My children are living proof that kids eventually get sick of watching the same movies and videos after nineteen days. We had loaded their devices with apps to watch the Disney Channel, the History Channel and some other favorite programs, but those apps unfortunately don't work outside of the United States - who knew! Italian television was novel for about a week. There are four channels equivalent to the Disney Channel, Disney Jr., Cartoon Network, and Nickelodeon. The girls got a kick out of watching My Little Pony in Italian for a while, but once you have seen every possible episode at least ten times you almost want to drop-kick Twilight Sparkle.
Beyond these four "safe channels" are a hodge podge of home shopping channels, news channels and soft core porn channels. Nothing strikes more fear in me than seeing one of the girls grab the remote and start to channel toward the 50s, where the porn lives. It only took one or two times of getting dangerously close to channel 49 for them to learn that those channels were completely off-limits because they are "inappropriate for little girls."
Then, they discovered the glory of You Tube. Now, I haven't let my guard down there either because You Tube can be a no-man's land of bad ideas and stupidity. Most good adult content on you Tube starts with "hold my beer, now watch this . . .." If you are lucky to find appropriate kid content, You Tube will pretty much keep feeding you more "similar" content. The girls started their You Tube journey with more My Little Pony, but in English. Then they progressed to Monster High - not my favorite but still generally positive messages in the shows. You Tube must have suggested videos of a very young girl (Scarlett tells me she is 8 years old) doing make up tutorials so that you can look like the various Monster High characters. Each of the kids have been watching these tutorials for about three hours today as I needed to be on conference calls for work. Now, this kid is good and seriously puts on makeup better than me, but that isn't saying much as I only own mascara and lip gloss. It is clearly time to download some new books and movies care of very generous gift cards the girls received from a number of people before we left. I have another set of conference calls tomorrow and I don't want to walk in on the girls practicing their best Tammy Faye Bakker faces!
While I have noticed that Italian women generally go "tutto naturale" with the makeup, they are killing their skin by chain smoking like freaking chimneys. I expected to see a lot more people smoking here than back in the U.S., but it is alarming how young people start to smoke in Italy (and with the permission of their parents). We were told by one of our guides that most Italians start smoking by the age of thirteen. From what we have seen, that is not an exaggeration. We have seen any number of kids with people who are presumably their parents and BOTH are smoking. Scarlett went into great detail yesterday telling me about a person she saw drawing the cigarette smoke in through their nose and breathing it out through their mouth. She compared them to a dragon, which I thought was a hysterical visual.
Another thing that I have noticed about smokers in Italy is that it is almost more fashionable to be holding a cigarette than to be actively smoking it. As I have told you previously, the sidewalks are minuscule here and one is constantly dodging people. I can't figure out how at least one of the three of us hasn't gotten branded by a cigarette yet. I am reminded of my grandmother who we called Ninny. She was the queen of the ten mile long ash on a cigarette that she was "supposedly" smoking - think of the crazy grandmother from 16 Candles and that pretty much sums up my Ninny. I laugh so hard when I watch that movie; my grandmother once, much to my dismay, felt me up too. I guess it is a little early to introduce the girls to 16 Candles, but I will have to put that on the watch list for future adventures when foreign language television no longer cuts it. For now, let You Tube tutorials on make-up application reign.
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