Trey Johnathan Braheem

All is well with Mr. Trey these days. He continues to devour books at a rapid pace (Presently he is reading a 500 plus page book titled “Eragon”. In school Trey is learning division and advanced multiplication and in history they are studying the Egyptian Civilization. Soon the class will be traveling to Torino (Turin) on an overnight field trip to visit the museum of Egyptian artifacts which is the second largest museum in the World dedicated to Egypt, behind the one in London. This will of course be quite a step for Trey to be away from home for two days with his teacher and classmates and one that Trey is very much looking forward to. He has student council meetings once a week (Livy attends the meetings as well) and is enjoying being involved in the decision making process. Soon he will be putting forth a proposal for his class to go on a weekend fieldtrip to the water slides that we went to last summer.

Now that soccer is behind him, Trey has transitioned to practicing baseball with dad at the castle (There are number of good places for us to work on his game including one that is covered when it rains). It’s funny how much he and I miss the game. Trey really fell in love with playing baseball last summer especially when he played on the traveling all star team. We brought quite a bit of baseball equipment with us to Italy (It’s a good thing because you cant find much of it here) and we will really turn up the practice once spring rolls around and it stays light out later.

For now, Trey has taken to learning the game of Tennis! There is a tennis club walking distance from the castle that has clay tennis courts (They’re very nice). One day about four weeks ago, I road the motorino down to the courts to see about getting him lessons. It just so happened that the tennis coach was conducting a clinic with boys and girls Trey’s age and grew up in New York as a child so he speaks pretty decent English! It’s too early to tell how passionate he is about the game and he is learning the basics at this point, but thus far he seems to really like it. For both Trey and Olivia it is important that they take part on some physical activities as schools in Italy are sorely lacking in this department. In fact Italian schools don’t have physical education at all and leave it up to the individual student to sign up for their own selected sports activities after school! At the International school where Trey and Olivia attend, they have limited physical education (once a week) and lately its been dance, hardly an Olympic sport!

Trey is not exactly a man of many words as many will attest. However, on the 10th of November his life long buddy Holden called at the castle. The two of them have had a very special and unique relationship for nearly seven years now (Since they were two). It was really cool to see Trey excitedly pacing back and forth while on the phone with his buddy for nearly one hour! Although he has managed to forge a few solid friendships here in Italy, there is no doubt that they pal in intimacy to those that he has back home. He is counting the days for our return home to Thousand Oaks for Christmas.

This month’s interview with Trey –

Q – How did it feel to see your grandma and grandpa for the first time in three months?
A – “Super Duper Happy and really excited to see them. It made me feel really good inside. I missed them so much. It wasn’t hard for me to stay up late that day to make sure I was awake to see them because I took five naps that day”!

Q – How do you like tennis thus far?
A – “It’s fun and much easier to communicate because you don’t have teammates. Its more fun than soccer because you need to use both your legs and your hands in Tennis.”

Q – Tell us about Spain. Did you like it and why?
A – “I liked it but I like Italy better. The food is a lot better in Italy. The architecture in Spain is different than in Italy. There can be many changes from one street to the next. The architecture in Spain is a lot better than in Thousand Oaks though. In Thousand Oaks there is no detail in the architecture.”

Q – What is the strangest thing that has happened to you since you have been in Italy?
A – “Having Olivia’s arm get broken. It made me feel very, very sad and I felt really bad for her.”

Q – When you come home for Christmas for two weeks, what are you most looking forward to?
A – “Seeing my friends and family and Tasha my dog. I’m also looking forward to going to bed in my bed at home.”