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!!!!!!!