A normal, exceptional weekend

What did you do this weekend? For us, this weekend felt normal, and yet has been exceptional, in a number of  ways. 

We had a great time doing things as a family. We started developing a new friendship with a colleague of my husband, who moved to Milan from the US with his wife and three children around the same time as we did. We went to the park with them on Saturday afternoon and then sipped on a hot chocolate together when we got tired. Yesterday evening my husband and I went out with a couple of friends while my son stayed at home with my parents. This morning we slept in and, after my husband went running, we went out for a late Sunday lunch at our local favorite Japanese restaurant. Afterwards we watched a movie and hung around the house until dinner with my parents. My son was in bed by 8 pm, because he goes back to school tomorrow morning, so I layed out his clothes and prepared his backpack before he went to sleep. 

This is roughly how we always spend winter weekends in Canada, and it is why the weekend felt normal. Yet, we have not had the chance to have such a normal weekend in a long time, which has made the past couple of days feel wonderfully exceptional. First and foremost, we were able to take my son outside to play. This has been a relatively rare occurrence lately, and it is part of the reason why, aside for a few of my closest friends, we have not made many new friends since we arrived. We have not had the chance to get to know the parents of his classmates because he has not been in school in almost two months. In addition, the "milanesi" are a quite a closed group, and lots of formalities are involved to organize any get-together with or without kids. Even though I am Italian and I was born and raised here, I realized I have much more in common with our new American friends than with my two Italian childhood friends.

There have been two actual exceptional happenings though. During our Saturday outing to the park, we stumbled upon the World Championship -- no less -- of Cross-country Skiing. We could not believe it: running through the park were a few kilometers of skiing tracks paved with real snow brought from the Alps in Valle d'Aosta. The surreal aspect of it all was that, because of the mild weather we have been enjoying (remember my last post?), the skiing tracks were surrounded  by green grass and leafy trees! One might say that snow calls for snow, and there has been the second exceptional happening of the weekend: today, for the first time, the temperature dipped below zero degrees Celsius. There go my plans of storing my winter gear and concentrating on Spring shopping...