Buona sera!

Ah, where to begin.... Starting from where the last entry left off - Milan is very satisfyingly enormous and overwhelming.

Saturday, while I was typing the last blog entry, Maria came in and completely randomly announced that we were leaving for Milan in twenty minutes. So I clapped and shouted in excitement, and then asked "perchè?" (why?) Maria's response: "boh" (linguistic note - "boh" is a really lovely word that very eloquently and concisely expresses all sorts of things ranging from "whatever" to "who knows" to "I don't care," and is highly favored among Italian youth). But since it's Milan, you really don't need a reason to go....

The distance between Monticello and Milan is more or less the same as the distance between Providence and Boston, but it takes longer because, as usual, the roads aren't straight. Luca drove us all (Maria and me) to a subway station, and then the three of us took the train the rest of the way in. Walking up the subway steps, the first thing that you see is a sweeping pedestrian walk-way completely lined with grandeur buildings filled with fashion labels (Prada, Armani, Dolce and Gabbana.....the works), all leading to Milan's greatest treasure, the Duomo. We got there around four, so everything was lit up by gorgeous afternoon sunlight.

There are lots of pictures of streets, because streets in Italy seem to be particularly photogenic. :)

We walked around for a couple of hours, absorbing the atmosphere and stopping to look at the Scala theater and Luca's office, which is RIGHT IN THE VERY ABSOLUTE CENTER of everything. When I asked him what it's like to work RIGHT IN THE VERY ABSOLUTE CENTER of Milan, his response was also "boh", and said that except when you come in the morning and leave at night, from a street RIGHT IN THE VERY ABSOLUTE CENTER of Milan, it's no different from living or working anywhere else. Go figure.

This week is Carnevale all throughout Italy (and there will be more on that after this weekend), so the streets were filled with little kids dressed up in costumes, exactly like Halloween in the US. And Carnevale is synonomous with confetti, so the streets were also covered with little pieces of colored paper.

If it hadn't been Milan, the whole trip would actually have been a little counterintuitive. We traveled a total of 2.5 hours, braved Italian drivers and, even more frightening, Luca's driving (again see below), so that Maria could buy a plain gray sweatshirt at H&M. But again, it was Milan, so definitely worth it to see the city. Hopefully there will be more trips soon, and a chance to actually go inside the Duomo!

Now, Italian drivers. To put it in perspective: having lived here for six months, when I get back, there will never again be any reason to fear driving in Rhode Island. Seriously. A few days ago, my host dad was driving me back from school, because I had stayed after with the English teacher to try to hunt down more textbooks. Roads in Italy are pretty narrow; as in, there's usually just enough room for two cars to comfortably, but narrowly, pass without having a head-on collision. That would mean that there really isn't room for a truck and a car to pass each other, although somehow it magically always ends up working out. So, my host dad is driving and we're getting pretty close to bridge, which means there isn't really a shoulder on either side. Then, all of a sudden, his cell phone starts ringing. So, of course, he answers it. So, he's driving with his left hand, holding the cell phone with his right, and Oh? did I mention? the car is a stick-shift - occasionally letting go of the wheel completely to change gears. And I almost forgot- Italians also like to talk with their hands. A lot. Including on cell phones. Are you picturing all of this in your mind? Okay, now imagine us approaching the bridge, with an enormous tractor trailer coming the opposite direction, just far enough away that we'll intersect it RIGHT IN THE MIDDLE OF THE BRIDGE where there isn't any extra room. At this point, I've said goodbye to everyone and said thanks for at least having a chance to read the 7th Harry Potter before I died. But since this is Italy and things like this are a daily occurrence, the car magically and smoothly slid past the oncoming truck and we continued on our merry way.

Driving with Luca is even more of an adventure, because you get to add him singing along in Italian to all of his favorite songs on the radio.

School continues to be one of the best parts of the experience!

This is my class:

And my philosophy teacher (the one from Calabria who always chews an unlit cigar:

We spent an entire class period taking pictures because the Italian\Latin teacher wasn't in school (this made for a very, very happy day - "la lotti", as she's known, is by far the most severe and difficult teacher that we have. When we found out she wasn't going to be in school, there was a class-room wide round of hugs and kisses).

