Fontana di Trevi

Fontana di Trevi is a beatiful barouque style fountain in Rome. The water is still supply by ancient Roman aquaduct. No road leads to the fountain directly and it is nestled in a small piazza. You hear the sound of water gushing before you see the fountain and then suddenly the fountain is directly in front of your eyes. The fountain is huge much bigger than the photo actually show.

Meredith was afraid of the water initially but she quickly warmed up and would not stop laughing as we let her dipped her hand in the water.

The small piazza where Fontana di Trevi is located is chokeful of tourists.

Hotel stay in Tuscany

Out of the many hotels we stayed in during our trip, we liked the one in Tuscany the most. It is located about 9km outside of Florence and closed to the Chianti wine region. The hotel is located on a very steep hill. I was debating whether we should rent a car for our Tuscany stay. I am glad that we did because the bus stop is at the bottom of the hill.

The view from our hotel room is classic Tuscany landscape with farmhouses and cypress trees.

Another view from the hotel. There are several ways to go up to the hotel. Some of the roads are very steep and narrow one lane road. I took the narrow one lane roads a few times just for kicks. Fortunately, I did not encounter any car going downhill on those narrow roads.

The restaurant attached to the hotel. The restaurant only opens when there is a tour bus carying a busload of tourist. I was poking around the first day wondering why all the tables are set but the restaurant is closed during normal dining hours.

Florence

We spent 4 days in Tuscany. Florence is the largest city in Tuscany and the renaissance started here. This a view of Florence taken from the hill near Michelangelo Piazza.

The weather was very hot when we were in Florence. Boon Hong bought Meredith a scarf to give her some shade. Meredith also points to her eyes when it gets too bright outside. That her way of saying she wants her sunglass. So, Meredith looked like Arabian baby all covered up with scarf and sunglass.

Now that we're back in Houston, Meredith starts saying "sai-sai" and requests for her sunglass as we drive around town.

Ponte Vecchio. A very charming bridge in Florence with lots of goldsmith shops. There used to be a lot of butcher shops on this bridge.

Convent in Rome

We stayed in a convent (Suore Elisabetta) near the central train station in Rome. It is a real convent run by a group of catholic nuns. The room is very simple, there's no TV in the room, but the room and the entire convent is extremely clean. The location is superb too, just 5 minutes walking distance from the train station and main bus stop. Everything in Europe is so expensive that a room in this convent costs about 85 euro. The view from the roof top of the convent is pretty nice as well. Most of the hotels in Italy including this convent provides breakfast with the stay. Every morning, the nuns served croissant, coffee (their coffee is good) in the breakfast room.

Meredith standing on the bed in the convent. She's holding a Lufthansa airline toy that the flight attendant gave her.
The cross in our room. The convent and actually the entire Rome has a lot of Christians and Catholics relics. When we stayed in convent, we can hear the church bell being rang at set interval. This makes me think of Kuching when I used to hear church bell rings at St. Joseph cathedral. Meredith reading the Italian prayer book in the convent. We tried to maintain a routine for her by reading her the same bedtime stories during this trip. We brought a few of her books with us. She can act out the simple motion in the stories book by now and she will perform those action automatically as I turn to right pages.
Breakfast room in the convent.

View from our room in the convent.

Italy Trip - Rome

We just came back from Italy yesterday. We went to Rome, Florence, Tuscany area, Venice and then spent several days in Luzern, Switzerland before flying back from Zurich. We were exhausted (physically and also moneywise) after this two weeks trip especially with a toddler but we really enjoyed it. I think we were being too ambitious when we planned the trip. All three of us learned a lot from this trip especially Meredith. Meredith learned about 20 new words during this trip (probably being stimulated by all the new things we encountered during trip and being around us 24 hours everday. I took a lot of pictures, so I will attempt to select a few pictures for each cities we visited. Here are some photos of Rome at night. Overall, Rome (and the Italy) is very charming but with some rough edges at the same time. In fact, the chaos in the street and level of cleanliness reminds me of Malaysia.

The Spainish Steps. This is where all the tourists came to sit and people watch. There are a lot of illegal peddlers hawking fake hand bags (Prada, Guccis etc...) and even cold beer all over Rome. We sat around at the Spainish steps for quite a while. Every 45 minutes or so, the police will come by and all the hawkers will roll up their mats displaying fake handbags and run away to the next street. Five minutes later, they all came back and unroll their mats on the same spot. The fake goods are not entirely cheap either. But business is good and a lot of American tourists have never been to Petaling street or Hong Kong, so they don't know how much good fake goods should costs. Law enforcement in Italy in this regard is pretty lax or sporadic. It's just like VCD hawkers and the police in Malaysia.
View of St. Peter Basilica from the top of Spainish Steps.

