Sinterklaas Dag

Growing up, my family was pulled in about every different direction during the holidays. We had parties for my dad's side of the family, my mom's side of the family, and all of the possible extended family variation you can think of. To make things even more interesting, we were also musicians. Christmas is not the most magical time of year when there are Advent services, church (and school!) programs, piano recitals, various concerts, and the big (!) finale on Christmas Day. That doesn't include rehearsal and practice times.

One year, I was probably 14 or so, my parents had enough of the madness. My mom found a holiday that celebrated our heritage and was nowhere near the absolute craziness of the season - St. Nicholas Day or Sinterklaas Dag. All of a sudden, my brother, sister, and I started putting out our wooden shoes with hay and carrots and received milk chocolate initials and little gifts the next day (sometimes oranges). My mom explained that the hay and carrots were for Schimmel, his hose. If we were naughty children, the Zwarte Pieten would leave coal in our shoes. If we had been good, Sinterklaas would leave us presents. I had passing familiarity with Santa Claus and the stocking tradition, so the parallels were not lost on me, this was just the Dutch version.

My family still does this, many years later, just with the grandkids now.

With an exchange student in the house and the holidays coming up, we have far fewer commitments now, especially since we moved cross country and have no family anywhere near us. We still wanted to share our traditions and favorite childhood holiday memories with Luca. Yesterday, we celebrated Sinterklaas Dag with gold coins (chocolates), oranges, and we exchanged small gifts. We have no wooden shoes here, so we did not put out hay or carrots (the carrots would not have been safe from the dogs). We also made everyone make a solid guess as to what the present was prior to opening it.

It was fun sharing my family's tradition with Luca and learning more about it. I'm sure my mom told me about it when we started doing it, and I've looked into it a bit since then. I researched Sinterklaas a lot more this year than I ever have before because I wanted to know why the little things were done, like giving chocolate coins covered in gold paper or giving oranges.

The gold coins are because of a legend associated with Sinterklaas where a poor man could not provide a dowry for his three daughters. Mysteriously, three bags of gold coins were thrown through his window and landed by the shoes that were drying out by the fire.

The oranges are similar. They can be used in lieu of gold because they look like gold balls. They can also be because Sinterklaas may have been from Spain, where there are oranges, and oranges would have been a huge treat for Dutch children in the winter.

Fun With the Suns

Thanks to a phone call from the Suns, we got to go on a VIP tour and sit courtside for warmups and some of the pre-game festivities for the Phoenix Suns vs the Atlanta Hawks game on 11/30/16. We brought our host son from Italy and another family's host daughter from Norway. Luca , our host son, loves basketball. His home town in Italy has its own professional basketball team that won the Italian league last year. He has gone to basketball games in Italy and went to the Suns vs Warriors game with us.

Andrea came along truly for the experience. She knew what a basketball was, but she knew nothing about basketball and had never been to any games. Ever.

The tour gave us a great view from the suites. When the kids really started to enjoy it was when we went courtside. That was when their phones came out and pictures started being taken.

The seats were amazing, and the entire experience that the Suns gave us created lasting memories for both students. It was something that we could not have done on our own, so we are forever grateful to the Suns organization for making this happen. It was a fun game.

We talked with Luca about how the shot clocked worked differently in Italy and the US, and we explained to Andrea how basketball worked - strategy, fundamentals, and some of the quirky stuff. They might not have started their homework until 10:30 that night, but both kids said it was "definitely worth it".

 

 

 

Giving Tuesday

Today is "Giving Tuesday", which I always found to be an odd thing. Let's have the day on which money is donated fall after the two supposedly biggest shopping days of the year. Anyway.

Hosting an exchange student is, in some ways, like volunteering, at least for me. I thought I was going to be giving Luca all these things like showing him all about baseball, American football, hockey, teaching him how to cook, etc. We really have received a lot. We have a second family in Italy now that we can visit whenever we want, and they can come here whenever they want. My parents have an Italian grandson now. It has been this experience of mutual beneficence, which is what hosting an exchange student is supposed to do.

We don't have kids, so we have also learned more about being parents and managing conflict. I know I have learned more about how to deal with a school from the non-student side, which is something that is definitely not taught anywhere! So what we have given to Luca - experiences, knowledge, a home - he has given back to us exponentially more than we could ever give to him.

This is why we host - creating invisible ties, familial bonds, and relationships that cross all boundaries.

We didn't set out to be host parents.  It wasn't like one day we woke up and thought, "Let's be host parents!" We actually did it because there was a student whose family changed their minds. Now, we were really reticent at first. We moved to Arizona Memorial weekend 2016. We found out about hosting July of 2016. We had been in our house for less than two months after moving over 1800 miles from the Northwest suburbs of Chicago to the West Valley in Arizona. We knew about three people - our realtor, our loan officer, and the sales rep for the builder. If anyone was ready to bring in a teenager into their house, it was NOT us.

What we did have was an extra room and the ability to provide reasonable transportation and three meals a day (plus snacks). We also created a quiet place for our student to study and got to know how to get to and from the school, which was not our local public school because we started hosting so late.

We picked our Italian host son up at the airport on July 30, 2016, and our adventure began. One of the things I was surprised by was how much of a challenge eating out was. One of the factors was that he had only left Italy three days prior so jet lag was still an issue. Another factor was that the kids had been up all night so no one missed their flights to their host families. Also, not all foods translate well. We ended up ordering for him after we got a general idea of what type of food he liked. We both assumed that ordering food at a restaurant would be a fairly universal activity. It took at least a month before he was able to order food with some confidence.

He has been with us for almost four months. The house feels emptier when he is not here. It is unnaturally quiet when he is not here. He is not a loud person, so it is not like his voice fills the house. We just miss him when he is not here.

We are both thankful we made the decision to host. It has been an amazing and life-changing experience.