More ways in which school in Italy is different - last Friday, as a joke my class decided to give the philosophy prof a birthday party, since his birthday was Saturday and they were hoping to bribe him into not giving them oral exams this week. So on Friday when he walked into the classroom, Anna ran up to the front with a bottle of champagne (yes, really) and Claudia and Cecilia put a cupcake on his desk with a candle in it. This all seems really generous and extravagant, right? But the prof takes one look at everything and shrieks at the top of his voice that we can't possibly celebrate his birthday because it's unlucky to do it the day before! All of the students kept asking "stai scherzando, vero?" (you're joking, right?) But he was totally serious. So we had a bottle of champagne sitting in the back of the classroom for a week, until yesterday the prof finally let us celebrate for him and we split the bottle 17 ways.

No school tomorrow, Saturday, or Sunday for Carnevale! AFS is going to Lecco for the festival\parade on Saturday, and we all have to dress in clothes from a different country, so tomorrow I'm going to spend the day trying to figure out how to make origami flowers for a lei. I decided that Hawaii was the cheapest option, despite my horrendous track record at origami projects.... Vediamo!

Tonight eight or nine of the girls in my class are going out to a pub in Casatenovo! None of our other plans to go out have worked out, so this will be the first time. Everyone's really nice (and very mature and responsible, compared to impressions of American teenagers) so it should be really fun.

Everything is set for me to go with my class to Florence for three days in March!! We're going with the History of Art teacher who's BRAVISSIMA - incredibly nice, very enthusiastic, and very very funny. I can't wait!! Hopefully it'll also be possible to go to Strausbourg later in the year with another class, since Max and Ryoto are both going too. The school is also going to be offering free classes after school for music, so I've just signed up for piano and voice lessons! It'll be really good to have a chance to meet more students and be out of the house more... Teachers and students are also really enthusiastic to help me find a school for dance, so hopefully that will work out as well! At the least, I hope to connect with people enough that it might be possible to see a show at The Scala... :)

A presto!

baci

Mary

Ciao a tutti! I've been writing this for like four days, so the meaning of "yesterday" and "tomorrow" is kind of irrelevant.

So, I just thought that the world needed to know that my life was pretty much changed forever yesterday when I discovered that schools in Italy have machines that dispense instant espresso and cappuccino for roughly $.75.

Starting this week, every Monday and Wednesday, for two hours in the morning and two more in the afternoon, Max and Rioto (the two other exchange students at Agnesi, both with Rotary - Max is American, Rioto is Japanese) and I go to Italian lessons with other kids from the area. We're the only exchange students; everyone else has immigrated to Italy with their parents. There are a six girls from Romania, a girl and boy from Russia, three girls and a boy from India, a girl from Albania, and one boy from Ecuador, but the three exchange students are the only ones going to both morning and afternoon sessions. Anyway. Yesterday was our second morning, and after an hour of working (kind of, but I'll get back to that later), Max and Rioto wanted to eat something (this is a very common occurrence). I decided to go along to see more of the school, since the lessons aren't actually held at Agnesi.

And then I saw the espresso machine. To begin (prepare yourselves: this is a truly poetic description), it has like 12 different choices based on whether you want sugar/chocolate or a cappuccino or just plain espresso, and then after you make your choice it whirs and hums and performs its espresso-magic and then down comes a little plastic cup and a little plastic stirrer. And then the machine beeps its Italian greeting, you lift a little plastic door, take the cup, and walk away with a steaming (in my case) cappucino. I'm seriously still excited by this discovery, and eagerly anticipating next Wednesday. :)

A word on the actual lessons - they're way more fun than I would have ever expected. Everybody has been in Italy for different amounts of time, and been under different pressures to actually learn the language, so we don't actually have a planned, orderly lesson. Instead the teacher assigns exercises in books as we go along, stopping at each individual student. Except that the teacher is really young and relaxed, so this quickly turns into goofing off and throwing things at each other, albeit in Italian.

AAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHH Maria just came in and told me that we're going to Milan this afternoon!!!!!!! Okay, back to blogging:

Things keep getting better in school. I now have books for almost all the subjects, except Latin, history, and math, so I can follow along in the discussions (kind of sort of). English is definitely my favorite, besides actually understanding everything going on. The teacher studied in England for a few years, so her English is really really good, and this year they're concentrating on literature, so instead of doing grammar worksheets, we get to discuss Shakespeare. Right now we're reading Richard III (well, excerpts anyway), and since I'm the only native-speaker I've been reading all of the longer passages and soliloquies. And the best part is that since I'm an exchange student and have learned over the past three weeks to absolutely embrace making a fool out of myself, there's no reason to shy away from hamming things up. Also, probably the most isolating thing about not knowing the language is that you can't follow along when people tell jokes or when something funny is on tv, so it's really really nice to actually know what I'm laughing at when Shakespeare makes funny plays on words, or other things like that.

This is a nicely disorganized entry, so I thought that now I'd talk for a minute about food, which is rather important here. We do eat lots of very identifiably Italian food, but things vary a little bit because of all of the culture associated with living in the mountains. Lunch is nearly always meat (chicken, bistecca, sometimes fish) and salad or carrots or potatoes and beets (I nearly died of happiness when I walked in from school and saw a large bowl of beets on the table). Dinner has included, over the past three weeks (it really doesn't feel like three weeks already) pastasciutta, lasagna, crespelle (which took two days to make, including all of the crepes, the ragu, and the bechamel sauce), risotto (tonight it's risotto milanese!), minestrone (which here means a soup with rice, potatoes, and lots and lots of parsley), and pizza, all of which are very recognizably Italian. But last night we eat something whose name I still can't remember, even though I asked like three times, which was apparently very typical of the mountains. Potatoes (which are in a bag hanging outside of a window, so when you want a potato, you open the window and reach out to grab one), cabbage, a funny gray type of pasta which also has a name that I forget, and roughly a pound of cheese. Oohh!! And the cheese here is soooo gooooodddd!!! Last Sunday we just ate cheese, bread, and vegetables, and it was supremely amazing. And then Tuesday night, when we were going to eat risotto but didn't because there wasn't any rice, my host mother made the absolute most extraordinary macaroni and cheese that has ever existed.

Since I'm on a role with the food topic - last night we had gelato for the first time! Every couple of days my host dad has to run errands and asks me to come with him, I guess so I can see more of the area. So yesterday we went out in the afternoon so he could drop stuff off at the Gruppo Alpini, and then walked around Casatenovo, a town near Monticello, while he explained all of the finer points of Italian butchers too me. Then we waited to pick up Maria, who has a prep class for a big English exam Friday afternoons. As soon as we got back to the car, Maria started saying "gelato gelato gelato gelato", even though it was 40 degrees out and windy. So we ended up going to the gelateria in Casatenovo. I was really not going to get any, because it was freezing cold and by this point after 6 pm, so dinner was relatively soon. But my host dad was appalled that I didn't want any, and I realized that I was in Italy and this was gelato, so why not... Two flavors were mandatory, so I had frutto di bosco (berries) and limone. It was absolutely sublime.

I think that's enough of food for a while. More later (including more pictures), because now WE'RE LEAVING FOR MILAN!!!!!!!

Starting out on an exchange program (and then trying to right a blog about it, hahahaha) is a lot like being in an impressionist painting. There's so much going on and so many new things that it's completely impossible to describe it all, or give a blow-by-blow account of everything that happens and everything that I'm experiencing. i.e. I'm lazy. So! In true Monèt style (I'm not sure if there's an accent in his name, I just wanted to play with they really spiffy keyboards that make it way easier to write using accents), here's a list of what, for me, right at this very moment, identifies Italy:

- My Philosophy teacher, who dresses all in black and who Cecilia, one of the girls in my class, has a wild crush on. He chews an unlit cigar everyday when he comes into class, and speaks with a thick southern accent (North\South prejudices are still very pronounced - the other students describe it as not being "pure" Italian)

-the fire in a wood stove in the living room of my house, which is the only reliable source of heat and forces everyone to spend large amounts of time reading or watching TV together, to stay warm

- the weekly deliveries of bread and biscotti from my host dad's brother, and the smell of the bread during every lunchand dinner when we put it on top of the stove to warm up

-hot lunch every day, which my host parents have waiting when Maria and I get home from school (actually Mom, when you read this, I kind of miss making my own lunch and just eating peanut butter!) We only really eat two substantial meals a day, so Maria and I end up eating tons at lunch because we're starving after all morning at school, and we don't get back until 1:30-3:00, depending on the day of the week.

