Field Trips

 Field trips here still amaze us.  They often head off into various parts of the big city and normally they go on public transportation and often we don't even know about the field trip until after it has happened.  What a HUGE difference from how school trips were handled in Seattle with several permission slips and payment due

reminders.  Most field trips so far have been free, including transportation.  Crazy.
A couple of days prior to Josie's latest field trip we got an email about it.  I probably wouldn't have even paid much attention to the email if it hadn't been for the fact that we were needing to pick Josie up a couple of hours early from school for our trip to Rome that day. 
So I asked the teacher if we could pick Josie up early from the field trip or if they were taking public transportation if we could just

meet her at a train station enroute on their return trip to school.  All of this was completely fine.  It is really no big deal just to leave a student at a train station or allow them to get home after a field trip (even if it is before school is technically over for the day) by themselves.

Actually on all of their field trips the only thing we have ever had to sign for is if your child is allowed to leave the field trip and make their way home on their own. 
The teacher who was leading this field trip was cool letting Josie hop off the train at a given spot.  But then he mentioned that he could use another chaperone or two.  He had just planned this field trip a couple of days before (another amazing thing!!  What teacher has EVER planned a field trip just a couple of days

before?!?!)  Because we were flying out to Rome that afternoon Marty had already taken the day off of work so he volunteered to be one of the chaperones.  First time for him chaperoning...
The field trip was to a cool exhibit called Makers Faire - A festival of Invention, Creativity and Resourcefulness.  Marty was assigned a small group of students that included Josie.  They both had a great time and Josie was THRILLED that her dad was able to join.  I foresee this changing.  Not necessarily with Marty but with both of us. 

I have a feeling that having your parents around in a few years will lose its charm so I'm happy we are both able to soak it up while we can.
I had to pick Benjamin up at school at 1PM with our two backpacks for our Rome trip.  We unloaded his heavier school things and then we were off.  We rode the bus to the zoo which is where we had planned to meet Marty and Josie who were making their way to us from the field trip from a completely

different part of town.  We arrived nearly at the same time, ate a quick lunch together and then all hopped on a bus to take us to the airport.
Within a few hours we had landed in Rome, we only had our backpacks so didn't have to wait for luggage and within minutes were out at the buses.  It was a type of a shuttle bus that I knew would drop us off in the rough vicinity of our hotel but I didn't really know exactly where it would drop us.  It turned out to be just minutes from our hotel. 

Score.  We checked in and dropped our bags and then headed out to grab a quick dinner.  Unfortunately, the dinner was just mediocre.  I didn't know food could be mediocre in Italy.  Disappointing for sure but we ended it with some delicious gelato ice cream then headed back and crashed for the night.