37100

Move to Trieste, Lorna. You get a 'bonus' for middle school books and in high school (the ones I know), for the first two years the text books are on loan.

gelato

Thanks for the advice upthread. A is too little (she'll turn 3 in July) for campi estivi but it turns out that the Comune has one asilo nido open during July. So we signed her up to go there for the month of July. It'll be a bit of a trek every morning to take her there but better than nothing. Her maestra at nido did say, though, that it was a bad idea to send her there as she won't know the teachers or the other kids but what can we do? We still have to work out what to do during August but we'll take a couple of weeks of holiday and then I guess my husband and I can take her to work with us or maybe we can find a babysitter.

Lorna at Vicenza

If only it was like that here.
I think a couple of schools in the bigger town have a second hand text book market but I know I'm going to have to hand over a fortune.

giodafa

Lorna , try your comune most give out bonuses for text books but they are means tested Which usually means that your dentist will get the bonus because he doesn't declare. This thing really annoyed me for years , so last year i went down to my loal CAF and asked to apply for the bonus ( my bill for two kids was 890 euros!) The nice man took one look at my 730 and "Signora you own a house you have no chance unless you declare false" It really annoys me. My daughters high school organize a second hand market in the school yard , the kids sell there books at half price. You seem like a girl with "palle" go to the preside and ask permission to do something similar.

Lorna at Vicenza

My comune is as poor as a church mouse - or so they'd have you believe.
Our Sindaco is also a really hard case Lega Nord, so one look at my foreign surname and I'm sure he'd rather kick me out of the country than award me with some kind of bonus, help or even a smile and courteous "buon giorno".
I also own my own house ............ or as the rotten bank manager said once - "Signora that is not your house. It is the bank's house until you have fully paid off your mortgage."

But you're right about one thing .... I have more "palle" than quite a lot of the Italian male species I have met around here so I might just be able to pull something off.
I'll be good though from September until the New Year. Don't want to get on the wrong side of all the teachers and the head immediately. I'll get to know their Achille's heel first before I strike in the New Year. I might even wait until February when Chloe has had her first middle school pagella.

giodafa

I'll be good though from September until the New Year. Don't want to get on the wrong side of all the teachers and the head immediately That's the Italian mum talking lol

giodafa

oops didn't quote

Lorna at Vicenza

No. It's a clever English mum who knows how to play her cards close to her chest and then strike when she's got an advantage over the opposition and get other people on her side.

giodafa

Lorna at Vicenza

Shit - just remembered it's rubbish night so now I have to go and almost vomit over the 'umido' bin when I bend down to tie a knot in the bag and drag the 'secco' down the steps as well.

This is supposed to be OH's job but it falls on me when he's away. There's not much worse than the 'umido' bin after a few hot days - Where's the vomit smiley?

Torno subito

K in Modena

So much for "organisation". After the long, drawn-out process of viewing all the asili and submitting our application for the end of March, the comune called me last week saying their was a problem with our application

The woman then proceeded to ask me all the same questions that we had already answered on the application form - names of all the nonni, where they live, how many hours we work, etc - and when I said they should have all of this written down already she said, "yes but it's quicker this way". She then seemed to expect me to list all the asili that we had requested in order of preference- from memory. When I said there were 12 of them and surely she had this information written down, she said, "OK, I'll make a note: trovare asili." Apparently our application had been "inserito male" - someone probably started entering the data into the computer but never got around to finishing I guess. Anyway we will expect our letter in June (rather than May as initially stated) and will then no doubt have to correct lots of errors (she insisted on putting Manchester as Comune di Londra but she says it won't make any difference to our application).

Lorna at Vicenza

Sad but true ----- the longer you live here the more you'll know that the word organizzazione is just that ... a word. And when your kid starts school you'll learn how to spell all kinds of words like this one as well.

giodafa

Six school days left

Lorna at Vicenza

AND COUNTING ----------thank somebody for June 2nd.

giodafa

It' only half term in th UK!