I watch two ultra-thin beautiful Sicilian 20 somethings exit a beach bar. Boy hands cigarette to girl, drops empty carton on the street and says, “hai ragione. hai ragione….” (you are right, you are right). He was upset - perhaps they had gotten into an argument with someone in the bar, or she had pointed out something offensive in his behavior - who knows? What i noticed was the cigarette carton on the ground as he said “hai ragione.” She didn’t pick it up either. These two are apparently concerned with what’s ‘right’ but have no sense that that littering or smoking might be a little wrong. Who is actually right?

Today Ella and I continued with our second lesson.  She did everything i asked of her. We played a sticker board game (she made the board according to her design, fairy garden theme, called Sunny Day) in which she had to read 3 letter words. She won again. She matched 3 sounds to the right letter and then traced the letters in rainbow colors. Then spelled 4 words and wrote them down correctly in boxes. We ended with some numbers - we threw the dotted dice and she had to identify the number then right them down.  She reversed a few numbers, and got stuck on 8 but other than that she did it all ‘right’.  We worked for 40 minutes, not a complaint.

Ella loves being in Sicily. When we ask her why she says its because she gets to do whatever she wants. I think that is what Sicilians like about Sicily. There is a certain amount of carelessness that goes with the culture. The biggest symbol of this is the littering. it’s everywhere. It drives me crazy. It stresses me out.  There is a lack of accountability.  Accountability is one of the many things that we try to instill in our children constantly. And I’m sure this drives them crazy.

As I work with Ella and we try to reshape her brain to make sense of words, I wonder how this re-shaping will subdue that part of her that wants to do whatever she wants. is that the right thing to do?

What she really wants to do is turn that pencil into an arrow and shoot it across the room, or figure out how to get a movie into the paper of the gameboard, or figure out how to use up all her lesson time to make a beautiful picture of a fairy forest without actually doing the hard work of reading and writing.  I love that her brain thinks like that.

Distractions/Tangents:

Models in Sicilian Garbage -  Aziza Munnizza - TGR Nazionale