Skiing and Camping La Villa

We spent four days camping at La Villa which is near Corvara and
connects to several ski areas. On the second day we did the Sella
Ronda tour which takes one around the mountain range shown in some of
the photos. The kids did it all no problem.

Some pictures of the Camper

Ski Trip to Pecol

Here is the camper parked during the day. After 5:00 there was no one in the parking lot. Actually the property belongs to a neighbor who also owns the house in the picture. He let us know we could park there. It's not really a parking lot but get used like one.
The view from one of the ski runs.
The view from our parking spot.
Julia ready to take off.

Snow Sculpture

We went up to Pecol in the camper, which is about an hour and a half from here in the camper, less in the car. Saturday evening and Sunday Julia and Giovanni made this little sculpter. The sad thing is they made it too close to the ski run and some jerk cut it all down with a ski pole. So I guess it was a kind of art happening something in which the action is part of the art.

Spring

Today I'm getting what is probably a false hope that Spring is just around the corner.  It has been sunny all day and almost warm, well anything higher than 5C seems warm now.   But also it's staying light later, which adds to the feeling.  I'm not so much in a hurry for Winter to end as I'm tired of the cold.  The end of Winter also means the end of skiing which I don't look forward to. 

I do actually enjoy the change of seasons.  Living in so Cal for so many years I always thought it would be hard to live where the Winters are so cold.  But the wonderful thing is that the seasons change, it doesn't last forever.   Then we have a real Spring followed by a real Summer etc.  

Raising my youngest kids bilingualy

When we lived in California Luisa always spoke Italian to them and I spoke English.  So when we moved to Italy Julia the oldest had a fairly easy time transitioning to Italian and her English is still pretty good.  She is now 9 and doesn't really have any problem speaking either language, though she has gotten a bit of an Italian accent.  Giovanni, had a harder time moving over into Italian.  He was not quite four.  At the preschool he only spoke English for the first couple of months and then more or less suddenly made the switch to Italian.  Now he is much more comfortable speaking Italian than English.  And he is a little resistent to speaking English, but since I mostly speak it to him he is keeping it up though at a slower pace than he might.  With him it may be a constent struggle, we will see.   We are not about to let it go.  They both must be fluent in English as well as Italian.  In the next couple of years we will have to decide on a third language.  Not sure what that will be. I suppose the choices are French, German or maybe Chinese. 

Ski Trip San Martino di Castrozza

We had a nice weekend trip. On Saturday we met some friends from Belluno who have an apartment in San Martino. We ended up skiing with about 15 people in total. That made for a fun time and an unusual one for me.

On Sunday it snowed, the kids were cozy inside the camper in spite of the weather outside. I just went skiing for a couple of hours by myself. I couldn't drag the rest of them into the bad weather. But then Julia and Giovanni played outside in the snow the whole time I was gone.