-the view from the classroom window, overlooking church towers and the Alps (yes, really)

- three or four girls in my class going out for a smoke every day during the 11 o'clock break

- one or two girls (and one boy) hanging up their motorcycle helmets on the coathangers in the morning, when they get to school

-my host dad baking at home, making pizza or tarts or biscotti, usually wearing a bright red, flowery apron, and often singing at the same time. His repertoire ranges from Beyoncè to church hymns.

-my host dad's parents' house, located in the middle of Osnago's winding streets, with walls from the 1400s

-homemade gnocchi on Saturdays

-eating bananas (with sugar and lemon juice) with my host dad while I was writing this in my journal....even though I was still full from lunch

-students at school shouting and yelling and crying as they decide who's going to volunteer to be interrogated (self-sacrifice anyone?)

-watching television during lunch and dinner (and the television always being on from 7:00 onward). Right now it's downhill skiing during the day and "Who Wants to be a Millionaire" at night (the Italian version), which everyone plays along with. Maria and I just watched "America's Next Top Dance Crew" which is my new favorite show because it's in English and I miss dancing. :)

-my host family being way more conscious of natural resources (or at least, my host parents) Lights are always turned off in unused rooms, doors are closed to save heat, and the only warm room is the one with the wood stove. Clothes are washed much, much less often, and when it rains, my host mom dries them in front of the fire. Food is never, ever, ever wasted. In fact, I just got reprimanded for that tonight - it turns out there's actually a word in Italian for cleaning your plate. Stray strands of pasta or grains of rice are not acceptable.... Every plate is cleaned with bread, no leftovers go uncomsumed, and every morsel of flour is incorporated when my host dad bakes. Showers are taken much more rarely - I feel odd taking them every three days.

-The girl sitting next to me in school, named Serena, who's officialy the nicest person in the world. After every announcement or discussion, she turns and asks if I've understood, and since more often than not I haven't, she always repeats it in simple, slow Italian.

-Seeing Montevecchia every day, to and from school

-Maria telling me about what she likes, always punctuated by "Che bbbeeelllllloooooooo!" or "It's fantastic!"

-Maria reading Frankenstein aloud or doing her English homeowrk while I helpf. or her standing in front of the fire (the most coveted place in the house) and practicing out loud for interrogations.

-The in-your-face prominence (at least to a die-hard-separation-of-church-and-state American) of the Catholic church

-seeing the Alps every time we turn a corner in the car (I still get a shock everytime)

-the morning routine of giant bowls of tea and biscotti

-trying to remember all of the names of Papa's extensive family and making the distinction between family and friends. This is not helped by the fact that every other person is also named Mary.... :)

-church bells, every hour on the hour. The one's in Monticello are simple and just give you the time. The one's in Merate which you can hear at school are much more elaborate.

I'm going to go to sleep now......school on Saturday!

Baci a tutti-

Today is a very important day.

On my fourth day of school at Liceo M.G. Agnesi, I can proudly say that I was only totally and completely lost during one class today.

It's a major improvement.

(For the record, it was Spanish, which I'm convincing myself is excusable since they've studied it for years and never-mind-the-fact-that-Spanish-and-Italian-are-as-closely-related-as-two-etymologically-distinct-languages-can-be I haven't studied it before.)

To sum all of the events of the past four days up, I love school in Italy!! Chemistry, physics, and math are all very doable, because the teachers use the blackboard very extensively. And the little that I can understand in Philosophy, Italian, Latin, Religion, and History is interesting enough to make it worth slogging through until I can understand more.

