The Parent Meeting at School

I wish I had some pictures of this event! But alas, that would have been obnoxious.

Last week was a parent meeting at Hannah's school. All of the parents came for a meeting led by her teachers (she has three), where they discuss the curriculum for the year, field trips they have planned and any issues they have concern about. Oh, and we elect a parent representative, who is then the go-between, between the parents and teachers.

So though we all know each other (Hannah stays with the same students and teachers throughout all five years of elementary school), the election of our parent representative had to follow strict protocol. Even though there was only one person who wanted the job, we each had to fill out a ballot, put all our identification information on it (i.e. our passport information) and put it in the voting box. Very official.

Last year I attended this meeting, but since we'd only been in the country one month, I quite frankly didn't understand a word that was said. This year, I understood a lot more. We did talk about the changes to their teaching style this year, but the majority of our time we talked about. . . you guessed it, food! Were the kids eating all their lunch? Were they eating their veggies too? Are they picky? Do they eat too fast? Can my child bring a toothbrush to use after lunch?

You know, sometimes it's been easy to look at the centrality of food in this culture and roll my eyes a bit (OK, a lot). But I confess that perhaps I'm becoming converted. Food is the venue for relationships. It is a great example of how Italians love to give their opinion. Food is common ground.

I knew this was changing in our lives when I suddenly became picky about the type of pasta I bought (only sun-dried--it allows sauce to cling better), when I began to discern what type of sauce goes on what shape of pasta (for instance, meat sauce is better on long pastas like spaghetti or linguine and pesto is great on farfalle but not penne), and when Cody suddenly decided we could no longer use Grana Padana to top our pastas with, only Reggiano Parmigiano. Yep, we're Italian foodies now.

So getting back to the parent meeting, we again have to thank God for just how incredibly He answered so many prayers for Hannah and her school situation. We think her teachers are great. They think Hannah is great. Hannah, in less than one year, is fully fluent in the language. Italians can not tell she is not a native speaker. Praise God! School has also proven to be our best venue for developing relationships in which to share the gospel. The parents are a pretty close group, since we're all together for the next five years. We're so thankful for the in-roads God's provided.

As I left this meeting, I thought, "Wow, what a normal thing to do." Granted, we probably wouldn't spend near the amount of time we did talking about food at a meeting in America, but we wouldn't have had a meeting like this in America. I love the community-based culture of Italy. And we're fully participating in it. God shows me daily just how much He has done in the past 13 months.