always learning

I think I’ve discovered the secret to a perfect day:

On my daily walk to work I pass all the condo employees – cleaners, building managers, security guards, etc – and every single person smiles at me and I smile back. We don’t know each other and we never talk, but we always smile. After growing up in New England, and spending five years developing a permanent frown in Germany, I can safely say there is nothing better than a few smiles to start your day off right!

Image: http://www.colinheatherly.com/images/Smile.jpg

After a week of this view from our own little balcony, it takes a few days to get back into the swing of things… I’m still envisioning:

the beautiful Boracay sunsets,

amazingly huge sandcastles,

and absolutely stunning beach….

Give me a few more days to settle back in to reality.

Alex and I are off on another adventure, this time to Boracay Island in the Philippines (country #35 for me!).

See you when we’re back, tan and relaxed!

Image: http://www.chikatayo.com/gallery/data/media/1/boracay.jpg

Miss Profe and Kelly Christopherson tagged me with Miguel’s new meme about being a leader. The question is: What are 7 qualities we don’t know about you that help you be a leader?

I wanted to do something a little different for this one, and so, with apologies to the Brothers Grimm, since there are seven items on my list I would like to express my ideas via the international language of the dwarves:

• I am trustworthy and dependable, like Doc. I often find myself fulfilling leadership roles by default because people have confidence in me.
• I am friendly and open, like Happy. I enjoy taking the time to get to know people. I find it easy to bond with all sorts of different people and enjoy developing productive working relationships with everyone. I enjoy fostering team spirit.
• I am sensitive to other people’s needs, like Bashful. I am very used to working with teachers that feel helpless or ignored (especially with technology). I enjoy listening, helping, and genuinely making people feel valued.
• I am practical and down to earth, like Grumpy. I like to find the most effective solution to every problem and I understand that it’s not always the “official” or “best” solution that can solve the problem.
• I know how to delegate tasks and step aside when necessary, like Sleepy. I have always been complimented on my ability to run meetings effectively, keep people on task and organize responsibilities. It’s something I have always loved, and got to truly enjoy as the Chairperson for our Amnesty International group back in Munich.
• I am super organized, like Sneezy. (You’ll just have to trust me that Sneezy is organized, or this isn’t going to work.) I have a deep love for containers and office supply stores. I like keeping track of things and making things easily accessable for everyone.
• I know I don’t know everything, like Dopey. I’m not afraid to admit when I’m wrong or to ask for help.

And there you have it: the closest I can come to getting in touch with my inner dwarves.

I’ve mentioned before that I often find myself in leadership roles by default. I do think some people have a natural ability to be effective leaders, but these courses I’ve been taking have really opened my eyes to just how many facets there are to educational leadership. Just being able to know when each member of your team requires a different leadership style seems exhausting to me (or is that just my Sleepy side?)!

To continue the fun I’ll tag: Susan Sedro, Graham Wegner, Clarence Fischer, Silvia Tolisano, Chris Betcher, Jennifer Cronk, and Chris Craft.

Image from:

Well it seems that my last post (item #4) has sparked another meme! How exciting! And completely unintententional – the best kind of inspiration, I say. In the interest of easy visual representation, you can also make a “visited countries” map to show where you’ve been in the world. Here’s mine:

Create your own visited countries map here.

I’m very excited to see almost all of South East Asia filled in on my map. That is one of the best things about teaching abroad – not only do you get to live in another country and experience an entirely different way of life, but you also get to travel so easily to the neighboring countries. In just the year and a half that we’ve lived here, I’ve been able to travel to Laos, Cambodia, Indonesia, Thailand and Vietnam. What a wonderful adventure!

Technically speaking, I’m still on holiday, but I also happen to be in an extremely comfortable and surprisingly chic Bangkok hotel with free wifi, so now I can finally get down to the important business of responding to the “Five Things” meme everybody’s been talking about these last few weeks. Way back in December, just a day after we set off for Vietnam, I was tagged by Graham Wegner, and just recently I was tagged again by Silvia Tolisano, Susan Sedro and Chris Craft (update: sorry it took me so long to figure out who tagged me! Internet was spotty, to say the least, in Vietnam) I guess that means I really have been much too slow in posting this sure-to-be-thrilling list of 5 things you may not know about me. Hold onto your socks folks, here it comes:

1. Ever since I was old enough to walk, I was a dancer. I started out at the Steffi Nossen School of Dance in White Plains, New York and , after we moved to Connecticut in elementary school, moved up to the Newtown School of Dance. At the tender age of about 5 I started with ballet and added jazz and tap when we moved to CT. In addition to the dance, I often performed in small professional musical productions in New York (no, not Broadway… yet…) One of my favorites was a performance of the Pied Piper when I was around 8 years old. Unfortunately, I stopped the lessons when I got to college for lack of a dance school in the nearby Storrs, Connecticut area (home to both the University of Connecticut, and a lot of green farm land with cows and sheep).