Meredith drinks from the fountain in Vatican city. A lot of water fountain in Rome are supplied from ancient Roman aquaducts and is safe for drinking.
The Pantheon. This is nice. It is a temple to worship all 30,000 of Roman Gods. "Pan_ theos" or all the gods. Worship them all under one roof.

Peach tree is bearing fruits again

My parents planted a peach tree in our backyard last year when they were here. I think we had three peaches from this tree last summer. Since last summer, the tree did not bear fruit again. I thought the tree was dead. Amazingly, three small peaches started appearing on this tree a few months ago. Finally, I plucked the peaches today. It tasted very sweet, more so than those we bought in the grocery store.

Crawfish boil

A family from Penang invited us to crawfish boil on Memorial weekend. There were eight adults and 38lbs of crawfish. Typically, each person will eat about 3 lbs of crawfish in a crawfish boil. I think I consumed about 6 lbs of crawfish in that afternoon/night (from 3pm to 7pm). We got home about 9pm that night and I had to go running in our neighborhood to help with digestion.

short legs

Meredith has short and stubby legs as seen in these two photos.

Meredith with Bandana

Boon Hong bought a new bandana for herself. Meredith saw and insisted on wearing it. Here's some photos of Meredith wearing the bandana and putting on her shoes before we go to the neighborhood playground.

Helping daddy get ready

Sometimes when we tell Meredith that we are going out, she would go pick up my cell phone, wallet and car keys. She seems to understand that when we go out, we will need the keys, wallet and cellphone.

Brushing teeth

Boon Hong started brushing Meredith's teeth a few months ago. Sometimes it can be a daunting task because she would not open her mouth. It hasn't been any easier lately but sometimes Meredith likes to imitate our action. We found her pretending to be brushing her teeth one day when she was playing with her toothbrush. She also likes the flavor of the infant toothpaste. She tried to suck on the toothbrush to taste the toothpaste.

New lake near Hwy 6 and supertarget

We recently discovered a lake with running trail near Highway 6 and Highway 59. The lake has about 2 miles of running trail around it and is not too far from our house. It is just behind Supertarget and we didn't know about it for years.

Meredith encountered some ducks near the lake and she was hesitant at first about feeding the duck.

Meredith at the playground

We just bought a new camera, Nikon P5000. So I took quite a lot photos to test this cameras last two weeks. The autofocus mechanism is rather but image quality is good. The following photos were taken at the playground near our house. Meredith likes to go on the slide.

Like mother like daughter

Eric did a post "like father like daughter" while back. I am going to do a version of "Like mother like daughter". Eric and most other people always complain that I am a clean freak. I like to "wipe" the kitchen floor with a wet cloth every time after I cook. Although we do have a mop at home, I still prefer kneeling on the ground and wiping the floor with a piece of cloth most of the time. Meredith observes me all the time and she likes to imitate my actions. One day, she saw the table cloth on the kitchen floor. Without any instruction from us, she started kneeling over and wiping the kitchen floor with the wet cloth. So, like mother like daughter, she loves to make sure the kitchen floor is spotless.

Teaching

Our cluster team has been meeting with many parents lately due to poor behavior (and consequentially poor performance) of the kids at school. X's parents are a shock to me. I could not imagine that X has been facing such problems at home. The parents were divorced a year ago and the mother badmouth X's father in front of all teachers and also her child and her ex-husband. From the conversation, the mother was telling everyone that X's father is soon getting married and becoming a father once again without disclosing much information to X. I was realy shocked after listen to X's mother statement. She was making very personal statements in front of X and the school teachers. Have she ever thought about X's feeling at all because X has to face all these people in school eight hours per day everyday. Through out the whole conversation, she tried to blame everything on X and X's father kept looking at the watch as if he was in a hurry to leave the meeting.

After two years teaching, I came across all kind of parents. We have MIA parents (we have to send police officers to send letters home), 24/7 parents who always want to make sure their child is the top 15% in class, rude parents and etc. However, many parents share a common trait as they like to blame all faults on the kid and the teacher, and parents always think they have done everything possible.