The cheers in the stairway reverberated off the walls, giving us goosebumps as we waited to ascend into Scuola Mazzini in Genoa, Italy. It wasn’t easy to have all eyes on us, and my palms began to sweat as I thought about stumbling through a first conversation with my daughters’ teachers in my awkward Italian. I already had a lump in my throat, as I always do on the first (and last) day of the school year for my kids. The slightest provocation could set tears flowing, so I held steady, not wanting to cause a scene among strangers.