What I still can't figure out how to do is answer questions - no matter how simple (although I think I've mastered "what's your name?") I usually stare at the person dumbly for a few seconds until after an immaginary awkward turtle has floated through the air and kicked me in the head, and I realize that it was question and either blurt out what I think might be the correct response, or wait until the other person feels sorry enough to repeat it. Italian doesn't have a different word order for questions, like in English, so you have to listen to the intonation. On top of that, it helps to be able to understand every word. Which I usually don't.

Anyway. That was a kind of unnecessary tangent.

The teachers at school differ like anywhere else. My favorite is the History of Art teacher, who's very, very funny and enthusiastic. It's a running joke that she replies to everything by saying "ok! ok!" in a comically thick Italian accent. Yesterday everyone in the class urged her on as she worked out how to say "Yoooouuuu aaarrrreeee veryvery niiiccee" in English. The Italian and Latin teacher (the same woman) is very strict and formal (i.e. she embodies Professor McGonagall), and an extremely good teacher. Italian schools have oral examinations (literally "interrogations"), which means that everyone has to be prepared all the time to sit at the teacher's mercy and recant absolutely everything they can possibly remember about the subject, while the teacher and most of the class stares at them. (This is not something I am anticipating with excitement). But it does imply that students tend to be much more on top of readings and homework than at Classical.

Yesterday the class threw a welcome party, and we ate cicerchiata, a sort of fried pastry that's made in Italy only during Carnevale, which is at the end of February. And oh man, since my host dad's family has a bunch of pasticcerias, we've also been eating them at home so if anyone in the US wants some cicerchiata, I've got sources for you.

Saturday night a bunch of girls in my class are going to go out, which should be really fun! They don't know where we're going yet, but usually teenagers go to bars (i.e. cafès) or discotechs, or sometimes to movies or bowling.

So. TODAY WAS MY FIRST DAY OF SCHOOL!!

Every morning one of my host parents comes in to wake up Maria at 6:15, because she goes to a private school in Monza which is 20 minutes by car, and longer by bus, which she takes. And usually I wake up, vaguely note what happened, and promptly go back to sleep, fulfilling all expectations of exchange students who spend all their time sleeping. But today I actually had to get up, which was kind of difficult until I remembered that OH MY GOODNESS I HAVE TO GO SCHOOL TODAY.

So then, like every morning, I had an enormous bowl of tea and ate a few biscotti (breakfast is very low key here. Everyone gets a nice caffeine jolt from tea or caffè latte, and eats a couple of biscotti or these mini-toast-like thingies with marmalade.) Then, because the bus system here seems very complicated (although that might just be the language barrier) my host parents and I pored over the bus schedule trying to figure out which one I'll be taking. But it didn't really matter for today, because my host dad was planning on driving me too and from for the first day.

So we got in the car and drove to Merate, where Liceo M.G. Agnesi is (a route which conveniently takes us past the extremely lovely Montevecchia, which is even prettier in early morning sunlight). The teacher who we had met the first time we went to the school, last week, met us again, and then one of the English teacher's took me up to the 4^E classroom.

VERY VERY luckily, my first class today was English! Everyone was sooooo friendly and welcoming. In Italy, students stay in the same classroom with the same students all day, while the teachers rotate. I'm in the second to last year, since Italians have five years of high school, in a class of 14 girls and 2 boys (who sit together in the back of the room). I'm sure I'll forget something, but I believe my class studies Inglese, Matematica, Fisica, Biologia, Storia d'Arte (art history), Storia, Spagnole, Chimica, Filosofia, Italiano, Religione, and Educazionale Fiscia (gym, but only twice a week and I think I have supplementary Italian lessons then :D). Five classes a day, with a 10-15 minute break at 11. The day goes from 8-1 six days a week, and then everyone goes home in the afternoon to eat lunch with their families (today it was.......pasta! Acutally, "pastasciutta", because the word "pasta" refers to any pastry\doughy object. They eat lots of Italian food here, in case anyone was wondering). My school is rare in that it does offer some extra-curriculars, so in the next couple of weeks I might see about joining something like at Classical. And there's a girl in my class who does ballet at a school in Merate!!!

