Christmas at the International School of Padua

One of the oh-so-cool 7 Swans a Swimming; she loved her outfit and I expect this is just a preview of what she will wear to her senior prom or wedding someday!


Even though our school is obviously secular, in Italy you celebrate Christmas, period. It was convenient for us, since we go along with all of that anyway in the Episcopalian/Christianity-lite version of religion that we are using for the religious indoctrination of our children. Isabelle’s class performed a play about Mr. Patridge and the 12 Days of Christmas and she was one of the “seven swans a swimming.” As described by my friend Allison the film maker said, “I loved Isabelle's costume it looks like it was right out of a Matthew Barney film (the most artsy of art films).” Of course, I don’t know who Matthew Barney is, I may or may not have seen one of his films, but you have to agree - that is no cutesy Anne Geddes get-up. (By the way, Allison is long overdue on answering one of my emails and I may be able to shame her into action by begging for communication in this quasi-public forum. Allison, when you get home from your vacation this month – call, write, email or at least send me a signal telepathically!) But, I digress.

The boys' classes performed a musical version of Robin Hood along with the fourth and fifth grades. The older kids got all the individual roles and the third graders were all assigned the part of “villager.” It was very cute listening to 150 children singing in their British accented English, peppered with the Italian pronounciation of some of the vowels, about the “magic of Robin Hood.” We have a LOT of video of these performances, so you better be nice to us when we return stateside! The rest of the school’s Christmas activities were fairly standard with Christmas parties, pitching in to buy teacher gifts, Christmas crafts of trees, Father Christmas (as he is known in the UK and Babbo Natale in Italy), etc.



Here is a picture of Sam as a medieval villager. Nick is in the video version only!