2. Along with the dancing, I was a cheerleader in high school. This is perhaps my most surprising “secret” for people who don’t know me, because although I am quite vocal and high-spirited, I’m not your typical “American cheerlearder” girl. I definitely enjoyed the dancing aspect of it, and cheerleading camp was certainly an experience I will never forget. I liked it so much that I eventually ended up coaching pop warner cheerleading for our neighboring town, Wilton, CT.

3. As you may have guessed from my last name, I am of Italian descent. Both of my parents are Italian American and both sets of their parents were born in Italy. That makes me 3rd generation Italian American. Growing up all of the food, celebrations, holidays, and experiences I had with my family were centered around my Italian heritage. In fact, I had never eaten a burrito or any other sort of non-Italian ethnic food (aside from Chinese, I think Chinese may be unescapeable in the greater NY area) before I went to university. My husband Alex often comments on the interesting family traditions we still keep, especially those centered around food. One of my favorites is the “7 fishes” on Christmas eve. I still wish I had learned how to make my grandmother’s white baccala because it will always mean Christmas to me! During my sophomore year in college, I studied abroad in Florence; and I knew as soon as I stepped off the plane that I was home…

4. During my first international school posting, I met a teacher whose parents had challenged her to visit 30 countries before she turned 30. The idea intrigued me, and so I adopted it for myself. I am proud to announce that I achieved my goal last year, with about 11 months left on the clock! I have been to:

1. Ireland
2. the United Kingdom
3. the Netherlands
4. Denmark
5. Sweden
6. Finland
7. Estonia
8. the Czech Republic
9. Hungary
10. Turkey
11. Austria
12. Germany
13. Switzerland
14. Liechtenstein
15. Spain
16. Portugal
17. France
18. Belgium
19. Italy
20. Vatican City
21. Monaco
22. Greece
23. Malta
24. Morocco
25. Egypt
26. the United Arab Emirates
27. Thailand
28. Indonesia
29. Malaysia
30. Cambodia
31. Laos
32. Mexico
33. Vietnam
34. the United States of America

I’m tempted to challenge myself to another list, perhaps 50 before 50, but I’m not sure it’s healthy

5. And, lastly, although I absolutely love being a technology teacher, I always thought I was going to be an international human rights lawyer “when I grew up.” During university, I spent a summer internship working for an international NGO called the Unrepresented Nations and People’s Organization where we focused our work on the Ogoni people of Nigeria, the Karen of Burma, and indepdence for East Timor. I enjoyed the work so much that, upon returning to UConn in the fall, I started the university’s first Amnesty International student chapter and was the student area leader for the Connecticut region. After moving to Munich I started the AI student group at MIS, and founded the (then) only English Speaking AI chapter in Germany, which I chaired for the following 5 years. I have loved working with Amnesty, and recently discovered a few new similar organizations: Witness, which uses mobile technology (like video phones) to capture human rights abuses around the world and bring them into the light; and Global Voices, which aggregates blogs from around the world to share first hand perspective and experiences from all walks of life.

And there you have it. 5 absolutely scintillating facts about me. I wish I could have come up with something a little more interesting, considering I had so much time to think about it all. And since I’m so late to the game, I’m going to excuse myself from tagging anyone else (and as I have a look through my aggregator, I see that’s probably not going to be a problem at all).

Update: I’ve been caught. I guess I’m not allowed to get away with not tagging 5 other bloggers, so let’s hear from: Jennifer Cronk, Chrissy Hellyer, Aaron Smith, Ed Warkentin, Konrad Glogowski. I hope I’m back in the good graces of my fellow edubloggers (sometimes, just sometimes, I try to break the rules – it doesn’t always work out).

Image citations:
Pointe shoes from: http://www.ballet.co.uk/images/thumb/pointe_shoes_on_black_mini.jpg
Pom Poms from: http://www.discountcheerleading.com/pages/images/poms/poms_main.jpg
Map from: http://artfiles.art.com/images/-/World-Map-Poster-C10086838.jpeg
Florence image from: http://70.86.208.146/images/guides/italy/travel/florence.jpg
Amnesty logo from: http://schema-root.org/region/international/
non-governmental_organizations/amnesty_international/amnesty_international_logo.gif