfield, fly straight to the airfield there and get off and move it. Much nicer than the full day trip if I were to go commercial.

So, on to Albania. Sorry, no camera, so only the visual image. What a country, very friendly, good food, but way way behind the times. The capital has a million people, up from about half a million, ten years ago. The infrastructure has not caught up. There are dirt roads all over the capital, and some that are not dirt, but are worse because they are an endless series of axle busting potholes.

My guys picked me up from the airport in a Land Rover Defender 110. Good thing, it was the perfect vehicle for driving around the capital! Food there is quite good. It is a primarily muslim country and really pretty cool. When you drive around it is like all of those pictures that I used to see as a kid from National Geographic taken in the old USSR. People walking around herding sheep and goats. Donkeys walking along with bundles of "stuff". Quite quaint over all. They have along way to go, but are friendly and open.

One interesting there is that the influence of italy right across the adriatic is such that as I wandered around, often times no one would speak english, but they would speak Italian, so I was still able to get by. It was fun.

Macedonia.

On the same trip, we left Albania and went to Macedonia for a couple of days. The first day was all official visits, office calls and VIP meals. The second day was pretty fun as Macedonian SOF hosted the four star for a day of skiing. Since I was there with the SOF guys, it was nice that I was able to spend the day skiing also. So, not something that everyone can brag about, but now I have skiied Macedonia!

With that said, Macedonia is a mix of Eastern Othodox and about 20 percent Albanian muslim. Thier infrastructure is quite well established with quite decent infrastructure. I was walking around the city one night and found a little antique shop. I ended up buying a pair of WWII German Mountain Corp Snow shoes that were in very good shape for fifty bucks. Sorry kids, that momento was for Dad! I will hang them on my wall back in Colorado. The food there was good and I think that it would be fun to get out and see the country side there.

After skiing there, we were at an official dinner with the Minister of Defence and their Chief of the General Staff (equivilant of our Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff). The official talk had died down, and our boss asked about a calander on the wall that showed a bunch of SF guys doing cool things. As they were talking, I butted in with a positive comment about their unit. I guess thier Chief of the General Staff, being a former SF unit commander, liked that I said what I did to our boss as after the meal, he grabbed me outside and pulled me aside. He shook my hand and gave me one of his personal coins and then told me that he expected that when I came back, when not if, that I was to contact him for a personal office call! Intersting. I will probably be back over there in the next while and will make sure I do what he told me to do.

In all of these places, I have made good professional aquantainces that are building into friendships, so it is quite rewarding work.

Sorry I didn't get any picture in either place. I realized after I was at the airport that I didn't have my camera. Sorry, I will try to do better in the future.

See ya!

Pete

Trolls!

2009-01-04T23:19:00.001-08:00

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year

2008-12-28T11:36:00.000-08:00

Dear Family and Friends, 25 Jan 08

It is Christmas Day and another exciting year has come and gone. We hope that all of you have had a very Merry Christmas, and that your lives are centered in Christ and that his comforting influence is with you during this season in which we celebrate his birth.We have had a great year, full of excitement, stress and growth.

The family arrived in Italy last December. We got into a house here in Naples in January and the kids started into Italian school in mid-January. It has been an exceedingly hard road for the kids, going cold turkey into school the way they did, essentially not speaking a word of Italian. There were a lot of hard days. Days when they came home crying, wanting to quit. But between Mom comforting them, tutors helping them, Dad holding the line and a slow but steady increase in their understanding, comprehension and ability to speak Italian, they are all little Italian speakers and day-by-day they get better.

Interestingly enough, in the beginning, they all thought that Dad was a hero because I could hack out enough Italian/Spanish/Portuguese to get by. Now, Dad’s unique form of Italian and his crazy non-american accent (mostly I get mistaken for eastern European) just brings corrections from the kids, where I once received their adoration. In any one sentence, it is not out of the question that I am corrected as many as four times on grammar or pronunciation. Why should I take an Italian class, I walk around with a bunch of full time Italian tutors! We have had some very good trips this year. Scroll down to see a record of some of our fun family times.

We have truly loved our time here in Naples. Naples is a crazy place, dirty, disorganized, inefficient and seemingly filled with grumpy, gruff Neopolatans who speak Italian when they want to, and napolitano (the local dialect, not Italian) when they want to be incomprehensible. Under their rough exteriors, there is a usually a warm and open person who once the ice is broken, is ready to do anything for you.

We are very active in the church here. Mom is the second counselor in the Primary and the District Young Women’s President. I am the only counselor in the Branch Presidency. Since the Branch President doesn’t speak any English, I end up handling most of the English speaking issues in the branch. I now conduct meetings in Italian. The first time was funny. As I was hacking through Italian during the opening of the meeting, the little old Italian ladies started correcting my Italian from out in the congregation! It was a little comical and humbling at the same time. We also have the missionaries over a lot and work with them a lot. They seem to enjoy our family and that is good for them and us also. Well, we will be here through Jan 15, 2011. We would love to have you come and visit us. We are looking forward to the next year with enthusiasm and wish you and yours a Happy New Year!

Pete, Denise, Jessica, Peter, Nicole, Rachel, Paul

Christmas Eve, Dad took the kids down town Naples to give Mom some Christmas prep time.

The Hills are Alive with the Sound of Music!

2008-12-27T02:55:00.000-08:00

The next day we headed into Salzburg. At this point, we realized that we might never make it home at the pace we were going so we decided ahead of time that we would just try to find the “Do, re, mi” steps and some of the sites in Salsburg where they had filmed the musical, “The Sound of Music” since it is a favorite of ours. Upon pulling into town we discovered that we weren’t the only ones with this idea in mind. We followed this bus thinking that it might lead us in the right direction, but instead it pulled into the tourist station. So we ended up deciding that it would save us a lot of time to take the family on the “Sound of Music Tour”.
Join us as we tour through Salzburg:
This first shot is the back side of the Leopoldskron Palace. It was this beautiful building that the movie crew planned to use for the Von Trapp family mansion, but unfortunately, the back yard and lake were the only parts actually used in the filming of the movie. MGM had made arrangements with the Austrian government to use this palace for all the inside shots and their crew had brought in all their generators, equipment, props, make-up, people and extras, etc, etc, etc. Eventually it became too much for the Austrian government, and just before the filming of the ball, they shut the whole thing down. Instead, all of the inside shots were actually filmed in Hollywood studios which were designed after the home . Another beautiful house was used as the outside of the Von Trapp family home, so you can imagine how difficult it must have been to film these outside portions of the movie. Think about the scene just after the boat has capsized and Maria and the Barron are arguing together. All of the shots of Julie Andrews have the lake in the background, and all of the shots of the Baron have the house behind him! (Filmed in two different locations.) Funny, huh!
Now picture in your mind the scene where Maria is dressed in those horrible clothes, with her guitar in her hand, singing “I have confidence in me!” as she approches her new assignment of being the new governess to the VonTrapps. She comes to the big gates of this home, which doesn’t look quite as grand from our far-off viewpoint on the bus. The lane of trees that the children were swinging from in their “playclothes” is also just outside of this house. I don’t remember the name of it, sorry.

Here we are posing outside the glass gazebo which is so well-known for the Liesle/Rolf duet, “I am Sixteen, going on Seventeen.” This gazebo was actually built by MGM outside of the Leopoldskronfirst Palace. The Austrian government liked it so much that it was left for them when there once the filming was over. They loved the new addition to the palace so much, that is until the area became inundated with people climbing the Palace walls to visit it, singing and dancing and leaping from bench to bench. They eventually decided to move it to another area for the tourists to enjoy. They also welded the doors shut, so that people would stop hurting themselves leaping from bench to bench. Darn, and we would have been so good at it!

These next pictures are of Nonnberg Abbey (with the red dome) where the real Maria really did study and where she and the Barron were married in real life. It is still a working Abbey and the nuns really do sing there in the evenings, but it is not opened to the public.

Next our tour bus headed up into the mountains where “the hills are alive” . This was so beautiful! The 70 glacier fed lakes are picturesque, and keep everyone playing there nice and cool.
This is the little town of Hoth . There were several little Maypoles in people's yards which were all ready for the summer solstice celebration coming up in a few days.

And this is Lake Fuschl, with it’s neighboring town. It had a really picturesque view so we all posed seperately for some pics. (Jess and I hate ours of course.) The lake is 7 miles long and here is also where Mozart’s Mother was born. You see, music really has been an important part of this area’s history. In fact, Mozart’s birthplace is also in Salzburg. The music festival that the Von Trapp family won many years ago has been a tradition in that city for over 200 years. The Character of Uncle Max was totally fictional in the Von Trapp story, but it was based on a real man named Max_ ?_ who originally began the music festival there. He was Jewish and fled from Austria at the beginning of the 2nd World War, several years before the Von Trapp’s fled.

Then we were herded back onto the bus to continue the ever upward journey into the beautiful hills to the next little town which I don't remember the name, but it is home to a beautiful cathedral--the one used to film the wedding in the movie. Before going off to visit the church, Pete was in the mood for the really yummy desserts that were famous for that town, so we stopped to eat two meatball soups (mom insisted that we couldn't just eat junk food) and a yummy cake with hot white chocolate drizzled over it. It was yummy, much better then the meatballs. I think mom managed to get everyone to take just one bite of the meat before they devoured their desert. It is easy to see why this cathedral was chosen, and I'm sure it has been kept in pristine condition because of all the tourists who file through here. As I was walking around the church I remember thinking that the movie made the wedding isle appear much longer then it actually is in real life, but now that I'm looking at our pictures, they do the same thing. It is actually a fairly medium sized cathedral, but appears bigger in the pictures. It really was beautiful.

You can see Paul trying to climb the steps to the alter be married, or perhaps to receive redemption for his sins which were starting to accumulate by this point as he was becoming quite unmanagable.

Unfortunately he was yet unwilling to fall asleep on the bus trip back down to the city of Salzburg, and so when we arrived in the famous gardens he was really really unmanagable! We managed to still miraculously get a few good pictures. The gardens here I also don't remember their name, but most of the song, "Do Re Mi" was filmed here. We had a fun time exploring all the different sites that we recognized. Maybe you'll recognize a few. The whole garden is really beautiful.

The Von Trap children marched around this big circular fountain and it took us forever to catch 2 seconds for a picture on those Do Re Mi steps with all the tourists walking up and down.

Then I have a whole series of these cute little stone trolls. The Von Tramp children all marched by and tapped this one troll on the head in the movie, so we posed for a family shot here. But there were so many other cute trolls that even though it was getting too late in the day that we had promised to make really short, we just couldn't stop having fun posing with these cute little guys and gals. For some reason Paul seemed to really make a connection with these miniture little monsters, they really cheered him up. I'll try to add a slideshow of all the troll pictures.

Please someone help me

I have a slideshow saved on

Photobucket but I can't figure out

how to get it onto the blog here!

Please comment!

Sadly, the time came for us to say, "So long,farewell, etc....." But our trip to Salzburg kept us singing....

Do Re Mi Fa So La Ti Do so DO! (I know, we are absolutely cheesy!!)

How to Cook Authentic Italian Pasta

2008-12-26T05:22:00.000-08:00

Ok, so we are still stuck blogging our last summer's vacation, even though it's really Christmas vacation. But I have to just insert this one post into the continuity of the vacation just because it is needed for all of you to whom we sent gifts of Pasta. You all have to cook it in the correct manner otherwise it defeats the purpose of sending over all the authentic ingredients. So the following blog is for all those who are ready for a cooking lesson from Italy.

