Monticello Brianza, 23876 LC
Italy
Letters are always welcome!
Send me your address and I'll write postcards!
And now for your viewing pleasure.........
A picture from Monticello's website!
28 hours and counting.
Tuesday, January 27, 2009
Address
Via Schiapparelli 1
Monticello Brianza, 23876 LC
Italy
Letters are always welcome!
Send me your address and I'll write postcards!
And now for your viewing pleasure.........
A picture from Monticello's website!
28 hours and counting.
Monticello Brianza, 23876 LC
Italy
Letters are always welcome!
Send me your address and I'll write postcards!
And now for your viewing pleasure.........
A picture from Monticello's website!
28 hours and counting.
Monday, January 26, 2009
DEPARTURE!
Today was my last day of American high school. Ever. Wow.
~2070 days of school.
~1500 peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.
~6 Gilbert Linkous field days.
~2 bloody noses from Whopper Hoppers at Gilbert Linkous field days.
~192 safety patrol cupcakes.
~3 Potter Pride days with Emma (and one Hobbit Pride day, ftw!)
~630 days of having to go from gym to a class on the third-floor. In four minutes. With a 20-pound backpack.
*sigh* It's the end of an era!
And now that the requisite nostalgia and sentimentality is out of the way - I'm leaving for Italy in 36 hours!! And I haven't started packing! In fact, I'm blogging instead. This year taught me way too much about the joys of procrastination....
For our final Italian lesson, Santina decided to have Lena (the student from Russia) and Nora (the student from Norway staying with Santina) and me help her cook Italian food! To add to the list of things to do in life - have a conversation in broken Italian with a Sicilian university professor while she sings Italian rap songs, as the smell of scorching risotto (which you've forgotten to stir while trying to remember Italian verb endings) fills the air behind you!
And since I don't have any pictures yet, here are some random internet pictures of what we made:
Exhibit A:
Penne all'amatriciana!
Exhibit B:
Risotto alla milanese!
It was all AMAZING. Possibly having to do with the very extensive use of olive oil and butter. This may or may not be why Italians are renowned for enjoying life so much: they don't have to worry about not believing that it's not butter! Apparently they just don't care. And 24 hours and many vigorous hand washings later, my hands still smell like garlic!
Okay, this time I'm actually going to go start packing.
~2070 days of school.
~1500 peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.
~6 Gilbert Linkous field days.
~2 bloody noses from Whopper Hoppers at Gilbert Linkous field days.
~192 safety patrol cupcakes.
~3 Potter Pride days with Emma (and one Hobbit Pride day, ftw!)
~630 days of having to go from gym to a class on the third-floor. In four minutes. With a 20-pound backpack.
*sigh* It's the end of an era!
And now that the requisite nostalgia and sentimentality is out of the way - I'm leaving for Italy in 36 hours!! And I haven't started packing! In fact, I'm blogging instead. This year taught me way too much about the joys of procrastination....
For our final Italian lesson, Santina decided to have Lena (the student from Russia) and Nora (the student from Norway staying with Santina) and me help her cook Italian food! To add to the list of things to do in life - have a conversation in broken Italian with a Sicilian university professor while she sings Italian rap songs, as the smell of scorching risotto (which you've forgotten to stir while trying to remember Italian verb endings) fills the air behind you!
And since I don't have any pictures yet, here are some random internet pictures of what we made:
Exhibit A:
Penne all'amatriciana!
Exhibit B:
Risotto alla milanese!
It was all AMAZING. Possibly having to do with the very extensive use of olive oil and butter. This may or may not be why Italians are renowned for enjoying life so much: they don't have to worry about not believing that it's not butter! Apparently they just don't care. And 24 hours and many vigorous hand washings later, my hands still smell like garlic!
Okay, this time I'm actually going to go start packing.
Monday, January 5, 2009
Preparing for Departure
Okay, so this will probably be the last post before I finally leave Jan. 28th! Which is still 23 days away, but here's to hoping it comes quickly:
Departure schedule:
Orientation in NYC Jan. 28.
Fly to Paris, then Rome Jan. 29/30.
Spend 6 months in Italy. !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Return to the US Jul 5.
I've been talking to my host sister, Maria Gloria, online a couple of times a week, which is awesome. There's a huge language barrier, so we end up communicating via a sort of English/Italian pidgin, but it's really fun, and I learn sooo much about colloquial Italian from the way she types. About a week ago I got a big packet of host family information from AFS, which included lots of pictures. My host parents, Gianmaria and Daniela, are both retired, but they do volunteer work and manage a garden, and my hostbrother Luca apparently likes to sail. Mom is hoping that it will include a chance to sail on Lake Como, and thus possibly a glimpse of George Clooney.....