So, back to the school day. First was English, so the teacher introduced me to the class and they asked questions about the US, which I got to answer in English, and then I asked them questions about the school. Then the teacher had them all talk about their impressions of the school (Latin is hard, Spanish is easy). And she also mentioned that there's a school trip to Florence in March!!!!!

After English was PE, but I didn't have any clothes to change into. It didn't matter at all though, because the gym teachers were totally relaxed and let us stand in a big circle and talk for 45 minutes. Everyone was really curious and had lots of questions, so we talked all about the US and Italy and Twilight and Harry Potter (almost all in Italian!).

Matematica was next, which besides English will probably end up being the easiest class. Math is universal, but the way they learn it here and how in-depth they go to topics is different, so right now they're covering trigonometry. It still takes a while to get used to the different names for everything and the way methods for solving problems and approaching equations differs, so still lots of to learn.

And if I was worried about school being boring after Matematica, Filosofia delivered a nice blow to my self-confidence. :) Non ho avuto capito NIENTE. The girl next to me, Serena, explained afterward that it was hard to follow the discussion even in Italian, but seriously, besides the name "Locke," I had absolutely no idea what was going on. Hopefully that will change once I have a book and know more Italian? And hopefully the teacher won't interrogate me (daily oral exams) until sometime ideally in May. Maybe June. Or better yet, not at all!

The Italian teacher, however, was very gung-ho about jumping right in (admittedly the best way to learn). Mainly they've been reading Dante, which is compulsory in all of Italy for fourth-year students, but today they were discussing a reading from the 1700s about the death penalty (la pena di morte). It was easier to follow than Filosofia because the arguments weren't totally different from what we might say in a US classroom, although it was really interesting to listen to some of the students' perspectives on the US still allowing it. And then the teacher asked me what I thought! In Italian! Oh man. Excellent practice in learning how to not mind making a total and complete fool of yourself!

I don't have any textbooks yet so I can't really do any homework tonight....

A presto!
Baci

Tomorrow marks one week in Monticello!

I've been really lucky and don't start school until Monday, so I've had a week to get to know my host family and learn their routines and habits, and to desperately attempt to learn as much Italian as possible. The best part? I'm learning Italian mainly by reading Twilight! Oh yeah. And I think sometime soon Maria and her friends are going to watch the movie (in Italian), so I'll get the full dual-language Twilight experience.

Thursday was the AFS Intercultura welcome party for the second semester students! We had to drive to Lecco, which is only 20 kilometers away, but distances are kind of misleading here because even though Italian drivers are ABSOLUTELY CRAZY, totally putting Rhode Island drivers to shame, the roads are so curvy it still took 30-40 minutes to get there. Everyone was crammed into the kitchen, and we met all of the year students, host families, and liasons. There's a girl from the Faroe Islands (!), and a girl from Hong Kong who lives just a few minutes away. There are two other new students, one from New Zealand and another from Columbian, and I think there are 8 or 9 of us in all.

Last night I met my host dad's parents, who live in a town called Osnago, near Monticello. AND OH MY GOODNESS IT WAS AWESOME. The town itself is like 1000 years old (I think - all of this information was delivered in Italian, so the margin for error is, hem hem, very very high), and the house where i nonni live has a room with walls preserved from the 1400s. Che bellissima!!! My host dad has seven brothers and two or three sisters, so the house (which is right in the middle of the town) is basically an entire building overlooking a courtyard inside. And one brother runs a pasticceria (a bakery), so to go upstairs to kitchen, you walk between the shop and the pasticceria kitchens. And oh man they make some truly amazing chocolate cream puffs.

