#savino might not need about a week of just fun family time before christmas eve but it definitely helps him

[thatsamericano]

I've read published books that had stuff about schools that hadn't been true in years, probably since the author was in school, so I think you're fine about the Xmas break thing. I get wanting to try to go for realism, though, and I've definitely done hours of research only to end up deleting the paragraphs with that information, because it ended up breaking the flow of the narrative 😩 Sometimes the narrative or plot just wins over little details.

Yeah, honestly, I've written several days of their Rome trip already, and I've gone into a lot of detail about that because it is important from Alfred's POV (he's visiting Italy for the first time, and he's meeting people from his boyfriend's extended family for the first time as well). I don't want to delete all that work just because it might be more realistic for them to show up later in the week. I do think they'll go back to school shortly after New Year's (like maybe on the third of January), so they'll have had about 2 1/2 weeks off of school in total. That's more than what students in the U.S. seem to get but doesn't seem like too much, because some students appear to be getting off about two weeks. I think Antonio deliberately sought out a school district with a longer winter break so the boys could get to visit with their Italian family longer than they would have otherwise. This is crucial for Savino, because he needs to cushion his annual visit to his parents' graves with some nice holiday-related family time both before and after. Marcello also gets really bad jet lag compared to his brothers, so Antonio prefers a longer winter break so they can get a decently long visit with the Italian family but Marcello has time to recover before he has to go back to school. I think FrUK also specifically selected this school district when Alfred and Matthew were young, because their Christmas plans would sometimes include going to France or the U.K. over winter break. FrUK wanted their sons to be able to spend enough time overseas to actually enjoy it but also have some time to recover from jet lag before they had to go back to school in the U.S.