(Dawnae's new ceramics, and pasta and salsa for Kristin and Deanna)

Italian food is always eaten in courses, even at home. At a restaurant you might order an anti-pasta first (in Napoli they have lots of seafood and also crusty bread with bruscheta and various other finger food). The next course would be your pasta (which is usually the beginning of a meal at home.) Often you might then have a side dish of pepperoni (sweet bell peppers cooked in olive oil-not spicey red meat). Next would come your meat, (lots of different kinds, usually all fried) followed by fruit and dolce or sweets. Meals usually end with coffee. At fancy restaurants you may have several plates of each separate course effectively making your meal into as many courses as you can eat! Your host will keep offering you more and more food until you insist that it is enough. Our elders just returned from Christmas lunch at a members home and they said they lost track of how many courses they had eaten, but it was between 10 and 15!!

Italians categorize their food into two groups: sweet and salty and they do not mix the two. Usually sweet is reserved for breakfast and for desert and everything else is salty, so sweet and sour is not a favorite dish in Italy! Pasta is served at every meal since it is the main staple, and sometimes a simple meal is only pasta. Also a typical meal on the go is leftover pasta fried into a round cake type meal. The breakfast is very light as is dinner, and the big meal of the day is served around 2:00 in the afternoon. All the stores shut down during the afternoon for the families to gather for their meal. Extended families and friends often meet for their midday meals.

There are so many different types of pasta it is impossible to list them all. Each area of Italy has their own specialty of pasta. Pasta makers usually go back generations. Italy has “pasta universities” which specialize in teaching the very best pasta making. Italian pasta is different than our American versions in that it has a lighter and usually thinner texture. The salsa is also different with a lighter tomato flavor. Pasta is served with all kinds of different salsas also. Basically anything you have laying around can be cooked and pureed into salsa for your pasta so there are almost as many variations of salsa as there are pastas.

Instructions on making authentic Italian pasta:
Heat up your pre-made sauce to simmer first so that you can add it to the pasta at just the right time. You can also put some fresh basil into it if you desire. Just keep the sauce hot, since it is already perfectly prepared and doesn’t need to simmer for hours like traditional fresh made salsa.

Italians use about 100 g of uncooked pasta per person (this is fairly generous). Look at the outside of your pasta package. You will notice the words “Cottura” 13 min. (or another number.) This is the key to know how long to cook your pasta. Do not cook it until it is tender as is the usual practice in America. Italians like their pasta “al dente” and it’s important to cook it this way so that it will absorb the flavor of the sauce. Also notice on the back of the package a diagram of how much water to add. I never thought that this was important before, but it makes a big difference if you don’t want sticky pasta. Add the amount of water in the diagram keeping in mind that 2 Liters equals about 8 cups. So 6 L = a little more than 6 quarts. It’s a lot more water then I used to use for pasta, which explains the need for a huge stock pot. Bring the water to a boil first and add salt if you desire. Add the pasta and begin timing the cooking when it starts boiling again. When cooked, the pasta should be firm but not crunchy. It may feel just slightly sticky, but not too much. Drain pasta in a colander but don’t rinse. Immediately, while the pasta is still very hot, put it into a serving dish and add the sauce. The hot “al dente” pasta will absorb a lot of the sauce and soften up even more in the serving bowl. Italian pasta has a lot less sauce then what we are used to. It never swims in the sauce like American spaghetti is proportioned. You need just enough sauce to be absorbed into the pasta so that it isn’t sticky. If you didn’t use enough water to cook the pasta it will be too sticky and you can add a little olive oil to the pasta before adding the sauce, but this keeps the pasta from absorbing as much of the sauce, so just make sure to add enough water. Eat hot with a little fresh parmigiana cheese sprinkled over the top. (Standard for every kind of pasta and very very yummy!) Serve and eat as soon as it is cool enough to not burn your tongue for the best taste. Bon appetito! Merry Christmas!

2008-08-31T05:56:00.000-07:00

The Czech Republic is such a beautiful country. The countryside is pristine and I think it was more beautiful than any other place we saw, with Austria coming really close behind! Anyway, we kept finding cool places to see in the Czech Republic. We stopped in the town of after we left church on Sunday. It was a tiny town, but had a really cute town square, and some good gelato (yes, gelato is everywhere in Europe, not just in Italy.)
We then drove to another town about 1 more hour south which we were told was a cool place to visit. Pete has gotten really good at spotting the off the beaten path little bed and breakfast places that are much cheaper and usually have a few more beds to cram the whole family into. We pulled into a huge old barn, and got a really large apartment: 2 bedrooms, a living room, and a kitchen for really cheap. The kids were in heaven. There were cows, chickens, geese, cats, and ducks to chase all over the working farm. They smelled like animals when the day was done, but it was the best hotel ever in their opinion. And everyone had their own bed! So we ended up staying there for 2 nights instead of one. I liked checking into a hotel and getting a good nights sleep, and then spending the whole next day in one place and returning home, packing up, going to bed and leaving early in the morning for the next traveling day. It seemed like when we traveled every day, we spent half the time either packing up or trying to find the next hotel. Anyway, the town we visited was really cool because it was an old medieval castle town. A river in the shape of a great big horseshoe encircled almost the entire town. In addition, the town had an outer and inner wall for defense. We visited some interesting museums on our way to the castle. Some of you may gasp in horror at the following pictures, so I need to warn you in advance that we have now permanently traumatized the children by taking them to the medieval torture museum. Actually, we think it had some really helpful suggestions for our parenting methods. Haha! We clapped Paul in irons for not being able to keep up with the rest of the family on the tour. You can see how upset he was about this! I told the kids that our basement could easily be adjusted into a damp, dark, dungeon for misbehaving children. Actually, it is Mom and Dad that need a nice little white padded room in solitude after this long vacation! But seriously, no children were harmed in the making of this blogspot. Next we went to a wax museum which depicted scenes from the medieval village and then went on to represent some important people in history. Sadly, many of the Czech Republic’s history was unknown to us. One thing that we have seen throughout Europe is that the people really know their history. Europe seems to dwell a lot on their history, and has so many reminders of it, whereas America seems to really look forward into the future instead. Each place we went to had a different feel to it, its own culture, which was neat to experience. Ok, anyway, after the wax museum we went to a really cute marrionet museum. We saw a lot of puppets in Poland and even more in Prague, and they vary from each region. These puppets were really really cool! They also had a few stages with different stage props and scenery. It’s been a secret desire of mine to build something like this for my kids, but I thought that I had satisfied this desire somewhat when Emily and I built the beds with storage underneath for the girl’s room. However, seeing these cool stage sets just brought this desire back again. Maybe some day when I’m a grandma I can realize this dream. Anybody want to help? It would be so fun! The oldest of puppets in this collection were 90 years old. The green guy is the Czech water spirit, and the guy with one cloven hoof is a devil. The other devil is also obvious. There were a lot of traditional Czech characters, but also many others mixed in. They were all charming!
It’s a good thing the McCollaum kids are so well behaved! Mom is playing with dolls while Dad takes a nap. We moved on after this refreshing break. We were getting closer to the castle all the time and now had reached it’s entrance. The tower served many purposes. It was a bell tower, and a watch tower, They really did lock people up in this tower. It had a fantastic view of the city!

By the time we made it back down the tower and into the castle, the little ones were just plain tuckered out and their parents were in even worse shape. You can tell we were nearing the end of our vacation , because mom and dad decided at that point to skip the castle and to turn back to the river below so that the kids could play on it‘s banks. Jessica and Peter continued onward alone to take in the castle gardens and then met up with us down by the river. They got some good pictures on their own! In the meantime Paul was the focus of many Chinese women’s pictures. They just loved this cute blond half-naked cherub. He probably reminded them of a blond budda! J

2008-08-30T04:12:00.000-07:00

Welcome to Prague!

Prague was absolutely beautiful. We arrived there Friday evening, and met another nice American couple with 3 children in the lobby who were also just checking in. The Ritters had just finished biking down the Danube with their boys, Patrick (8), Casey (7), and Derek (or Boo Boo, age 1). We met them again the next morning at breakfast, so we all headed out together to see the sights. We headed into the old town center, on the left bank of the river and walked around a bit there. As usual, many fountains, churches, and statues were the favorite sites.

At two o’clock, we joined a “free tour” which accepts tips in any amount at the end of the tour. Our tour guide was Czek, but raised in Germany. She took us over to the right bank where we saw many sites, including some important sites in history. She showed us where one student had burned himself to death in 1969 to protest the Communist rule of his country. She also showed us some important sites where different Hollywood movies were filmed. Mission Impossible, and the Borne Identity both had some great running scenes up and down lots of stairs which we were lucky enough to climb. J It was such a thrill!

We ended our tour with a walk through the Palace and its grounds, the largest in all of Europe. We didn’t have time to visit the inside of the Palace by the end of the day, which can take up to two days to visit; however, we thought we had an hour left before the beautiful Palace church closed, so we rushed in, only to be pushed back out by the guards who kept trying to close the place down. Our guide had previously explained to us that the crown jewels (which go on display every 5 years) are locked up in this church, and each evening it takes 7 different keys belonging to 7 important people to lock it up.

I spotted the head guard with a huge metal key in his hand and I kept trying to get a picture, but we kept getting shooed away. Finally, I went up to the guy and asked him if I could get a picture of him with his key. He said to me in an exasperated voice, “No, we are closing! There is no time!”
Then about 3 seconds later, he just handed me the key without a word. Jessica and I were together and so I quickly handed it to her so that I could get a shot. You can see that I was standing too close, but we were in the crowd of people being shoved out of the building, so I did what I could. It was pretty funny! We found out minutes afterward that the church had closed early that evening for a wedding! Boo!

After having some Czek goulash and potato soup (yummy!) we walked down the golden lane. This was a street filled with little tiny houses that were originally used to house the king’s guards. (Sorry, I can’t remember any names!) When the new king came to power, he was quite crazy and kicked all the guards out, replacing them with his own little crew of alchemists. Hence the name, “golden lane”. These little houses are so cute and today they are little tourist shops of course, still used in the quest for wealth! That particular King was obsessed with alchemy and legend says that one of the huge fires in the palace was started in the king’s study where he kept his chemistry experiments. The fire burned a huge portion of the castle, and took a lot of work and money to repair it. However, it did give the king a good excuse to re-model!

We descended back to the center by way of the beautiful castle gardens and returned to the town center through the famous St. Charles Bridge. There were tons of people painting pictures, and playing music to earn money here. We even saw a guy with a rat and a big bulldog. His talent was to keep his dog calm so that the rat could sit on top of him. Aside from this guy, all the others were quite entertaining and talented.

Prague is a beautiful city, but filled with tourists from everywhere! I’m not sure if there are any Czeks that inhabit the area. It was very romantic and beautiful and certainly has a lot of sites to entertain a person, however, the people were a little cold, probably because they are quite sick of tourists. And it is quite expensive, like a European version of Disneyland or something! Still, if I had the chance to go back I would because Prague is another city which has so many amazing and beautiful original historical buildings which are really incredible to see. It has a very interesting history!

See you next time on our next post!!
McCollaum fam.

Krakow

2008-08-07T11:54:00.000-07:00

Finally we arrived into Krakow, about 3 hours later then our arranged meeting time with Gerald Kohan. He had lost his phone on his trip over and so we were going off of our back-up plan to meet in the main square, only we were 3 hours late. Luckily he was checking back every hour on the hour and we happe
Krakow was really beautiful! We were finally able to meet Gerald’s family: his wife, Gosha, and daughters Alexandria and Madja. Sorry guys if I spelled your names wrong! Our kids immediately paired up, or at least Jessica and Alex did, and Nicole, Madja, and Rachel formed the troika as we affectionately referred to them. It took all four adults to keep Paul occupied, and Peter gave us an extra hand when needed. We had a great time together! We were so compatible that we managed

to keep finding more and more reasons to stay. We enjoyed our time there for 6 days, instead of the original 4-5 that we were thinking.

