Blatant Lies and a bit of sunshine

Italy offers more of the same can't-do attitude when it comes to daycare that we have already encountered in Spain: sorry, we only accept kids the first three days of July for the following Spetember, he is too old, we are full, too much administrative hassle, etc. We visited 3 schools today (Uli called 10 but 7 said right away "no way") and this is the tally: the first one is still discussing, so we are sort of holding our breath, the second one was full, according to Uli the nun he spoke to was very nice and had the sign-up book with her - for next year - but the place is full to the legal limits - so nothing they or we could do. The third one was "no way that late in the year and only for such a short time" and the fourth, which we found through the third would only accept kids up to 36 months. Now Max doesn't look a day younger than he is and so sneaking him in with the "diaper-bums" or "binki-faces" - as he calls them - wasn't really a viable option. As said, we are still holding out hope for the first one as they haven't said no - they haven't said yes either, but promised an answer by tomorrow. To get this far Uli resorted to some blatant lies: we are temporarily relocating for work and we might, in fact we will very likely, relocate permanently a little down the road and so we want Max to familiarize himself with the schools and language. Sounds real good and after repeating it about a dozend times he is getting good at telling it with a straight face. Since I do not understand every word of what he says but only get the general jist of it I manage to keep a straight face myself - not an easy feat. But, hey, if that's what it takes, that's what it takes. So we are sitting here holding our breath and keeping our fingers crossed - not easy while typing either.
The weather has improved some - no rain today - and so we visitied some of the sights: the Ponte Vecchio, the Palazzo Pitti, the Duomo (again), cast a side glance at the Uffici and the counterfit statute of David standing in front of it and ended up at McDonalds at Via Cavor where Max had his favorite French Fries and as an allowance to Italian taste, I guess, breaded gambas. The kid is so skinny that I am pretty much counting calories not with the goal to limit them but to max them out - pun intended. A medium portion of french fries has 470 kcal , he ate about 80% of that so that's roughly 400 kcal, then the gambas and the sweet juice that should bring him to about 600 and therefore might make up for all the energy he burned during the last couple of hours of walking, running and chasing pigeons.
I took my first Florence picture today but I am not too proud of them so I won't post any. This is an extremely interesting city with a lot going on, including a lot of cliches - again - and so I need some time to think, walk around and experiment to come up with anything interesting because the cupola of the duomo has been done before: form below, above and sideways and any other direction you could possibly think of. It's hard for me to admit but the light yesterday after the rain was so much better than during this day with sun only. So the photographer in me hopes for a little - a tiny little bit - more rain the Californian in me hopes not to lay eyes on a rain cloud during the next 12 weeks.
I am still feeling a bit, well, unfamiliar here. I expected as much in Mexico, where I never did, and India, where I did but for good reasons but not here, where I have been more than once and basically always thought of Italy as the logical choice for the next country to be expats in. It might be the language that makes it harder than it was in Mexico and Spain. I forever want to say Spanish sentences just to catch myself at the very last moment and then feel completely stunned, unable to say anything, even things I used to be able to say in Italian before I started to study Spanish. The two languages are very similar but just different enough to be forever confusing. Like "tener" in Spanish means to have but "tenere" in Italian means "hold" but has an aspect of "have" as well, like in you "have" a thing when you "hold" it. "La sposa" means fiancee in Italian but esposa in Spanish is "wife"- now that does not seem like a big difference but if you are in a Catholic school talking to a nun and your husband introduces you as "mi sposa" with your almost 4 year-old around hoping around you might have a problem.
Anyway, tomorrow hopefully there will be some more sight-seeing and some pictures for posting as well.