Here are Sam and I the night we arrived in Athens. We hit the ground and the non stop party began. As Sam and I grabbed the first glass of wine at the welcome reception held at the hotel, the photographer grabbed us to take our photo! What I love about this shot is? I have one very similar taken at the Malibu nightclub on Long Island 17 years ago! Sam is grabbing and leaning over me in just the same way, and my smile was just at big. The only difference between the shots I will have to tell you, I will never post the the old photo, we all must agree, the 80's are best forgotten. Sam has less hair, we both now carry a few pounds extra, and our smiles create more laugh lines. Barring those changes, I am just as happy today as I was then to be Sam's leaning post.
To catch you up on the other goings on. I arrived home late Friday night to only have to wake up early Saturday morning to go to my conference on Learning Disabilities and Dyslexia that was held here in Chiavari. It was a long day, but, the conference was very well attended. There were over 100 people in the audience and prominent well informed speakers on the panels. As all conferences go, it had its ups and downs, and most speakers went way over their allotted time. Therefore, my panel being the last, ran late, and was the least attended. About 40 or so attendees remained and I got to tell them about Anna and her struggles in school, my experience here in Italy trying to find answers and solutions to her issues, and mostly about how Special Education works in The United States. Amazingly, people were very interested and quite surprised at the differences between The USA and Italy. I won't bore you those details but will tell you that it was very difficult to speak in public and worse to speak in Italian. Overall, I said what I had to, sparked a discussion, and an exchange of ideas took place. Isn't that what a conference is all about? I enjoyed meeting many teachers, learning specialists, and student teachers wanting to know more about what I now call learning differences. You know what? I was asked at the end of my speech about my experience trying to get answers to what was going on with Anna all those years ago. What I had come up against and would I say overall the experience was negative or was it positive? I thought about it for a moment before I answered. And then I realized. My answer was not really relevant. Yes, it was not easy for any of us, but, it would have been like that anywhere. The time had passed and Anna has come so far. She reads. She learns. She struggles. She was born with her dyslexia and she would have had a hard time in school if we were here in Italy, the US, or anywhere for that matter. Yes, systems for addressing the issues are in place in the US and may be better than Italy. But, what did that matter? The discussion has started in Italy. The information is there for all to see. It is now up to the Italians to make the improvements they need to. And you know what I saw Saturday? Hope. 100 + teachers, speech therapists, and college students turned up in Chiavari to listen and learn more, and some came all the way from Genoa! Imagine? I left the conference Saturday and I felt great!
Arriverderci!
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