(above, Maja and the two girls, side, Jessie and Alex hanging out)

We toured the Castle, its private chambers, and the weapons and armor, along with the kript, where many of the royalty and important people in history were buried.
We enjoyed visiting the beautiful church and bell tower.

We visited the salt mines close by. These were all hewn out of the salt rock, which is in many different colors, not just white. Pictures can’t quite capture the beauty of this underground world with its many sculptures and even chapels. Take a close look at the floor and chandeliers, it is all salt rock!
A bit of trivia--here is where the word “salary” comes from, the workers were paid in salt.

We went spelunking into a dragon’s cave and heard an old fable about the dragon who was eating all the townspeople. The dragon had demanded the kings daughter, but obviously the king was unwilling to giver her up. He sent many knights out to kill the dragon, but unfortunately they all lost the fight and their lives! Finally the town’s shoemaker volunteered to fight the dragon if the king would promise his daughter’s hand in marriage for him if he won. The king was desperate, and didn’t really think this shoemaker would succeed when his knights had not, so he agreed.

The shoemaker then gathered up some sulfur, and stuffed a sheep with it. He placed the sheep outside of the dragon’s cave and the dragon came out and gobbled it all up. He became parched with thirst from the sulfur and ran down to the river to drink. He drank and drank and drank until he exploded! So the shoemaker won the princess’ hand in marriage where everyone else had failed. What a great story. The caves and river are just below the castle so the story really must be true! The dragon sculpture that remains today really does breathe fire (every five minutes). Rachel especially loved this tale!

(pic. Bell tower, and down below, the dragon!)

We visited the town square several times. It is closed to automobiles and is alive with tons of people and traditional Polish food. Krakow is one of the few places in Poland that has survived through many turbulent times including WWII. At one time the city was rigged with explosives by the Germans so that they could destroy it if they needed to retreat, but somehow the Russians outmaneuvered them and they were forced to flee in a hurry, leaving the town intact.
We heard many of the polish traditions and fables from Gosha and Gerald and from these excellent tour guides, we were able to understand the area and country with a deeper insight. It was an incredibly valuable experience that we really loved!
(salt mine pics are starting, those to the right are the stairs going down, down, down, down, down)

You can really feel the authentic history of the place. We listened to a concert complete with bells, pipes, singing and great dancing too! We had fun window shopping. One area of the square has been the traditional place for people to sell their wares for eons, and still had the coats of arms for the different trades (cobbler, weaver, etc.) painted up on the walls where their stands would have been set up. We bought the kids some really cute little wooden toys there, and some beautifully painted wooden easter eggs. One of the kids favorite activities was feeding (and chasing) pigeons in the middle of the square. They got pretty good at it!

Eventually, we did have to leave, before we spent all our money and drove the Kohan’s nuts. We filled six days solid with non-stop fun, but still left without one very important ballroom dance lesson that was promised us, so we have that to look forward to the next time we meet up again! Thanks Kohans! We loved our visit!

One other very important item I was still on a quest to find in Poland still eluded us. Polish pottery is something I have wanted to buy for a long time, and once we were in Europe I started saving (well, kind of) so that I could blow it all on a mismatched set for the family, ok…for myself. We got some tips on where to go from Gosha, and the next day we set off in search of pottery. We were not disappointed. The little town of Boleslawiec boasts the most famous school educating people in the technology and design of ceramics.

It is also home to many manufacturing plants, so it is like one big outlet center for ceramics. I shopped while the kids played at the cute little Garden Hotel we stayed in. Several boxes later, we left heavy laden with beautiful stuff that I found at 60-70% off. Just think of the money I had just saved! Anyone who wants to come to visit can now be treated to an Italian meal served on Polish pottery! Won’t that be an experience! : )

(this is how paul wanted to be carried the whole trip!)

We pulled out of Boleslawiec heavily laden, and headed to our next stop, Prague.

I thought the fire breathing dragon was the perfect way to end the blog entry. See you all next time, hope you enjoyed the pics!

Road to Krakow (Bosnia, Croatia, Hungary)

2008-08-02T10:02:00.000-07:00

Picking up where I left off on our Eastern European family vacation:
Our next two days of vacation were spent driving, driving, and driving. After leaving Sarajevo, Bosnia, we once again entered back into Croatia, where we took a slow, but beautiful drive through the mountians and into Hungary. In the beginning, we weren’t really sure we were on the right road, because our GPS didn’t have a very good map of the area, and kept telling us we were off route. The sparsly populated mountain road was beautiful and almost felt like we were back home in Colorado! As we did encounter little pockets of civilization, it was soo cute and quaint. It reminded me of the scenes from the book, Heidi. I imagined these mountain folk never leaving their little villages. Some funny things we encountered along the way: An old man, walking his cow down the road, a woman washing her clothes in a big tub in her front yard, lots of old old cemetaries, some Christian and some Muslim, lots of milk cows wandering around on and off the road, an older lady herding sheep and goats, a man raking his hay into cute little hay stacks., the police officer, giving Pete a ticket for driving without our lights on (oops! Even without a common language you can still get a ticket and we had to pay for it on the spot! He was very nice about it though!) Then there was this little old lady who stepped out into the road in front of us and flagged us down, holding out her passport and jabbering away to us. We had no idea what she needed, so we just gave her some money, and kept going. She didn’t act like that is what she needed, but took it anyway. I think she was trying to get a ride. I kicked myself for not getting her picture after we drove off, because she truly looked like a witch! Warts, big nose, and all, and she was dressed in some interesting clothes which were mostly black. We saw lots and lots of police officers, Eventually another officer flagged us down for speeding (we didn’t know the speed limit since it wasn’t posted) and right at the moment that we were trying to play the dumb foreigner, Paul, as if on cue, began throwing up in the back seat. Pete jumped out and I was scrambling to find napkins. I guess the officer finally decided that we weren’t worth his trouble after all that and just waived us to continue on once we had gotten the mess cleaned up. It was a stroke of good luck for us, or maybe a blessing from God, because Paul never complained or got sick again after words. We spent the night in a little bed and breakfast in Hungary. The innkeeper spoke no English, but he and his wife knew a little Italian, so we were able to get by. They were really friendly and sweet and picked two bags of plumbs and 1 bag of tomatoes for us to take with us on our trip. We had wanted to spend some time in Budapest the next afternoon, but by the time we got there, we realized that we only had time for lunch. As you can see Paul found the joy of picture taking, and went a little crazy! Other than that we were there just long enough for us to get a parking ticket, and a beautiful view of the city from the car windows. Definitely a place that I would love to go back to. The Hungarians were very friendly people.

Lunch in Budapest.....

Sarajevo...

2008-07-24T08:14:00.000-07:00

After leaving Dubrovnic, we drove north through some mountains into Bosnia until we reached Sarajevo. Our route was pretty deserted except for the many remnants of old rock walls that had once sectioned off all the hillsides. One old road, wide enough for only one wagon, or perhaps one tank from the days when the Soviets occupied this area wound around, following a similar route to our newer, somewhat improved road. Occasionally we saw a few piles of rubble of what we assumed were little rock houses. Our purpose for entering Sarajevo was for Pete to attend some top secret, super cool, world crisis NATO meetings there (none of you can tell a soul.) We arrived a day early so that Pete could show us around the city. It was beautiful and set in a valley surrounded by mountains on all sides. Only 15 years previously, this country had been part of the country of Yugoslavia. After Bosnia split off, they immediately began their own discord between the Serbians living there and everyone else, mainly of Muslim faith. Muslims and Serbians (Christians) live together fairly peacefully in the city now, but had the US and NATO forces not stepped into the crisis, there may have been solely Serbians left. With the help of the Country Serbia (to the east of Bosnia) the city of Sarajevo had been successfully cut off from all outside help through the mountain passes, and civil war raged.. Many of the buildings still have scars, particularly in the area we were staying. The one main road through the city was nick-named “Sniper Alley” during the crisis. One of the city’s most beautiful buildings almost survived until just at the end of the war it was set on fire by Serbians. Today it is a beautiful but burned shell, it’s main purpose a reminder of more turbulent times.

The city felt somewhat primitive and poor, with a distinctly Muslim feel to it. Most of the Muslims there are pretty relaxed and peaceful, with only a few radicals. We did see one full faced Burka, but mostly the women and men looked pretty “western” or the women had the shawls on their heads over modest dress. It was really cool and definitely different then any other country we had ever been to. Particularly the toliets were a bit different! Ew! What a surprise we had when we first entered the public restrooms!

We enjoyed the market in the center of the old town with its antiques and old crafts. Our favorite was the copper alley. I ended up buying a beautiful copper pot for my kitchen. The girls bought some leather and wooden shoes from a cute little man who spoke no English at all. He taught us the word for thank you, “Fallah.” Peter got a cool wooden canteen after pricing the ENTIRE market, (he is a very savvy shopper). And Jessica was allowed to purchase some belly dancing attire after earnestly promising that she would not be using it to dance for any boys.

Legend says that if you drink from the fountains, you will be returning some day to Sarajevo...

Muslim call for prayer...

Coppersmith...

On our way home from the market one evening, Jessica, Nicole and I were trying to sneak a picture of a cute little old lady struggling with her bags and a few pieces of corn she had just bought. As she looked up, she caught us trying to take her picture and broke out into the biggest toothless grin which lit up her entire face. I wish I could display the picture which is only burned into my memory, but here is the pose that she happily agreed to stand for with Nicole. She was soo cute! Smiles are the same in any language!

On our way out of town, we were attacked by a swarm of little boys begging in the street. They had caught hold of our van and were running along beside us until Pete was able to fish out a few coins for them. Just up the street was another little girl, left all by herself on the corner. She looked like she was only about 5 or 6 years old.

Just as we were regretting having to leave, and sad that our shopping was all finished, a small group of mountain Bosnian’s wares caught our eyes. The little boy, Yesjdan, was just Paul’s age and they got along great! Only one man spoke English, but we all used a lot of sign language to chat away, and it was funny because he interpreted for his wife and I, so we were able to have a typical conversation between mothers, telling all about how old our little boys were and how much they weighed and how well they were speaking, etc. The girls were fascinated by the horse-skin rugs! They had some really cheap prices and we ended up buying two sheep skin rugs, one more really big copper pot, and a clay pot to cook in the fire with. They gave the kids a little clay pyramid shaped piggy bank as a parting gift and our little boys kissed each other goodbye.

2008-07-16T05:40:00.000-07:00

Hello everyone! We're having an awesome time on our vacation! We began our trip by purchasing a European mini-van for $500. It won't go over 100 kmh, which is about 60 mph, but most of the roads we will be traveling are slow, windy things anyway. It is truely a Naples car, which means it looks like crap! I think every single green panel is dented in some way, but we think it will run ok, and it was the right price!

We drove from Naples, on the west side of Italy, over to Bari, which is on the East side by the Adriatic. Here we caught a ferry at 10:00 pm that sailed for the town of Dubrovnik, Croatia. We arrived at 7 am the next morning. There's so much we've been learning and we've been busy with the camera! Here's some pictures for you guys so you can see what we've been up to.

Dubrovnic is a beautiful small town. Of course, everything now seems small compared to Naples! In the center of the town there is an old section which dates to the middle ages. It has been remarkably well preserved, and was renovated after a war there damaged many of the buildings. At the entrance of the old city there is a map which documents the damage from the bombings. All of the buildings have been restored to their original state, and you can see the contrast between the new roofs on the buildings as compared to the old ones. The main street of town is beautiful, and paved with a gorgous stone of some type (which looks new to me.)

Some cute pictures by a fountain:

And the local neighborhood dog! : )

The city still has the complete walls, which is a big tourist attraction to walk all the way around. However, 4 adults and 3 kids prices later, we decided that we could look up at the walls with just as much enjoyment!

