Han The Hun: Dreary weather and coffee galore.

I thought I would write every other day because I wanted to be able to share everything I did with my family however these past couple of days there hasn't been much to talk about. I haven't left the house because the baby has had a fever on and off and has been incredibly restless with teething and not sleeping properly so if Erica has needed to run out I have stayed here to look after Riccardo. It has been generally playing with him inside because the weather has been pretty crappy to say the least....I think when I tweeted my friend saying I was sending sunshine her way it was taken all too literally and I've given it all away.. Can we have it back now?!!

I have fed him and tried to get him to sleep and changed him and all the usual baby things I've said already. Yesterday morning I went out for ten minutes to get Erica something from the pharmacy and to get something photocopied in the shop. Now I'd like to think I'm a pretty confident person but when I go on stage I can get really bad shakes and my nerves hit me terribly which doesn't exactly help being a drama student and everything...

I strolled in there holding a piece of paper with all my lines on shaking like a fucking leaf!!!

They kept asking things which were completely outside of the things I had written down..I kept looking at my little note frantically hoping that words would appear for me to be able to answer them. I am pretty sure I now have a couple of haters in Brescia because I must have seemed the rudest person alive! It's terrible how the English always assume people will know our language and yet we never expect to fully learn others. I mean my app is great and everything but I can't string a bloody sentence together unless its asking where something is....I should have asked for the nearest exit because I couldn't have bloody left quick enough.

'Dovrei Fare queste fotocopie' means I would like this photocopied. 'Totte' means all, 'Vorrei questo' means I would like this... and 'Ho questa' means I have this.

Apart from that being the most exciting part of my week I did actually have a bit of a run-in with the Russian cleaner today who can speak Italian fluently but barely anything in English again. Erica left me with Riccardo and said he needed a nap and the other half of his afternoon snack was in the fridge so to give that to him. I finished my incredibly awful workout sweating like a pig and took him off to play, I played with him in his play pen for almost an hour and then decided he should probably nap now so as usual I popped him in his pram and pushed him up and down the apartment singing Twinkle Twinkle Little Star to him. After a while he started to really cry so I pushed the pram into the sofa as it creates a rocking motion which always relaxes him, the cleaner came in and put the pram upright so he was sitting up and waved her hands as if to say no and got him out of the pram!!! And started to hold him, I thought okay she's just trying to comfort him but seriously he needed to sleep at this point.... Erica always says when he cries like that he is just overtired. So I took him again and put him in his highchair and tried to feed him with the rest of his afternoon snack... now as the spoon is in mid air and he's still crying she comes in and points and says in Italian that he doesn't want. AND TAKES HIM OFF AGAIN! I could have poured the afternoon snack over her head at this point. And then she says relax, relax in Italian to me whilst trying to stroke my shoulder as she can see how irate I was getting. I was ready to throw her out the window and back to Russia at this point! She was completely undermining everything I was doing and allowing Riccardo to see it was OK to completely defy me. Instead she took him in the living room and let him play so as she was meant to have left 45 minutes before I sat down and tried to get him to play with some toys thinking it's alright she'll leave soon to which once again she told me I was wrong and I should leave him to play and crawl round and just watch him...Was she crazy? You can't sit back and watch a nine month old baby crawling round a room with hard surfaces and edges. No way sister. I stayed put and finally she left and what do you know....he fell asleep for an hour. So who was right...the patronising 54 year old know-it-all cleaning lady or the 20 year old apparent peasant who knows nothing...but yet he fell asleep..........Luckily enough when I rang Erica with steam blowing out my ears she agreed it was wrong and that sometimes the cleaner allows the fact she has worked for Michele longer than him and Erica have been together make her think that she knows better than Erica and has undermined them a couple of times too. That made me feel much better!

Tonight we had cold meat called Rizziola (I think), savoy cabbage stir-fried with red onion and tomatoes and feta, I am also addicted to these little breadsticks they have in the house.