Madeline Jhawar

I live in California with my husband (and amateur photographer) Sanjay and our 2 kids, and design custom travel itineraries for Italy.

ABOUT ME (IMMEDIATELY BELOW)
ABOUT THIS BLOG AND ITS PHOTOS (SCROLL DOWN)
ABOUT ITALY BEYOND THE OBVIOUS (SCROLL DOWN MORE)

II grew up mainly in Edmonton, Canada, and have also lived in - for at least one year each:

- Brussels, Belgium
- Kingston, Canada
- Stockholm, Sweden
- Milan, Italy
- Vancouver, Canada
- New York, USA
- Boston, USA

I have a Linguistics degree from Queen's University, Canada and spent 8 years at Arrow Electronics in international operations.

My Italy Experience
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AFS EXCHANGE STUDENT
When I was 17, I left home to go on a one-year cultural exchange. My first choice of country was Italy, and because our family had hosted so many exchange students (from Brazil, Colombia, Switzerland, South Africa, and Japan), I got it, and spent the year in Monza, just outside of Milan. I went to a Liceo Classico high school.

ITALIAN LANGUAGE TEACHING ASSISTANT, QUEEN'S UNIVERSITY
When I returned from my year abroad, I enrolled at Queen's University in Kingston, Canada, and began a Linguistics degree. I spoke fluent Italian so enrolled in the master's degree level courses which were Italian literature. My professor asked if I would be his teaching assistant for the language labs, which I then led 3 times a week. I also marked grammar quizzes and evaluated students' pronunciation.

NANNY
I returned to Italy the following summer as a nanny, and worked for a family with 2 children in Brisighella, a tiny medieval hamlet near Faenza in the province of Emilia Romagna.

TOUR GUIDE IN HISTORIC FORT
I spent a summer guiding tours in Kingston, Canada, at Fort Henry. Dressed as a soldier's wife, for 90 minutes I explained the life and times of the 19th century Fort to visitors. Actually I did the tours mostly in English, French, and German, but since I was the only Italian-speaking guide on staff, I was called whenever Italian tourists arrived.

TOUR GUIDE IN ITALY
After graduation, I got a job with the hiking and biking company, Butterfield & Robinson, and led travelers on week-long biking or hiking tours in Tuscany, the Veneto, Parma, Italian Lakes, and the Cinque Terre. To them, my co-guide and I were the face of the company, their translators, van drivers, guides-on-a-bike, luggage haulers, and bike mechanics. I led wine tastings and castle tours and was, in general, problem-solver extraordinaire.

ATHLETIC COORDINATOR
A famous Milanese designer hired me to come on vacation with his family and another for 5 weeks to St. Tropez, France. And my title was indeed "athletic coordinator". The staff included 2 nannies, a chef and an assistant, and me. My job was to take the kids to the beach, swim with them in the pool, teach them tennis, and basically do things that were in the category of "athletic". I got on well with the Scottish nanny but I couldn't understand her accent so we spoke Italian together.

EXPATRIATE ASSIGNMENT IN MILAN
While biking in Tuscany, one of the B&R clients offered me a job in international operations at Arrow Electronics. I ended up working for her (well, as the COO, she was initially my boss' boss' boss!) for over 8 years. After being trained in NY and doing an assignment in Stockholm, I moved back to Italy - to Milan this time. I found an apartment right near Piazza Duomo and worked as Southern European operations manager, for 2.5 years.

ABOUT THIS BLOG
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I started writing this blog for my clients. It was easier to send them a link with information rather than having to repeat the same things all the time. Then I started noticing that I was getting a lot of hits from around the world. I was excited that the information I was providing was useful to others, and I really enjoy writing it.

I get a lot of comments on the photos in the blog. There are quite a few by my husband Sanjay, who is an excellent photographer and took quite a few photos while we were living in Italy.

The main source of my other photos is Flickr, and I use only Creative Commons photos, which means that the artist allows others to use their photos with attribution. If you click on a photo and it isn't part of the Creative Commons in Flickr, it means I personally contacted the photographer to ask whether I could use their photo - and they said yes. My secret to finding great photos on Flickr? I know what I'm looking for. Most of the time, I've been there, and I've seen it, but I don't have a good photo in my personal collection.

ABOUT ITALY BEYOND THE OBVIOUS
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I've been planning trips to Italy for friends and family for about 15 years, but until August of 2008 I wasn't charging for them, and I started getting more requests from people who weren't friends and family, people who said they'd be happy to pay for such a valuable service. And so, Italy Beyond the Obvious was born.