Here's the pics by the coast.

Here's paul chasing the pigions, something we've discovered is one of his favorite things to do!

Here's the view going out of Dubrovnic to Bosnia

This is the castle wall around the old city of Dubrovnic. It was amazing, we didn't go on the wall because it was very expensive, but we still had a fun time walking right next to it and all through the city, it was very beautiful.

We stopped by a restaurant with a beautiful view right next to the ocean, it was really nice.

We bought some beautiful linen table cloths from the cutest old lady, as you can see. We had to take a picture of her and her work.

We love you all and will talk to you later!!

2008-06-23T09:10:00.000-07:00

Ok, I thought I'd have more people's funny guesses, but I guess it was too much like a homework assignment, eh? Here is the same blog in English...but it really isn't nearly as cool sounding! BTW...I can't really take credit for this, because although I can easily translate this into English, Jessica was actually the one who wrote this! : ( I'm getting there piano, piano, piano....for you English speakers that is slowly, slowly, slowly.

Hi Everybody! These are the plates that we bought at the market. We love them! The bigger fish is Luigge and the other is Simone (sorry I don't have the correct keyboard.) [for the accent mark] Ahh...they are beautiful! We love these plates!
And here is Paul, he is beautiful always!

ps-We went back and read this blog just one week later and Jessica picked out several mistakes that she had made in grammer. So it just demonstrates her progress in one week's time! She has her oral exam tomorrow! Everybody pray for her. She was talking in her sleep in Italian tonight. Peter and Nicole are done and got their report cards, and they were actually quite good! I was plesantly surprised! They are both moving on to the next grade! Bravi! -Em, you don't need me to translate that do you? ; )

2008-06-18T11:48:00.000-07:00

Ciao tutti! Questi sono le piatti che noi abbiamo prendate dallo mercato. Noi amiamo loro! Le piu grande piesce e Luiggi, e l'altre e Simone (mi dispiace, non ho la corretto castiera). Ahhh... che bellino! Noi amiamo nostro piatti!

E questo e Paulo, lui e bellisimo sempre!

P.S Anyone know what this means?

Scuola Finito

2008-06-10T03:26:00.000-07:00

Rachel's prima scuola. Three, four, and five year olds attend here before moving over to the Elementary building. If Paul is potty trained by September, he will get to go here also! The teachers tell me they are already prepared for him now that they have had Rachel. I think they are in for a surprise. : ) note: fattoria is a farm, not a factory

Well, school is out here in Italy except those grades that are taking exams, which just so happens to be Peter and Jessica. Jess will be taking her written and oral examinations on the 12-19th of June and they are quite difficult for her since everything is in Italian. She has received a lot of help from the teachers and from her tutor. In addition to their written tests, the students have an oral exam in which they stand up in front of the board of teachers and just get asked random questions from the things they have learned throughout the year. Jessica has been given extra help, because they have given her specific topics which they will question her on. She is going to have to understand the questions and be able to respond in Italian, so she is working really hard. Peter has all oral exams, except that his teachers are asking him questions in English and he is allowed to answer in English. It is still difficult because his books are all in Italian. Nicole has done well and will be passed to the next grade as will Rachel. The schools here end with a big production either dramatic or musical. Jessica's class did a full on opera! And Peter's school did a huge 3 hour production filled with songs and dances in Neopolitan dialect. Their grand finale was the song "Oh sole mio" which is an old Neopolitan love song. Pavoratti sung it many times, and Peter is going to be singing it this Thursday at our Ward Talent Show, so I'll be sure to get that on tape for the blog! Unfortunately, I lost my camera and was unable to capture any of Jessica's or Peter's performances, but I borrowed a digital camera from my friend to get some of Rachel's graduation from Kindergarten. Hope you enjoy the pictures! I loved the performances so much and in typical mom fashion had real difficulty keeping back the tears!! (I'm such a baby, I cry anytime my kids perform!)

Rachel played an antico farm woman for her first parts, and a cow for some others. Here you see her dressed as half cow, half farmwoman with her friends in between performances.

This is Rachel running away from the director of the elementary program after receiving her diploma. She was so fast and it was so crowded, I couldn't get a shot of her actually receiving the diploma!

This is Rachel and her best friend Alesia with their diplopmas! Don't they look ready to go to first grade! And check out the cute Italian dancers below. They are soo adorable. Sorry the camera work isn't as good as i bambini ballano!

Our Song for Great Grandpa

2008-05-26T13:28:00.000-07:00

We were saddened to recieve the news that Grandpa has passed away. The saddness is in our separation but our joy is in knowing that Grandpa and Grandma are together again and are waiting to recieve us when we all ineveitably pass on through the veil.

Our joy is also in the wonderful memories that Grandpa has left with all of us. I just remembered one of my earliest memories was from Tucumcari. We drove somewhere in Grandma and Grandpa's car, an old 1950's station wagon. I remember as we arrived at their house, it was late and I pretended to be asleep. I still remember the warmth and comfort of Grandpa carrying me into the house. That is the kind of warm memories that Grandpa has left for everyone. You can't think of Grandpa without thinking of him making you and everyone else smile. I have never met anyone who could crack as many jokes as Grandpa.

I am grateful that my kids were able to be with Grandpa one last time before we departed for Italy. These pictures are from the last time that we were with Grandpa, in October of '07 at Clay's house in Durango (Grandpa drove himself up from Aztec!). I look forward to the day when we are able to re-unite with him and Dad and Grandma when we too fly away.

We are saddened that we can't meet with you all to celebrate Grandpa's life. We hope that this dedication reminds you our spirits are with you even though we are physically far removed.

We love you all.

We love you Grandpa.

Pete, Denise, Jessica, Peter, Nicole, Rachel, Paul

Io capisco!!

2008-05-07T14:03:00.000-07:00

Ciao amore from Denise! I just need to share the highlight of my day today. I have this italian cell phone that delivers tons of text messages in Italian to me all the time. I've just gotten so used to looking at them and immediatly deleting them because I don't ever understand it. Well, today I got a text message from my phone service again. As usual, I instinctivly went to the delete button and then froze in mid-action. I was looking at a message in Italian that I could understand! It was a miracle! It was just as if suddenly I knew all the words there! And it was so simple, I had to wonder to myself, "Why didn't I understand this before?" Anyway, it was great! So I now understand the following message in Italian: "The telephone secretary informs you that you have 1 new message. To listen, the number is 42020. To receive the number that called via SMS press 0 after you listen." Isn't that sooo cool! It's amazing that such a small accomplishment can make me soo happy! Capische?

Progress in School

2008-05-06T11:54:00.000-07:00

We have had a very adventurous experience this school year. Our activities and learning have been both fulfilling and surprising. Our time spent in Italy has given us a wealth of learning that is difficult to quantify. Recently I was required to write a year-end summary on each child’s progress. It is a bit boring and doesn’t read exactly like a letter, but I thought that I would combine all the kids’ experiences into one document to share on our blog-spot since it is a good way for me to journal. For those of you who can’t stand long, lengthy explanations, I have omitted much of the boring studies like math and science, and I give you permission to just skip the journaling and go straight to the pictures! Sorry, it’s really long! Enjoy! (I hope!) -Denise

In Italy we found that our biggest obstacle to overcoming the cultural barrier was that we did not speak the language. This has halted our schooling on many levels and we decided as a family that the best course of action would be to put off many of the original field trips and goals we had made in our learning plans until we could master the language. Unlike northern Italy, the people in Naples speak hardly any English. There are few adults who understand English and although the children learn English in school, their ability to speak it was no better then our ability to speak Italian when we first arrived. Our ability to read and understand the historical sites was also limited since only some sites had English narration and an English guided tour was always expensive. The solution required a new coarse of action. In addition to the Italian courses that we have already purchased and continue to study, we felt it necessary to hire three different tutors. Firstly, Roberta has come to our home in the evenings two times a week. The entire family participates in learning the Italian language with her. Her tutoring consists of conjugating verbs and learning vocabulary, and specifically deals with language skills, helping us to communicate with each other in Italian. She is a great addition to our Rosetta Stone and Instant Immersion CD’s and other workbooks. She is very helpful with the pronunciation and accent. Secondly, our good friend from church, Anna Maria has been tutoring Peter, Nicole, and Rachel with their Italian school curriculum. Thirdly, and as required by the school director, Allesia has been attending some of Jessica’s classes at school three times a week and tutoring her about once a week in her home.

Anna Maria has been tutoring Rachel by simply speaking to her as much as possible, first in Italian and then in English. She also reads stories to her in Italian. Rachel enjoys cooking Italian food with Anna Maria. (And we have enjoyed eating it!) We have tried to incorporate games and activities with Anna Maria to help encourage Rachel’s love of learning and to train her ear to the language. Because of her young age, she has a perfect accent! Her pronunciation is better then anyone else in the family! We have enrolled her into the local Italian pre-school. Here she has only Italian speaking friends and teachers. Her teachers have been amazed at her ability to cope in school. Only on the first day did she shed any tears. She is always happy, has made quite a few friends, loves to try the new food, and follows the others’ examples when she needs to follow directions. She has been able to progress well enough to communicate when necessary and can understand a basic idea of what her teachers are teaching. She has memorized lots of poems and songs, knows her alphabet in Italian, and can understand a lot of what the other children have to say to her, even though she still doesn’t have the ability to answer them verbally. Rachel is learning the language by immersion and repetition, not by translating. She is young enough that it is just a natural expansion of her vocabulary. She comes home repeating lots of different phrases used by both friends and teachers. We are really proud of her progress! She tells us that she can’t understand Italian, but frequently corrects our verb tenses and pronunciation! She sometimes gives her mother commands in Italian just for fun because her mother doesn’t understand them. She will probably be fluent faster then anyone. [She told me just today that she asked her friend to come to her house. Her friend didn’t want to and so then she asked if she could come to her friend’s house. This her friend agreed to. I asked her how she said all that, and she answered, “in Italian,” and then repeated the Italian phrases she had used.] She has shown a great amount of self-mastery in exploring her world. We will continue to strive to have as much social interaction as possible with other Italian children through the summer for Rachel. Rachel has good letter recognition and an understanding of phonics. She can read and write her letters in English and has also been reading some basic three letter words as well as some sight words. In addition, she knows her alphabet in Italian and the difference between the pronunciation of vowels and consonants in the two languages. We have become aware that the Italian language is easier for the children to read then English because it is phonetic so we will continue to emphasize the English language and reading so that she stays proficient in both languages.

Anna Maria has been tutoring Nicole with her Italian curriculum on the 3rd grade level. Nicole spends the first half of her day in Italian school learning solely in Italian with no English spoken at all. She is doing a very good job of figuring things out all on her own. None of her teachers speak any English nor do her friends. Her teachers believe Nicole capable of understanding the Italian language without translating into English, and by simply learning through repetition similar to Rachel. Nicole has spent much of her school time reading short stories and fables and summarizing the story on paper. Anna Maria is instrumental in helping Nicole translate her own words into Italian for her summaries; however, she does not translate word for word. She takes notes while Nicole summarizes out loud, then gives Nicole a finished copy in Italian to copy into her notebook for her teacher at school. At first I thought this sounded like cheating, but it is part of the immersion learning process. Nicole has proven to her teacher that she is very bright and has the patience to endure the confusion and stick with her work. She has the ability to listen and follow directions even when she doesn’t understand all the words. She also loves to read out loud in class. Nicole tells me that she is the 2nd best reader in the class! She has enjoyed many hours of writing in Italian. She has had to learn the Italian cursive in order to do so. Her attention span has been surprisingly lengthy! She has studied Italian grammar and its English counterparts of concrete and abstract nouns, adjectives, and articles (important in Italian because they change according to whether the noun is masculine, feminine, singular or plural). Nicole has also studied the parts of a story and the different types of characters and settings. Nicole is beginning to understand more and more as she applies herself. She doesn’t always understand what she is learning, but her tutor believes that she will progress in the language very quickly because of her young age and bright intellect.

