Life at 247-1

When I was given a bunch of yellow mimosa (silver wattle) at the supermarket today and then greeted with 'Auguri', by one of the men there, it wasn't until later that I found out it was for IWD. In Italy on this day, men usually give women yellow mimosas, I guess it's a little like the western Mother's Day and Valentine's Day mixed together.

To celebrate this day we had a little gathering of all the mothers from our Italian class at a cafe just across the road from the kindergarten. Elena our teacher made us all 3 kinds of tea, Chinese, Mint and Japanese green tea.

While the adults sat and chatted, the little ones amused themselves with the piano there.

We had lots of sweets to go with the tea, one of them a typical sweet of Egpyt and the Middle East called Baklava. A nut filled pastry, quite rich and sweet but very tasty.

Chatting around, I was quite interested to find out that most of the Egyptian women come to Italy with their families so their husbands can be chefs. Some work in the Kebab shops and others in restaurants or hotels, it seems that their life is much better here in Italy than it would be in Egypt. The only problem is that they tend to stick within their own community so much so that they don't pick up the Italian language which is why the majority of mothers in my class are Egyptian.

Happy International Women's Day!