Two days ago I got up the courage to ask my host mother if I could go for a walk, since I do it all the time at home in the US and the area around the house is mainly fields and little narrow roads. Except that then she asked what I thought was "you won't get lost, right?" and so I nodded cheerfully and said "certo!" (certainly). But apparently she was actually asking something more like "But won't you get lost?" So that didn't really work out. But then she offered to walk with me, so we ended up walking into the center of town, and because then it started raining we ran into the Gruppo Alpini building, which is (again piecing things together from what I could pick out of my host dad's explanation) a branch of the Italian military which does something in the Alps. Google to the rescue! Anyway. So downstairs there's a bar which was filled with older men chatting and drinking coffee, and upstairs is the club office, where my host dad is the secretary. The walls are covered with Alpine hats and the whole building looks like an Alpine hunting lodge - it's a really interesting contrast with the rest of the buildings and town. And then my host mother started speaking the local dialect, Brianzolo, with an older man who was also upstairs working. That was really cool, because you can hear all of the French and German inflections. The only word I know is "nem!" which means the same thing as "andiamo!", or let's go! And like some of the older people in town, this man doesn't actually speak Italian, only the local dialect. But sadly the language is dying out - Luca and Maria can understand it, but they don't speak it, which is true of pretty much all the younger people here.

I'm going to go keep reading Twilight.... :)

A presto!
Mary

ITALIA 101

Important words for foreigners to know:

capito (or more often than not, non capito)/capisco - I do\don't understand. Seriously like 80% of what I say right now....

buono\bello\bravo - all variations on "good" but each used in different ways and I still can't for the life of me figure out how

BASTA - "enough", because Italian mothers want you to eat more. Always.

esatto - "exactly" for all the times when you flail your arms around trying to mime out what your trying to say and your host family provides the Italian (extra points if it turns out to be an exact cognate. Per esempio, yesterday I was trying to describe North Dakota to my host father, with variations on "lots of space, not lots of people", when he raised his eyebrows and said "deserto?". Deserted. Heh. Esatto!)

My host family is amazing, and it already feels very much like home! My host dad, Gianmaria, is retired from working at a bank, but still "giovane" (young) inside, as my host mother says. My host mom's name is Daniela, and she works part-time at a factory that makes picture frames. They've both lived in Monticello Brianza their whole lives; the house was originally Daniela's grandmother's, and all of her family is buried in the local cemetery. Both are EXTREMELY patient, which is pretty much the best thing I could have asked for in a host family! Gianmaria has picked up a few words of English, but Daniela doesn't speak any, which is amazing for learning Italian, but not so great if you want to communicate quickly and efficiently. But they're always willing to speak slowly, rephrase things in simpler words, or look things up in the dictionary.

It's been wonderful to have a sorella (sister) for the first time! Maria Gloria is similarly amazing. She's been learning English and is getting ready for a huge standarized English exam, so she practices her English, I practice my Italian, and it works out perfectly for everyone. Two nights ago I helped her with her English homework, and we talked about the Industrial Revolution in a broken Italian-English pidgin. Not an experience to be missed!

I also have a brother, Luca, although I haven't had a chance to talk to him very much. He works as an analyst in an investment management company in Milan, and hasn't been home except for the first night because he volunteers as an ambulance driver and was out meeting friends. He's fluent in English though, which is incredibly helpful for the times when communication is really necessary. Both he and Maria Gloria have been very generous about acting as translators when I get confused!

I don't start school until Monday, because this is a review week (I think - something involving "recuperare." Everyone was speaking really fast when they were explaining it.). There are two other exchange students at the school though (two boys, one from North Dakota and the other from Japan, and both speak English), and since the school offers supplementary Italian lessons, I'll be able to take lessons with them! The teachers I talked to were all very excited that I can speak a little Italian already, which is encouraging because I'm still pretty lost most of the time... I can follow the gist of conversations, but if people ask me something directly or if there's a lot of background noise, I have absolutely no idea what's going on. It's an interesting change! There have been a lot of times of the past few days when I've gotten in a car with only the vaguest idea of where we're going.

The town of Monticello is beautiful! Everything is very hilly (I'm in the pre-Alpine region), and the first night I was here it snowed six or seven inches. My house is at the bottom of a hill, looking up towards the center of the village and the church. (There are many, many churches and they are all, without exception so far, very old and very pretty).

And today I went to Lake Como with my host parents! AAAhhhh sooooo pretttyyy!!!