Anna Maria has been tutoring Peter with an Italian curriculum on the 5th grade level. His experiences have been similar to Nicole’s only his courses require a much larger Italian vocabulary that has resulted in a lot of slow progress in each particular subject, but greater progress in the language. Peter spends a lot of time translating his Italian into English and answering the questions. Anna Maria then helps him to re-translate his answers back into Italian. His teachers at school are much more concerned with him keeping up with the rest of the class, and have been translating things into English for him whenever possible. This may prove to be a disadvantage to him. He has been very motivated to use the Rosetta Stone program so that he can talk to his friends better. Peter has been able to progress through 20 lessons in the past 3 ½ months. He feels that his comprehension is about 40% and has a limited vocabulary which he can use to talk with his friends and be understood. He is still working on overcoming his shyness in speaking though! Peter has been very popular with the other kids who are always curious and admire Americans. He is probably the most popular kid at school and this may be the best motivator for him! Peter continues to read many English books here at home for both pleasure and for information. He always reads a lot and loves it! He is also able to read in Italian very well and understands all the rules of pronunciation. His teacher reports that he can read better then a lot of the Italian kids do! In his book, “Exercizario di lingua Italiana” (Exercise book for Italian Grammer) he has learned grammar such as proper and improper nouns, subject and predicate, direct object and indirect object. He has successfully created a blog-spot on the internet and periodically updates it. He frequently is asked to read and summarize in Italian. He has also written some poems in both English and Italian and continues to write in his journal. He also has an Italian workbook, “Antologia” (creative writing) and has learned about descriptive writing, letters, informative writing, science fiction, fables, and folklore of Naples and Italy.

Jessica’s tutor, Allesia is a college-age student who studied high school at the international school and speaks English very well. She is also the older sister of one of Jessica’s friends in the class. She is a great help to Jessica in her studies, and attends some classes with her as well as helping her out when needed at her home. Instead of putting Jessica into the 9th grade like she would be at home, we opted to place her into the last grade of middle school here, (8th grade). We felt this would be wise for her because of the language, and we wanted her to be able to experience a full curriculum before entering the high school here, where they branch off into different specialties. We feel that it was a wise choice especially after discovering how much more advanced the Italian system is compared to our American school system. She has made wonderful progress and her study time has skyrocketed. Jessica has really put her nose to the grindstone, studying sometimes up to 12 hours a day in an effort to understand her assignments. She has been required to understand some extensive vocabulary and has spent countless hours trying to translate and understand her readings in Italian. In the beginning, it would take her hours to translate only one paragraph, but she can see great improvement in only the few short months she has studied. She is looking up far less words in the dictionary now. Because of her perseverance, she has been able to learn new things beyond just the Italian language. She has had to play “catch up,” especially in Math! The kids here start Geometry in 5th grade, and Algebra shortly there after! Jessica’s comprehension level is close to 90% of what she hears and she has a growing vocabulary which she can use to talk with her friends and be understood. She chats on-line in Italian after school, and Jessica’s mother depends on her to be the translator for the family when her father is not at home! One big success story for Jessica was studying WWII. This was an extensive unit that was very in-depth. She spent hours and hours studying for the final test. Her teachers had given her a shortened written test in Italian, but she was able to take her test, and then ask the teacher for more questions. Her teacher allowed her to take the rest of the test and she scored a “Bouno!” (Good). She missed only two questions. Jessica has also kept up her English writing skills by continuing with her short stories and novels and poems and she has also kept a daily journal.

Our family has been studying lots of history. We have learned about ancient Italy (the Greeks and the Roman era) and we have been able to visit the nearby ancient Cumae ruins which house a temple to Apollo. The ruins were settled by the Greeks even before the city of Naples, and is one of the earliest of local sites founded probably in the 8th century BC. Our house overlooks the hills of these ruins. We have also seen a lot of the innumerable Roman ruins throughout the city, which we drive by daily, but we haven’t been able to study them in depth yet. There is an abundance of history to be studied here, and we haven’t even been able to scratch the surface. Peter was able to visit the ancient city of Herculaneum with his friends. Herculaneum was the neighboring city to Pompeii who’s existence was brought to a halt in AD 79, with the eruption of Vesuvius. We have learned about the local Napolitan culture including many of the fables and songs in Napolitan dialect. “Dialect” is the local language of Naples and is totally different then Italian. The locals here are very proud of their heritage and still use the language often and use it in many theatrical interpretations. Peter has been able to participate in some of these productions and has even been seen on Italian television.

In his book, “Convivenza Civile” Peter has studied good citizenship and environmental issues. The garbage is a huge problem in Naples and we have witnessed first hand garbage burning protests right by our home which shut down all traffic in and out of the area. The teachers in school are now starting to impress upon the children in all grades the need to recycle. Peter’s class especially stresses the social studies and field trips. He has learned intercultural studies and racism, has studied holidays around the world, famine and overabundance, vaccination, clean water, fire safety, the food pyramid, health at the beach, and survival in the mountains. He has also learned about world organizations such as the World Wildlife Federation and UNICEF.

During the month of May, many of the museums and sites are open free of charge to the public and we plan to take advantage of this to do a lot of site seeing. We are also planning a trip to Rome and other sites, with our cousin who will be arriving in May. We have also learned an amazing amount about the Italian culture from everyday life, from their passionate ability to discuss things in loud voices, to their eating habits and daily schedule that is so different from ours. We have learned more about this culture then could possibly be written unless we were to write a book. The children have all had so much fun learning the ways of the Italians and how to fit in. The culture is very affectionate with lots of kissing and hand holding between friends. Jessica’s friends especially do lots of this! Even Rachel is understanding the differences in appropriate behavior according to each culture. She is fascinated to learn new things about Italians, and has learned that the Italians are extremely protective and concerned about children. (At the same time, they absolutely love any childhood antics and spoil them rotten with anything they want.) Rachel understands that she needs to dress warmly and is careful to select her dress appropriately so that her teachers don’t “freak out” (in her own words). She also understands that taking her shoes off is completely unacceptable in the Italian culture (because your feet will get cold and you might step on something that would hurt you.) This has been difficult for all of them, especially Jessica! We are all learning a lot, and it has been a pleasure for us to be so well accepted by the community.

The hands-on art classes in Colorado with Terrie Watts were a pleasure for all of the children. They loved this class. Rachel continues to do many art projects and is progressing in her small motor skills. She is getting better at drawing by mimicking her older sister, Nicole. She has recently learned to draw horses. Nicole continues to fill her album with spectacular horses and has begun to add other animals. The girls her age love to draw fancy Italian dresses (imagine that!) She has a collection of dresses drawn by her friends and has taken up the hobby herself now! We haven’t been able to do very much study of the art history like we planned to. However, we have been able to appreciate gazing at the many architectural wonders, marble statues, frescos, mosaics, etc. They are beautiful! We are looking forward to our tip to Rome to see the Sistine Chapel in two weeks!

Rachel was able to learn to ski at Powderhorn resort, along with her siblings. We weren’t able to spend our entire winter on the slopes as was originally planned, but the short time we had was great fun! Nicole’s teacher was able to spend two days on the slopes with her and he said she picked up right where she had left off last year. She learned some new skills such as side sliding, and skiing backwards. We all look forward to it again in the future, perhaps in the Italian or French Alps! We have also started a regular exercise program coached by dad made up of calisthenics. This has been inspired by all the good Italian cooking! Rachel runs laps around our house with her mom, and Peter and Jessica have also gotten in some running with mom. Mom needs all the encouragement she can get! We have also been able to do a little bit of hiking with an outdoor adventure club that is well established here.

All of the children have enjoyed studying music by singing a lot of Italian songs in church and at school. Jessica joined a choir at school and sang a lot of gospel music in Italian. The kids have all dabbled with the piano and Peter has joined Jessica in learning the guitar. Jessica has even composed a few songs on the guitar.

Our studies this school year would definitely be defined as thinking “out of the box”! The kids’ active learning time at home and in the community has greatly increased. We consider their academics and the learning which doesn’t show up on a test to be of great value, even though some of the learning has been slow and painful. We look forward to even greater progress again next year!

2008-04-13T10:53:00.000-07:00

I mentioned the Cumaen ruins that are just down below our house on one of the previous posts. These pictures are a few from our visit there. The ruins are set up on a high hill that overlooks the bay much like where you would normally see a light house. You can imagine why the ancient Greeks built their temple and great entrance to the city there. It must have looked quite spectacular to any ships coming into the bay.
Here is a side view from the temple site. You can see out to the City entrance and beyond the hillside is the ocean. (It's a little overexposed, but that is the ocean.)

Here is a shot of Peter and his two friends. We went with a really nice family that will be moving to California in just a few months. They've been able to tell us a lot about fun things to do while we are here.

Believe it or not, climbing all over the ruins is perfectly acceptable. No one had a problem with it, and it was just part of the trail. But as our children were running down the path, we were lectured, because they might fall and hurt themselves! This is so typically Italian!

Base of a giant greek columb at the temple site. Just Paul's size!

You can see several different construction techniques. Some look like red bricks, and another is a criss-cross pattern of stones. These would have been completely covered in marble tiles. In some places you could see the marble still attached at the base. It must have been spectacular!

Here is where we got lectured! Cute kids, though! :)

This one is the city entrance. It has been excavated and is far below the current surface, home to only bats and birds. Obviously there are a series of nets to keep people from falling in. I was explaining to Rachel all about the ancient civilization and their city, and she asked me, "But mom, how did they get down there?" I thought that was a pretty good question and started explaining how the surface used to be way down there at that time. Interupting me, she said, "No mom, not that, how did the birds get down there?" What can I say...a little age, maturity, and understanding can change your perspective a whole lot!

And this one is an ancient calander. A little hard to read! We did have a lot of fun, and it inspired in some of us, the desire to know more about these ancient people and their way of life. To others, they were very cool old rocks. :)

2008-04-06T05:14:00.000-07:00

Well, I know we've been doing a really bad job at keeping the blog spot up, but to make up for it we put tons of pictures in this post, so hopefully you will forgive us. Well, we're all pretty much completely moved into the house, and we're now getting settled in enough that we're going to be updating the blog spot alot more now. The pics on this post are of dad's visit to Milan and mom and dad's special date day visit to Procida. There all really pretty pics. Here they are:

This is at the beach of Procida, very pretty.

There's superbo modello padre!!

Isn't that beautiful??

There are lot's of small streets over here, they're really pretty, our road that we walk to school on everyday is a really tiny cool road, except now the italians are widening it. My parents are very happy about it, I'm really sad about it though, but then again, I'm not the one driving!! The other road is still small though, my young women president (she's an american) scraped up her mini van on that road. It was terrible!! All the girls heard the screech on the car and we all froze, it wasn't cool!! Now she won't drive on my road any more!!

Molto bello!!

These are on the front of one of the churches, pretty huh?

The beautiful view at Procida.

They're extremely pretty, next time I'm going with mom and dad!!

My cute parents!

Now here's bella modella!!

more beautiful photos!!

some square or other, I have no idea what the name is!! (haha)

Italia!!

This is absolutely gorgous!!

This is... oh, I forgot the name, it's in Milan and it's really pretty, that's the important thing right?? lol

Pretty flowers!!

And, before we say goodbye, to end we have another super modello padre picture!! Ciaou!!

