To give or not to give... a gift

When I was little, I remember that every year around new year, the national day of teachers and mothers' day the parents' representative of our class was gathering money from our parents to buy gifts to our teacher(s). I remember how irritated our parents were every time they were asked for money. Since we are two sisters, of course, my parents had to pay twice for each occasion. I thought this was something done only in Turkey. God, how wrong I was.. When our daughter began attending daycare, I learned that the same tradition existed also here in Italy. The amount that was asked increased when we changed schools and my daughter began the kindergarten. This year she is in elementary school and we pay even more! I wonder where this thing will lead us to... And you should hear about the presents the parents' representative has got for two of the teachers (thank God that she bought gifts only for two teachers and not all the others). This year the primary teacher is getting a Gucci foulard, and her assistant will get a Gucci silver bracelet. I have never bought any Gucci stuff for myself... Don't get me wrong, I have nothing against Gucci, or Prada, or all the other designer stuff. The thing that disturbs me is the extravagance in the gifts. What happened to the good old modesty?

Oh, my son is in daycare by the way, and we never had a parents-teachers meeting for his class, so we do not have a class representative there. Yet, someone has taken the initiative (as always is the case) and has sent out notes to us parents, asking for money to buy gifts for the teachers :-) We have already left the asked amount at the school's secretary since we have no idea who the initiative taker is, and what kind of presents she has in mind....

Do you buy gifts to the teachers of your child? Do you think it is necessary? For me, they are doing their jobs, and are getting paid for that (in our case, getting well paid I presume, since it is a little private school). I do not see why I am forced (not literally, but, hey, the pressure is there; if every other parent has paid, you are also expected to pay) to give/contribute to a present if I really don't feel like it....

Xmas objects everywhere in the living-room

We are ready for Xmas in our house. Last Saturday, December 8th, Iris and I decorated our tree as we do every year exactly on December 8th. It is a holiday here in Italy and it seems to be the right day to begin decorating the house and mounting the tree. I said 'mounting' the tree because some years ago we decided to be environment-friendly and bought a plastic tree which looks quite good in fact. Of course the smell and the real green of a little pine tree is more beautiful but it is a pity to throw it away after the holidays are over. We have tried to plant our trees after the holidays in the past, but none of them survived, so we gave up.

In addition to the tree we have other objects that we take out only at Xmas time. This is our electrical '7-candles light' that we have bought in Norway in 1998. I saw on hedikliev that the same light exists also in Sweden. In Norway they usually place this light in their windows and that was what we used to do in our other house. Unfortunately, in this house we don't have a proper place in the windows so we place it over one of the furniture in our living room.



Over the fireplace and on our coffee table we place different candle holders. The Santa-figured candle holder was a gift from our gasoline station a few years ago. The Santa-hat on the coffee table belongs to Iris.



The candle holder on the left is one of my favorites. It was a gift from a friend of ours some years ago. The snow ball shaped tea-light holder is from Norway, we bought it in 1998. The other tea-light holder below is Swedish and it was a gift from a friend who visited us in 2003. I love these Scandinavian design objects.

As is the tradition Iris has written her wish-list for Santa and placed it over the fireplace. She began writing it in early October and every week one or two new things are added to the list :-) This year she wants objects of Winx Club, different games of Winx, computer of Winx etc. There is a Winx mania in Italy among little girls, and of course, my little one is also a part of it :-) There are some electronic toys, dolls and few innocent stuff like colored pens, a new pencil holder on the list as well. My favorite on the list is: computer come quello della mamma, a computer like my mother's :-) Eh, I know that also the father would love to get a computer like mine (a MacBook Pro), but my little one, I guess you should wait some more years before you can get that wish granted ;-)



Iris likes Xmas and Xmas decorations a lot. She also likes making drawings of the Xmas tree. For now, we have only two drawings in the living room: one over the fireplace and one on the Xmas tree itself :-)



The decorations on our tree increase every year with the edition of new pieces. The two pieces in the photos above were Xmas presents from one of my husband's assistants a couple of years ago.



These two were products of the tiny hands of my Iris. The first one she made in kindergarten, the second one even before, when she was still in daycare.

I think that this is one of the most beautiful decorations we have. It was a gift from my Norwegian professor Trond. He sent it with his Xmas card in 2004, saying that the minute he saw it he thought about Iris :-) The little girl sitting under the tree with black braided hair does look quite much like Iris :-)








These five figures above are my traditional Norwegian Santa Claus, 'nisse' (click the link and read the story of nisse in Wikipedia, really nice), that protect our tree :-) I bought them in 2003 in Bergen at the Christmas Shop, Julehuset, an all-year open traditional Xmas decorations shop, along with some other decorations. One of them was broken, but I didn't have the heart to throw it away, so it has been glued (as can be seen in the photo).

The last important Xmas item in our living-room is the tree mat. When we bought this plastic tree I also looked for a nice tree mat to put under it, but didn't like the items in the market. Hence, I went to a shop that sold beautiful cloths with traditional Xmas figures and bought two different textiles and made my own tree mat using one textile as the border and one as the center piece. I even used an old bed sheet as lining under the mat ;-) I am very happy with the result.

I got tagged

I was tagged by müzi some time ago, only now I have the time to write..

When I was little (ben küçükken) I was a good and silent child, I think :-) I was rather shy, didn't talk much, was mostly interested in my books and school work. When I was in elementary school whenever I had some problem with the kids in my class I called my (younger) sister and asked her to 'fix' the problem. I remember her beating up a couple of kids that were disturbing me :-) I liked being the brain behind the scenes, if you know what I mean ;-) I had a nice name among teachers that I didn't want to destroy ;-)

I am in fact (ben aslinda) still a little bit shy. I thought that I had overcome the shyness during my years in Norway, but every now and then it takes over me, like two days ago, when we were at a Lions Club dinner with my husband, the speaker was bullshitting about the school system in Tuscany, about the rights of the kids, about the number of foreign kids in schools etc and I just didn't have the guts to stand up and say exactly what I mean. Ufff... In fact I am quite good in giving public speeches, making presentations and stuff (so they say), but maybe I was afraid that my Italian was not 'good enough' (my horrible perfectionism!)? I don't know...

The first time I cheated in an exam (ilk kopyam) must be in a history exam in high school. I cannot remember well. I didn't cheat usually. I was the one who was helping others in exams. But in high school I began thinking that memorizing the exact dates of wars and treaties was a waste of time. I preferred solving a few extra maths or physics problems instead. (God, do I sound boring?)

My cellular phone (cep telefonum) is not an elongation of my body, but I do feel a bit irritated when I forget it at home, worrying that they might call from the school of the kids, or my mother may call and I cannot answer back. I do miss the time before any cell phones existed.

My most stupid characteristic (en saçma huyum) must be my perfectionism. I do not only try to do my best in anything and everything I do (from cleaning the house to writing a thesis), but I expect the same attitude also from others! This is wrong. I only disturb myself and nobody else gives a damn.

Love (ask) cannot be explained by words. If you can answer the question "why do you love him/her?", that is not real love, because for loving someone you do not need a reason, you just love. It is love when a smile appears on your face only on hearing his/her name. It is love if you feel a sudden flush of heat in your body on seeing him/her. It is love if you get goose bumps only by a little touch of his/her hands. Although I define myself as a realistic person with feet firmly placed on earth, when it comes to love I think I am an incurable romantic :-)

The blogs that I like the most (en sevdigim bloglar) are the ones that I try to follow and sometimes leave a comment.

I want to tag metin, fulya and alp&ege'nin annesi. If you were tagged before, sorry, I haven't been following the blogs very much lately...