Tomorrow there's a welcome party by AFS Intercultura for all the students in my region, so I'll be able to see the town Lecco (which is supposed to be even prettier than Como) and meet all the other students. And Italian lessons start Friday!

Ciao a tutti!!

Ciao a tutti!!

I'm writing from my room in Monticello Brianza, serenaded by a particularly noisy flock of sheep in the field next to the house!

The room Maria Gloria and I share:

And the sheep:

So much to tell everyone! I'll try to keep this post from becoming ridiculously long!

Okay, here's a recap of the past six days:

Because of the ice storms in New England, Mom underwent her Transformers-esque metamorphosis into Hun Tours mode and expertly changed all of our travel plans. We spent Tuesday night in Boston, and then I flew to New York early Wednesday morning. Since the orientation didn't actually start until 5 that night, I had a rather significant amount of time to kill in the scenic JFK Doubletree Hotel. But on the way to the hotel from the airport, I ended up taking the same shuttle as a girl from North Dakota going to France, and we talked for hours (literally, since we had about six before anyone else arrived). That was really awesome, because we were worried about so many of the same types of things and it was fun to wonder about how things would work out with our host families.

The New York orientation itself was kind of like lima beans - useful, but ultimately bland. Few things kill the mood at a party than 70 bored, anxious teenagers! We went over the AFS rules (there are only three of them, so it doesn't take long) MANY, MANY times, and talked some about ways to integrate yourself into the community. The students going to Italy (there are 43 of us) had a Skype conversation with a Sicilian woman, who gave a us a 45-minute crash course in Italian culture. It was intense! The best activity (and incredibly useful) of the orientation was Charades, using a compilation of enthusiastic hand gestures, broken Italian, and odd bits of French and Spanish to try to convey such eloquent ideas as "I need a blender, milk, a peach, and a banana to make a smoothie." If the past three days are any indication, six months from now we'll all have had a lot more practice!

We flew from New York to Paris Wednesday evening, via Air France. The flight was loads of fun. More 45-minute crash courses (in Italian), and we thought that we were ridiculously cool for talking to the flight attendants in high school French (which in my case is completely nonexistent). The flight attendants were very indulgent.

We had a two-hour layover in Charles de Gaulle, which ended up being just enough. We had to go through security again, but we got really confused about where to go so various policeman ended up pushing us towards a seperate security station for airport employees. But since there were 43 of us, we hadn't slept in 24 hours, and everyone was carrying her entire life on his back (why are English pronouns so difficult?), it took a while to get through.

The flight from Paris to Rome was also fun, because I ended up sitting next to a very talkative Lebanese fashion photographer - the conversation ranged from the Statue of Liberty to Alpine skiing to urban development to the state of electrical engineering in Lebanon. All on a 24 and counting hours without sleep, which is definitely the best way to do things!

Le Alpi!!

We got to Rome, lost of a few kids in the airport, eventually found those kids, then waited for a while for the AFS volunteer who had gone off to look for them. And then we drove through Rome to the Villa Aurelia, a hotel-conference center where we had the Italian-side of the orientation.

Everything that other students have said comparing the NY and Rome orientations is completely true! In NY, the volunteers were older and treated us like we were somewhere around the age of 12, the food was okay, the plates were made of paper, and the weather was foul. In Rome, the volunteers were all around 26, our orientation included an impromptu "How to swear in Italian" lesson, lunch and dinner always included three courses, served by waiters, at tables supplied with bottles of sparkling water, and the weather was a balmy 55 degrees (after 36 hours without sleep and 13 hours without food, dinner the first night was very probably the best meal I've ever had). And it was sunny.

Our one touristy thing during the orientation (which was much shorter than we were expecting, although after NY I think we were all tired of being oriented, so it all worked out in the end) was a visit to the Vatican. BELLISIMA!

Whew. This is longer than I planned, and I haven't actually gotten to the host family part yet... Another post with more later! But to sum things up, everything has been going splendidly and I LOVE MY HOST FAMILY.

Baci e abbracci! (Kisses and hugs! Italian is a rather affectionate language.)

Mary