McCollaum fam

2008-03-11T11:38:00.001-07:00

Hello everyone!! Sorry we haven't published in so long, we've been really busy. but here's some more pics of our house anyway. Paul is so cute!!

Our New House

2008-02-05T13:34:00.001-08:00

Hey Everyone! Check out the great view of the Med from our new house!!! Isn't it great! This is our favorite thing about our place, it has a very grandious view of the bay below us. We were previously trying to get a location that was more in the touristy old region with lots of history around us but in the heart of the city of Pozzuoli near Pete's work. That house was within walking distance of all the schools and many markets and shops for me. When the other "tile house" (that you may have seen in previous posts) fell through, we opted for our current house which has all the same features, but is not in the heart of the city. Instead we are located in a quieter area of Pozzuoli, called Monte Rucellio. (I'm still not sure that I'm spelling everything correctly.) Here is a look at the area from a little further off. Our house is at the top of the "mountain" on the street, Coste di Cuma. It's in a nice middle class italian neighborhood. We live in a villa which is actually one large building, split into a duplex. Our neighbor is a man from Equidor who is in the US Navy and we share the yard on his side of the house. It is mostly surrounded by black asphault and a large gate to come in and out of. The side of the house with the view is open (no fence) but has a large drop-off down to the next terraced level of homes. Our 2nd level is the same as the neighbors ground level, etc. So we have a nice view of lots of rooftops below us, clear down to the sea. You can see the pictures here that have been taken from our second level balcony. Here I am enjoying the view from our little window in the grande master bedroom! Hee Hee! :)

Another great thing that I'm really happy about is that I was able to pick a few colors for the walls. The construction in Italy is almost completely built with cinderblock and plastered, then whitewashed. The landlady was re-painting, so I gave the painter some colors to add to the house which does soo much more for the beauty of the place I think! Here is a picture of the kids in the girls yellow room. It is the brightest room in the house with two different sets of balcony doors on the north and west sides. The kids are enjoying a new bunkbed set that we bought from a cool second-hand italian furniture store.

In total, the house has 4 bedrooms on the second floor: one for Pete and I, one for the two girls, one for the two boys and one for Jessie and her dog. We all share the one bathroom on that floor and we also have a nice bonus which is unusual for Italian homes...a closet. It is large and in the hallway centrally located and is really really appreciated since it is the only one in the house!

On the first floor we have a large front room, kitchen, bathroom and what is probably meant to be a dining room which we will use as the office/guest room. My washer is in the main floor bathroom and the dryer is on the balcony off of the kitchen (a few steps across the hallway).

Then we have a full unfinished basement which is bare cement cinderblock walls and dirt floors. There is a lot of storage space down here which we are filling up with all the junk that doesn't fit in the house! The garage is what comes out onto the ground level, so it is kind of like a walk-out basement with the view from the garage and the front door on the opposite side of the house and one level up.

In our garden we have one lemon tree, a fig tree, and a clemontine tree to eat from. There are also lots of other flowering plants and I hope to plant lots of yummy fresh herbs to cook with! This picture is of our yard, with our neighbors house in the background. Our own house is in bad need of a re-plastering re-painting job which the landlady is supposed to finish before next October. I'll have to get more pictures of the outside at a later time.

Hope you enjoyed the semi-virtual tour. Of course, these pictures were taken with the navy temp furniture in it, and now the entire house is filled with boxes everywhere! AAugh! Anyone want to come help me unpack?

After a hard day's work of unpacking we like to enjoy a fresh Italian meter pizza. Actually this is a half meter pizza, but divided into quarters with the chef's special assortment of whatever he wants to put on it is what we always tell him to do. Believe it or not, these pizzas bake in about 5 minutes in their cool brick ovens and always get an extra drizzle of olive oil on top just to make sure that nothing is too dry! It is always delicious! Come on over and we'll treat you to pizza that never tasted this good in America!! It's great!

This is Peter

2008-02-05T06:13:00.000-08:00

My school is crazy! No one will leave me alone. They won't leave me alone because I am an American. When I walk down the hall every one who sees me calls there friends over. I am the only one who can't be missed because I have blond hair. I stick out like a sore thumb. I have so many friends here, the only problem is that I can't talk to them. My class has 8 boys and 14 girls total. 14!

It's like a trap waiting to be sprung.

Garbage! Aaaugh!

2008-02-03T15:03:00.000-08:00

Denise here reporting on the biggest problem plaguing our area right now. Many of you may have already heard reports on the terrible garbage problems in Italy. The worst of it is right here in Napoli. These pictures were taken several weeks ago when we thought that the garbage piles had reached an all time high. We were wrong. I don't have recent pictures, but at this point there are many streets that are now literally impassable because of all the garbage.

Almost every day protestors block the roads in different major traffic areas to protest the garbage problem. Most of them are protesting the fact that 3 major land fills that had previously been shut down are now going to be re-opened. People in those areas don't want this to happen, because they are demanding new and better ways of getting rid of the garbage since the land fills are constantly full and garbage ends up sitting on the street all the time. Poor garbage planning and the fact that the garbage industry is owned by the Cumora (Mafia here) has kept Naples littered with garbage for years now and the Italian people are sick of the problem especially since they are taxed for the removal of trash which never gets removed. It's a little difficult for a newcomer to understand all the particulars of the politics here, but it sure is a mess. The rumors around here from the locals is that the Cumora obviously just pockets the garbage money instead of constructing adequet facilities for removal. When things do get bad they usually hire another company (also owned by the Cumora) to do reports on all the toxic and environmental problems the garbage is causing. Of course, this still hasn't solved the problem, just lines the Cumora's pockets with more money to do these reports. This persons uneducated opinion on the matter--Naples would be such a beautiful city without all this mess! I hope they get it cleaned up sometime in the near future!

One garbage adventure for me was the other day a friend and I were trying to get to the Post office to pay the fees for the kids school insurance. We rounded a corner to find the roads blocked off. The protestors had seized a city bus, unloaded all the people and parked it across the intersection to block traffic. They looked very angry and shouted for us to turn around, so I promptly backed up the one way ramp until I could turn around. We then had to find our way around the clogged traffic to the Post Office in the next city over, Pozzuoli. Once we got there we stood in line for over 2 hours. All the local parents who needed to pay for their kids' school fees before the next day were in line there. We found out while waiting that the other main Post Office in Arco Felice had been set on fire by the protestors also, forcing all the parents left to wait at this one in Pozzuoli.

Garbage is not picked up at your house here in Italy like it is in the states. You simply take it to your local dumpster on a nearby street location. Can you find the dumpsters in these pictures? If not it is because they are covered in garbage! Needless to say, this garbage problem really stinks! Google Garbage in Naples, Italy if you are interested in learning any more. It is making international news. The army has been called out to help the garbage trucks get through and the EU is now threatening to take Italy to court and force a solution. Just thought you might find my local pictures and perspective interesting!

Nicole's Thoughts on Italian School!

2008-02-03T14:02:00.000-08:00

Hi Everybody! Sorry we haven't been posting on the blog but we are going to do it now. I am going to talk about school. My school is fun but it is kind of annoying only to me but it is verry fun. Peter has a teacher that speaks English. I have a teacher that speaks only a little English. All the girls in the class love me. School is kind of boring because I can't understand very much, but it's fun once you can stand up. I made a friend. Her name is Diana but you pronounce it like Deanna in Italian. Me and her play a little game together. I say, "Como ce diche that?" In english it means, "how do you say?" and I point at the thing that I want to know in Italian. Then she tells me the word in Italian. Some times she says, "In Englese?" and I say glass or what ever I asked her. Sometimes the other girls like to ask me what things are in English too. Diana has a dad that speaks English so she knows a lot of English. But the other girls don't speak any English. Almost every time I take a snack to school all the kids want some of it. It's fun going to school. I like school a lot. It's very fun at school. I'll write again soon.

Love, Nicole

ps-The picture is in our new house just as we are leaving for our first day of school!

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

2008-01-07T04:46:00.001-08:00

Hi guys!! How is every one? We've had a great holiday season this year. Christmas was great! We had a mad shopping experience in local markets and shopping centers here until finally all the family's christmas shopping was done. Since we were unable to be in a house before the holidays, the outgoing general of the army here found us room in the distinguished visitors quarters for Christmas! Instead of being crammed into the two bedroom Navy inn, three days before Christmas we moved into another two bedroom dig, but one much much nicer! The living room of our new place was bigger then the entire area of the old one! We felt really lucky! It was practically the General's last command before leaving to his new station. He had just heard in passing that we had 5 children and were still stuck in the TLA for Christmas and commented that he just couldn't let that happen. We all helped set up our tree and hang ordaments on the day before Christmas eve.

There's cutie Peter

There's cutie Nicole.

Here's cutie Rachel and below is cutie Paul.

This was pauls third christmas, and he hung his own three ordaments himself (almost). He's so cute!!

We all had a great time. We didn't have any Christmas music to listen to, so we serenaded ourselves with all the carols we knew, and just about 10th time of singing "Here comes Santa Clause" we heard a rapp at the door. Lo and behold it really was Santa Clause! He was immediately invited in and we all had a turn on Santa's lap.

Then Dad took him back to the train station where he told us he was riding the Polar Express home. By the time it was Christmas eve, almost all the presents were wrapped, but Paul found the joy of unwrapping gifts before he was supposed to. Luckily he only got into a few presents and no surprises were spoiled. One Christmas eve Jessica, Peter and Nicole took forever to get to sleep. They were to entertained by the fantastic show of fire works that the Italians were giving and the bell calls to midnight mass from all the churches nearby. In the morning we all woke up to find that Santa had really come. We all got to work digging into our stockings and seeing what Santa brought us all. It was a fantastic Christmas!
This year was the coolest New Year ever! I really like the Italian's way of doing things. New Years eve here is almost as popular as christmas, if not more (maybe). We spent New Year's eve at our new friends house. We played lots of games, ate lots of yummy food, and had a great time together. By the time it was midnight every one was still awake except Paul! We went up on the roof to watch the fire works. When it turned midnight it was so amazing! Everywhere you turned you could see fire works! Even the neighbors had fire works. And these fireworks were nothing like the ones we have in the states. They are like the one's your town lights off on the fourth of July. Our pictures don't do the scene justice. It was so much cooler in real life. I'd never seen anything like it, ever! Just imagine almost every one setting off fire works like it was the fourth of July. Wow! That was the greatest New Years eve. We're so grateful to be here in italy. This new year will be a very exciting one for us, and we are so excited!

We're now in Italy!

2007-12-21T06:42:00.000-08:00

We don't have an internet connection and have to travel 45 min to the library now to get a connection so we are a little out of touch. Sorry everyone! Hopefully we will be better connected soon! But here is some news from a week ago.....

Hi Everyone! We're sorry that we have taken soooo long to update the spot. We have been really busy doing a lot of things here, but most of the things we have been doing here would be really boring to report, so we'll only tell you the cool things!