Italian keeps becoming easier and more familiar. I feel like I have a handle on most of the grammar (Santina, an amazing woman from Sicily who has been giving Italian lessons to me and Lena, an exchange student from Russia, is officially the world's best Italian teacher), so now I'm trying to build vocabulary. That's probably the biggest problem about only having studied it for 5 months - the grammar follows from Latin, but Vergil never had to use words for pencils or backpacks or cell phones, so there are tons and tons of words I don't know. And I don't usually remember any of the new vocabulary in Vergil anyway....
Still no school assignment, which means there's still no way to apply for a Visa. All of the students leaving are getting really worried - but since no one has been able to apply yet, I'm assuming they must process them reeaallllyyy fast, since it's unlikely they'd be forced to postpone the departure date for all 45 of us. Hopefully? ^^
In other news: while my friends in Providence suggested that I "take my fashion to Milan" rather than trying to adopt more conventionally fashionable attire, I am now thoroughly decked out in new clothing. And it's mostly age appropriate. It's a really bizarre experience to finally buy clothes in a store that (*gasp*) sells hip new teen gear, where every other customer is also a teenager!
Oh, and just to keep track of other ongoing developments - I've been accepted to MIT and UChicago (yay! no more applications! which is terrific because I've turned into a first-rate procrastinator and I'm not sure how I would have gotten the rest done), and now I'm just waiting for Harvard. But I'm also currently having a midlife crisis (albeit at 17 :D) trying to decide if I actually want to do astrophysics. It wouldn't be quite so hard if I hadn't been planning on it since the beginning of fifth grade.... So now I'm thinking maybe I actually want to do something in science/technology in sustainable international development. But I'm not sure. There are very many things to think about, mostly involving the fact that the world is an enormous and exciting place and I'm not sure that 50 or 60 years in academia would really be the most satisfying. So if anyone has advice, I would be happy to listen before I leave!
Departure schedule:
Orientation in NYC Jan. 28.
Fly to Paris, then Rome Jan. 29/30.
Spend 6 months in Italy. !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Return to the US Jul 5.
I've been talking to my host sister, Maria Gloria, online a couple of times a week, which is awesome. There's a huge language barrier, so we end up communicating via a sort of English/Italian pidgin, but it's really fun, and I learn sooo much about colloquial Italian from the way she types. About a week ago I got a big packet of host family information from AFS, which included lots of pictures. My host parents, Gianmaria and Daniela, are both retired, but they do volunteer work and manage a garden, and my hostbrother Luca apparently likes to sail. Mom is hoping that it will include a chance to sail on Lake Como, and thus possibly a glimpse of George Clooney.....
Italian keeps becoming easier and more familiar. I feel like I have a handle on most of the grammar (Santina, an amazing woman from Sicily who has been giving Italian lessons to me and Lena, an exchange student from Russia, is officially the world's best Italian teacher), so now I'm trying to build vocabulary. That's probably the biggest problem about only having studied it for 5 months - the grammar follows from Latin, but Vergil never had to use words for pencils or backpacks or cell phones, so there are tons and tons of words I don't know. And I don't usually remember any of the new vocabulary in Vergil anyway....
Still no school assignment, which means there's still no way to apply for a Visa. All of the students leaving are getting really worried - but since no one has been able to apply yet, I'm assuming they must process them reeaallllyyy fast, since it's unlikely they'd be forced to postpone the departure date for all 45 of us. Hopefully? ^^
In other news: while my friends in Providence suggested that I "take my fashion to Milan" rather than trying to adopt more conventionally fashionable attire, I am now thoroughly decked out in new clothing. And it's mostly age appropriate. It's a really bizarre experience to finally buy clothes in a store that (*gasp*) sells hip new teen gear, where every other customer is also a teenager!
Oh, and just to keep track of other ongoing developments - I've been accepted to MIT and UChicago (yay! no more applications! which is terrific because I've turned into a first-rate procrastinator and I'm not sure how I would have gotten the rest done), and now I'm just waiting for Harvard. But I'm also currently having a midlife crisis (albeit at 17 :D) trying to decide if I actually want to do astrophysics. It wouldn't be quite so hard if I hadn't been planning on it since the beginning of fifth grade.... So now I'm thinking maybe I actually want to do something in science/technology in sustainable international development. But I'm not sure. There are very many things to think about, mostly involving the fact that the world is an enormous and exciting place and I'm not sure that 50 or 60 years in academia would really be the most satisfying. So if anyone has advice, I would be happy to listen before I leave!
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