Our search for a house to live in has taken most of our time. The very next day after we landed, Dad had appointments set up for the family to start viewing a list of homes. The kids liked every house better then the last, and didn't seem to mind where we lived, as long as it was something we could move into soon. Jessica had definate ideas on the homes she liked best, and so did mom and dad. We decided to narrow our options down by price, and as soon as we ruled out a few homes this way, then the market started dropping down in price, which left some homes on the list and added one in particular that Mom really loved also. However, after a lot of debate, we have decided to put the home that Pete found and has been previously posted on a contract hold. The house then had to be inspected and now is waiting for a few safety issues and requirements to be met. Hopefully it will be ready for us to move into by the end of December. There are millions of paperwork steps all along the way and each level of beaurocracy takes it's own sweet time. Then there is Italian time...we've discovered that 10 minutes in Italian means maybe if I feel like it I will be there within an hour. We had to do a lot of talking with the Italian landlord's family to get them to come down in price. They have a wonderful restaurant and hotel in Bacoli, which is down by the coast in a very pretty touristy part of Napoli. There are ruins everywhere in that area and it has a lot of great places to see. The home is located between Pozzouli and Bacoli and has been vacant for over a year. This is because "Mama" as everyone calls the owner, loves it (she raised her children there), feels like everyone else should love it just as much, and doesn't want to change a thing about it, but feels like it is worth 3,000 euro/month. For you mathmatically challenged individuals, this is over 4,500 dollars due to the terrible exchange rate. The home is probably worth over 2 million dollars because of the location. We finally got her to agree to our 2,000 euro, only with the promise that she can be "Nona" or grandma to all the children except Nicole, whom she wishes to adopt as her daughter. The Italians LOVE children. They are all amazed that we have 5 children. They all say that they would like to have more children but cannot afford it. They spoil children rotten which is not helping Paul at all. Children can do practically anything here, including break things, and they are excused from all fault. "No problem," they say, "he is a bambino."

We have done some other fun things as well. I'll let the kids put things into their own words...

My favorat thing about Italy is the pizza , it is grate, you even get to watch them make it.

there are tons of romen ruins. We went to some, at first all of the archeolegests thoght it was a temple, but it terned out to be a market place.

it is awesome. We went to a dock it was cool. We saw a ferry.

and we found a house! We still have to get moved in though.

Peter

My favorite place in italy so far is a medeval church we went to. It didn't look very old, but it was very old. We also saw a castle, it was really cool. Some times they let you in, but we couldn't go in, it was closed. We could look on it from the outside, but not on the inside. It looked really old. It was really old. So far it's really cool and I'm really liking it.

Nicole

Being over in italy has been really great for me. I don't have any friends, which is taking a little getting used to, but I'm sure in no time I'll get some. I really enjoyed church, there are some nice girls. They're italian, but we try to communicate despite the language barrier. It's really cool. We're finally getting in a house. It will be so much nicer than the TLA. We went to the market, which was really fun. I found some xmas presents for people there, but mostly I just fell in love with their cool fur coats. I'm not sure how I would feel about wearing the high pointy boots they have though, it looks dangerous and painful. The food over here is really great. I've had sea food and pizza, that's basically all there is. It's going to be really fun to go to school and learn more italian, I'm looking forward to it.

Jessica

One more picture for us: This is the medieval castle that Nicole was talking about. The original castle with moat was built in the 500's with the rest of the buildings including the cathedrial added in the 1500's. It was really cool! A little too cool for us, as we were freezing cold that day, and the buildings were closed for the winter. But we are definately going back to the Caserta veccio ruins in the spring. Caserta is the name of the town and veccio is the italian word for old. I'm misspelling everything though! ;)

2007-11-29T20:04:00.000-08:00

Well, I'm sorry that we haven't blogged in a long time. I'm especially sorry to Becky
who got us starting on the blog and made us promise we would blog. Well, here's the
newest update. We are now in an empty house! The movers came, packed the whole

house and took it to be shipped to Italy.

So, since we are sitting in an empty house with nothing what so ever to do, mom decided that we needed to varnish all the wood in the house. It has proven to be a very difficult task. Luckily for us, we have loving relitives like our Grandma Wilson and Aunt Elaine who offered to come up and help us. Since they've been her they have not only been vernishing, but have done the cooking and cleaning our cabinates for us until they shone. They've been so wonderful.

If you've ever seen our house, you know that we have a very high roof in our living room. In order to reach it we had to borrow scaffolding from our wonderful friends the Watts.
When Paul saw the huge jungle jim in our living roomyou could see him devising a plan to get to the top of that towere. He couldn't climb it because he wasn't tall enough to climb it by himself.
He's so cute! So we got to work. We sanded, we painted, we sanded some more, we painted some more, and now we're still sanding and painting!
It was fun to be so high up there!

We had to have the proper breathing gear so that we didn't breath in sawdust. So that's what the wierd white things are around our necks.

Grandma couldn't resist. She had to see what it was like up there.

The scaffolding was sixteen feet off the ground!

Aunt Elaine and Grandma were awesome sanders and painters. Thank you guys so much!

We have some bad news. Today an unnamed person was carrying Paul down the
stairs when they took a spill. Paul's leg was squished and we ended up having to take him to the emergency room. They're not sure if he has a broken leg or not, but the doctors put a cast on him just in case. Paul is getting lots of attention here and home and despite his leg he his very happy.

Last is a little video that I found very funny. I hope you enjoy seeing me leap off the giant scaffolding onto the ground. I have recovered and am not dead any more, but thanks for asking.

See you next time!

Becky is posting

2007-11-25T08:44:00.000-08:00

So, the kids have not been keeping up on the blog! It's so sad because I love to log on to the internet and see their cute faces. But, they are quite busy getting ready for the whole move thing. I only hope that they are better at it when they get to Italy.

Anyway, my dad, Shelle, Trish, and I went over to Colorado this past Friday to pick up a couple of cars and help around the house as much as we could. So I decided I would post on the blog the happenings that occured while we were there.

We helped Denise and the kids pack up a load of garbage to go to the dump. On the way to the dump we were pulled over for going to slow! Seriously! That is a first for my dad! Apparently, we were going 20 mph in a 30 mph zone, ooooooo! But then the trailer's lights were not hooked up and the registration was old and there were 6 people in a 5 person car. Ooops! However, my dad and Aunt Denise played up the fact that Pete had been in Iraq and was now in Italy and the family was moving and sob sob sob! It worked! We got away with just a warning.

After the dump, we played around for a bit, had lunch, and then left. I am going to miss them but I am sure I will see them in Italy. I hope they have fun!

Possible house

2007-11-07T11:06:00.001-08:00

This is a view from the roof top terrace of the entrance to the mother in law apartment looking through the clothes lineThis is a street view of the main entrance to the house, the dark door on the right is the main garage door, which is automatic, and the gold doors are the stairs going up to the main terrace to the main entrance to the house
This is panning to the right as you look at the house from the street, what you see is the main garage door, then bars that look into the mother in law apartment where there is a largish bedroom and another room/kitchen with an attatched bathroom. The odd thing is that it is not directly attached to the house, but the landlord said that he would cut a door in from the bedroom to the garage and you could walk up from there. It does look like there is an intercom, I just don't know if it is functional.
this is the far left view of the house from the street, this entrance can be used to go up to a locked gate from the outside. Looking up, you can see the main terrace area outside of the front entrance and looking up to the roof terrace you can see the corner of the sun room on the roof.
Denise, this is the nexus of the place, the hallway that connects living room to bedrooms and to the kitchen. Notice the arched doorways that you like and this is an extra on the ceiling of this little area. The column in the background is out in the main living room area

this is the far corner of the property, with the picture being taken from the pizza stove and BBQ area, looking back at the house. You can see the stairs leading up to the roof, the 16 x 20 sun room up on the roof and an idea of the way the yard looks. The path that is going straight out in front of Celeste drops down into the covered outside terrace (nice and easily big enough to set up a table and chairs)that is right out of the back kitchen door, in the corner of which is a step down wine cellar which holds somewhere around a thousand bottles of wine (just in case we decide to make that our two year storage!)
This is the sun room, it has shades and windows that open all of the way around. They are currently getting ready to refinsh the roof tile, so the repaired spot will not show when they are done. The view from up here is spectacular. Not quite the view of the other house, but clearly molta bellisma.
This is looking from the roof down to the main level terrace right outside the front door. It is an example of the kind of garden/yard that is all around the house. Surprisingly enough, there is not a lemon/orange or fruit tree on the place. The landlord did tell me that he would be happy to plant an orange a limon and a peach tree, but about died laughing when I asked him.
This corner of the roof terrace is the best view. You can see the coast of Sorrento, the Island of Capri and much closer the Castle of Bacl....something,
The downside is that you are in the city and this is what you see when you look at the back of the house, so your neighbors get to watch your party. The corrugation is the covered area outside the backdoor of the kitchen. I regret to say that somehow we did not get a single picture of the kitchen. It is big enough to put our table in, with enough space for the one cupboard that they give us. The cabinets are old but adequate and the entire kitchen is a different style of hand painted tiles.

this is the storage area of the main bathroom, It looks nice, but if you look close you can see that it is a converted shower stall, notice the hand painted tiles in all of the rooms, each room has a different pattern
This is the second main floor bathroom, it is quite narrow and you could sit on the toilet, use the sink all as you shower.......hmmmmm?
this is the main terrace overlooking the street, and while you can see a bit of the view, it didn't catch the fron of the house which is too bad, it looks nice with a bunch of planters and very large sliding doors going out on the terrace. Notice the rails for the sun awning which you can extend to shade the terrace area in front of the front room all of the way out to the edge. The railing is nice finished wood as opposed to metal railings that you mostle see, as up on the roof.
Master bedroom, somewhere in the neighborhood of 14 x 14 feet with ac. There is an ac in the front room and two of the bedroom which should be plenty adequate

This is off in the far corner of the yard and there is a wood burning pizza oven right over my shoulder, in front of me is a wood fired BBQ and behind me is a utility sink. To walk here from the kitchen is up about six steps and probably 15 yards

This would be one of the three bedrooms on the main floor with a beautiful beaurea (brass inlaid) this is the second largest room and is about 12 x 14 or so
This is the smallest room, about 11 x 12 with a 5 x 3 foot nook
This is the front room, on the left is the piano nook and front door, the piano nook is 10 x 14
This is the same piano nook, looking right down the wall
this is the main room looking from the hallway over towards Celeste is the front door and piano nook

downstairs apt kitchen and entrance to bathroom
opposite wall from the kitchen in the mother in law apt
little hallway in front

upstairs narrow bathroom

Downstairs, mother in law apt bedroom with built in shelves. Room is probably about 10 x 14

Here are pictures of the house that for me has moved to the top of the list. Now of course, Denise has to look and decide.

Becky writes tonight

2007-11-05T21:14:00.000-08:00

This blog entry is once again done by Becky. This will probably be the last entry I do since tonight is my last night with the kids. I have really enjoyed being here. It has been fun. Granted, it has had its rough spots, but it has been an experience that I am so glad that I was able to take. These kids are special and wonderful and I am going to miss them, even before they move to Italy.

Today was a crazy day. We decided that today we would focus on getting the pool up and filling and cleaning the house. We woke up early and were able to start our chores right away as we didn't have breakfast (except Paul and Rachel) because we were fasting. We ended our fast right before 10am as the kids were going to Art class and snacks are usually served.

This morning I had the opportunity to get to know the people at the hardware store rather well. I visited it twice. I finally got most everything that I needed to get the solar panels up and running. However, one of the things I got didn't quite fit tight. So I used duct tape to increase the size around one of the tubes and it only leaks when there is high pressure, which believe me was a problem at first. However, the high pressure only occured when the water was running in so fast that it wasn't heating the water at all. I slowly turned it down until it was running at only a trickle (and I mean trickle) and even then it wasn't terribly warm. I don't know what else to do. It will take about a month to fill it at that rate I am afraid.

This picture was taken at the end of the day before I turned off the faucet. You can see how little the pool filled. Luckily, a neighbor will turn it on and off each day so it can warm in the sun.

In Art class the kids made cool crests (like family crests).

After Art class we started to clean. Jess cleaned the kitchen and quite a bit around the pool and helped in the bathroom. Peter helped clean and vacuum the car, and helped with the living room and the bathrooms. Nicole helped clean and vacuum the car and cleaned the living room and swept a little bit of the pool. Rachel did her chore and helped out where she could. Paul helped out by taking a nap after lunch so we could all do our chores. After all this cleaning I must say...the house and the car look fantastic. The kids all worked very hard and did a fabulous job!After the chores were all done I decided that for our last night out, I would take them all out to eat in Delta. They chose pizza as their meal of choice so we went to Pizza Hut (rather ironic I think as they will be moving to Italy). It was fun (despite having Root Beer spilled twice)! And the best part about it as pointed out by Jessica (who has the kitchen chores) is that we don't have to do the dishes!!!!

When we came home we packed our bags as we will be heading out to Utah for a couple of days tomorrow. Deniese (mom) comes in late tomorrow night. The kids are all very excited to see her. Paul is probably the most excited.

Then we said prayers and went to bed (of course I stayed up to do last minute things like pack the car and write the blog). After prayer tonight we announced "hugs and kisses" and Paul immediately jumped up and said "give me my hug"! Oh I am going to miss these kids! I sure hope that they keep up on this blog so that I will know what they are up to!

Good Night

Sunday November 4 2007

2007-11-04T19:44:00.000-08:00

Hello again.
Today we went to church and I (Peter) gave a talk for the primary. It was a good one in my opinion. (Becky writes: He wrote it all on his own....scriptures and everything). It was on gratefullness.

After that Terrie came over for lunch/dinner. It was fun; really fun. We showed her our blog site and showed her the finished pool. After that we started our fast. We forgot that it was fast Sunday until we were in church so we started our fast after our lunch with Terrie. We are fasting that everything will work out ok for us to get a good house (hopefully the one we want) in Italy. We needed to fast today because my mom and dad find out tomorrow if we get the house we want.
Then we mostly just sat around but Becky took Paul for a ride in the car so he would fall asleep for his nap. We also made birthday cards for our friend Terrie because we are going to be in Salt Lake City on her Birthday. Then we made a plan for cleaning the house for tomorrow so that the house can be nice and clean for mom when she gets home.
I am going to bed now....good night!

Saturday November 3 2007

2007-11-03T20:03:00.000-07:00

Hi!

Today we had smoothies for breakfast. They were interesting but really good. Then we played outside most of the day, and played on the computer too.

Also we went over all the characters in the pool and made sure that it is finished, and it is!!! We start filling it on Monday. We could start filling it at Four AM but Becky doesn't like to get up that early. We will probably have to stop filling it when we go to Salt Lake City to pick up Mom on Tuesday. We are all excited to see Mom again.

We did have some finishing work we did on the pool today. Paul had not contributed to it yet and so we dunked his feet in paint and let him walk around the pool a little. At first he had so much paint on his feet he slid and couldn't walk without help from Becky. Also, he wouldn't take his knight helmet off or let go of his toy gun. It was a sight to see! Mom and Dad think they found the house we will rent for the next 3 years. We don't really know what it looks like because you know you have to see it first and we are not in Italy. We wont know until Monday if we get it, but we are all praying that we do. Mom and Dad think we will go to an Italian Catholic school. This is because the catholic schools are better than public schools and so we can learn Italian better. We will still do our home school stuff while we are there.
And PAUL IS THE SUCKER KING. No seriously! He ate about ten suckers and didn't finish a single one. What do you think of that? I think he just likes to taste them and make sure they are sweet.
we'll see you next time, the McCollollaum family...

Hello again

2007-11-02T18:21:00.000-07:00

Hello again! Today we played outside alot and had lots of fun!

Becky's back hurt a little, so Nicole and Paul helped her out by walking all over her back.

We danced this morning and this evening (well most of the girls and Paul did).

We had a great dinner of pork shish-kebabs that were grilled on the outside grill by me, Peter, the MAN WHO GRILLS! Grilling them really made them taste good! Ashley (my older sisters friend) came over to sleep.

We are having pumpkin ice cream just before bed tonight.

Arrivederci!

Its Peter this time -- 11/1/07

2007-11-01T19:42:00.000-07:00

Hi, today we really just sat around and ate candy. Until Becky decided we had eaten too much and put it away. Paul got soooo sticky!

There is lots of Candy!!! Besides this big bag that Becky filled, there is one other little bag that wouldn't fit in.

We also went to Science class today and learned about bones and muscles. We also watched a movie, played outside, and did homework.

Maybe there will be more to talk about tomorrow!

Happy Halloween

2007-10-31T21:28:00.001-07:00

Once again, Becky is left to do the blog. Peter is off at a friends house tonight & so cannot do it.

Today was a fun day, but at this time is such a blurr that I don't know if I will get it all.

Jess, Paul and Becky went to Grand Junction today for an Orthodontist appointment. The roads in Colorado are not much like the roads in Utah (in a grid pattern) and so Becky got sort of lost. However, Denise's map helped us to get back on the right road and to the appointment exactly on time. The appointment was really quick and Jess got green/blue elastics in her mouth. Her teeth are hurting her pretty bad now. She couldn't find the gum-numbing medicine, so we dosed her with as much tylenol & ibuprofen that Becky was willing to do and sent her to bed. Hopefully, it will kick in and she can get some sleep tonight.

While we were in Grand Junction we got a cute little outfit for Paul. We didn't have time to get his picture taken as planned, but we might do that tomorrow or Friday. We got the outfit at Ross. I love Ross! The outfit was less than 5 dollars! It was great!

When we got back to Cedaredge we picked up the kids from Famous People class. They learned about Hellen Keller today. They said they had fun and Peter even learned how to do his name in Braille.
When we got home we played around for a little while. We read the letter from mom & dad. Nicole was mildly bummed about the room situation. Peter grinned from ear to ear when he read the comments that mom & dad had posted on the blog. The kids are all very excited about the house and are praying that the family will be able to get it.

We then got ready for the Halloween party at the church. I wish I had gotten pictures of the chaos, as it was chaos getting all of us ready. We sprayed Nicole & Rachel's hair green. Jess and Peter got themselves dressed in their costumes. However, while Jess was putting on her make-up, Buzz Light Year (aka Paul) decided he needed some face paint as well and grabbed a chunk in his little hand and smeared it across his face. Oi! When Becky left the house she looked around at the mess and thought to herself (how does Denise do it!). At the party, our double headed dragon (Nicole and Rachel) needed to use the bathroom right away. That was a challenge. Then they only made it through dinner before they were begging to be removed from each other. So we removed their costume and they were the green faced, green haired girls.
The kids had fun at the trunk-or-treat. They got tons of candy. Becky isn't quite sure how their parents would handle all the candy, but she is going to make them pick their 5 most favorite treats for themselves and then the rest is going in a big bag for everyone (to be dispensed at Mom & Dad's will). When we got home Becky was exhausted. The kids took a bath to get rid of their greenness while Becky cleaned the mess. Oh it was a long day, but it was fun! Oh! I almost forgot. Peter lost a tooth today! One of his molars on the top, left side. He said it wasn't even loose and just fell out (this was before all the candy I must note).

Well, Trick or Treat and Happy Halloween...it is off to bed with me now!

Becky's posting - The pool is FINISHED?!

2007-10-30T20:29:00.000-07:00

The kids were up too late tonight, so Becky gets to post for today. Today started a little late as we were all exhausted after the pumpkin carving last night. Even Jess came home and went back to bed after Seminary this morning. And worst of all, we forgot to start the dishes in the dishwasher last night and so alot of the dishes were dirty this morning.

After breakfast and chores the kids started working on schoolwork as I (Becky) started painting the pool. It was soo close to being finished that I really wanted to get it done. After Jess finished her schoolwork she helped me paint and together we think we did it. (Granted, it still has to be approved by the parents before we can fill it with water and start using it).

Peter and Wyeth (a friend) came to help but they decided it was too difficult to paint the skull so close to the bottom of the pool and opted to watch a movie instead.

Rachel helped a little, but more or less supervised the work.

(The video feed of the finished pool was supposed to go here, but I stayed up putting the finishing touches on Peter's costume and thought to myself "I will do this until the video loads"...two hours later I cancelled the video upload and now am going to bed)

Paul did us a great favor by watching a movie instead of trying to help as his little hands and feet probably would have gotten into everything!

Nicole was my steady worker, as in school work. She stayed at it for much of the day and after that was finished she went on to Rosetta Stone to learn Italian. She seems to me to be the most determined to grasp the Italian language of all the kids. However, when she struggles with the spelling she comes to me and asks me how to spell certain words. I really think she would do better guessing as I didn't even know how to say "hello" in Italian until two days ago. But I try to be a good sport and help her spell it by helping her sound it out. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't.

Tonight Terri (a friend) came over and offered to take the kids so I could have an afternoon/evening to myself. She has been so helpful these past few days. I let Rachel, Paul, and Jess go with her. Nicole went to Achievement days (they went to a cornmaze). And Peter and Wyeth and I went to Walmart to get the final stuff for Peter's costume. We also had to get candles as last night after carving the pumpkins we realized that all the candles we had left were birthday candles (which don't stay up very well in pumpkins).

All things considered, I think we had a very good, very fun day today.

So tomorrow we hope for fun & maybe spooky things, because it is Halloween!

Monday October 29

2007-10-30T07:37:00.000-07:00

Hello again. well today my sister and I were lucky because we got to spend the whole day at my friends house. So I don't really know what went on while I was away. But I do know that my cousin, little brother, and one of my sisters went shopping for pumpkins. After that we carved them and had pumpkin pie. It was great!

Until next time, you know who.

Sunday October 28 2007

2007-10-28T19:45:00.000-07:00

Hello again! I know that by now you are getting tired of the usual. What you are!>:( Thats ok I am to. But we do the same stuff every day. (Almost every day.) Today our church did what we call the primary program. Every one did a fantastic job! It was a big success (in our church.) After church, we lazed about all afternoon.

Then we had some friends come over and the fun started. We were wrestling with the best of them! It was fun!

After dark, we went out and played on the swings.

When it got to cold we went inside and had HOT CHOCOLATAY. It was really good. I decided to rip up a big marshmallow and put it in mine and well every one else had to have one too.

Well, it's the end of the day, but before we go, we would like to to leave our parents a message in the video below.

Until next time, see ya.....

Saturday October 27 2007

2007-10-27T19:20:00.000-07:00

Today after we did our chores we painted some of our pool. It was lots of fun. We made lots of cool stuff too on the walls of the pool! My cousin painted a fish, a jelly fish, a turtle and some coral. My sister and her friend finished a treasure chest they were working on, and then when we went to town my sister painted coral all over the place. It looks awesome!
We also went to watch one of our friends play in a soccer game. His team lost 5 to 0, but the team he went up against was undefeated. After that one of my sisters went to a Hallowen dance with her friend. I hope they have fun. She is the Corpse Bride. Scary! We didn't get to see her costume because she went to her friends house to get ready and then went straight to the dance. But we will get to see it on Halloween day. She dyed her dress last night a light purple/gray. It didn't dye itself evenly, but it looked ok considering it was a Corpse Bride.
We were going to work on my Eragon costume today also but we ran out of time because we stayed and played at the soccer fields. One of my sisters and my brother played on the playground while me and one of my other sisters talked with some of our friends.

Join us tomorrow for more McCollaum family fun.

the start

2007-10-26T19:49:00.000-07:00

Today we did the usual, which includes: morning chores, playing with friends, school work, etc. The only thing different was our dog Addy got shot. DUN DUN DUN!!! Actually, she just got some vaccines....but its more dramatic saying it the other way. She needed vaccines because we are taking her to Italy with us.

That actually wasn't the only thing different, Addy also got her first haircut and nail triming. Jessica did them both. They both look good. It is perfect.

Yesterday, poor little Paul got stung by a wasp. His little hand is kinda red and kinda swollen. He was hurting a little today, but we gave him some ice for it (which less of it ended up on his hand than in his mouth) and he was feeling better.

I have to go to bed now.

Until next time, the McCollaum fam...