So much to say!

Starting nowhere in particular, Thursday was absolutely amazing. My host parents had to go to Como in the afternoon to sign something for their insurance company, and afterwards we drove all around the lake that connects Como and Lecco. The lake is quite extensive though, so the road winds for miles and miles through little tiny towns (which by now exist solely through the life-blood of tourism), all perched precariously on the cliffs and mountains overlooking the lake. The weather was very luckily gorgeous - there will be pictures eventually, although there's no way they can possibly do it justice!

There have been lots of really interesting moments in the past couple of weeks that stem from being an American abroad at a very interesting time in American and global history. I have yet to meet anyone who isn't very, very enthusiastic Obama - and simultaneously, very, very strongly anti-Bush. But at the same time, everyone is worried stiff about the economic crisis. Italy's economic boom is relatively recent, especially in terms of how old the country is, and there are still a lot of areas of instability, which are compounded by rising immigration, high unemployment rates, and the fact that everybody is disatisfied with everything the government does. All the time. Pretty much without exception, at least for the small part of Italy that I've seen. So sometimes people just ask questions about American music and habits (and usually if we're all overweight or obese), other times they very, very directly confront you about America's role in creating the current crisis.

It was really neat in today's English class, though, because we started analyzing Obama's inauguration speech. The English teacher is very good - she studied in England for a few years, so she speaks perfectly, and most of the class is actually focused on literature (we've been reading Richard III, and are starting Macbeth next week), so you don't actually lose out on much being a native-speaker. And today we started talking about accents in the US and Italy, because la Maroni (the English prof), had read an article in Time about people in the US cultivating their accents to alter their effect on other people. Afterwards, I tried to teach the other students how to talk like an American trying to talk like an Italian, and then they taught me how to speak like an Italian trying to speak like an American but actually speaking like a British person, who's confused about their place of birth and may or may not actually be Italian. This continued all the home on the bus.... Bellissima!!

Now approaching the seven week mark, it's easy to say that pretty much all of the expectations I had about everything have turned out to be completely wrong. :) There's absolutely no way to anticipate how complex everything ends up being. For example, the last thing I expected is that living in a family would be the hardest part of the experience. But in fact, everything is going absolutely wonderfully except, at times, the relationship between me and my host mother. It's very easy to forget that we've only been living together for 7 weeks, so you don't have the 17 years of mutual understanding that goes unsaid between me and my own parents. And when I found out I would be living in the north of Italy, I immediately switched mind-sets and assumed that I would be with a family that was very cultured, very modern, and very mainstream-European. Instead, my host mom takes enormous pride in still making gnocchi by hand, nobody uses a drying machine for laundry, and one of the most difficult conversations with my host mom was trying to explain the concept of pre-made spaghetti sauce. And I've learned to appreciate the fact that there's a whole lot more to this style of life than simply wanting to be "quaint."

Lots of exciting things coming up!! Tomorrow I'm going skiing with Intercultura, although unfortunately I'm actually the only student going... Everyone else is away with their families or doing an exchange in another part of Italy (unfortunately apparently not an option for the semester students in my region), so it will just be me and the volunteers. Although it's all good because they're all really nice and young and enthusiastic, and I want to talk about the host family stuff. The only problem is the "skiing" part, since my only skiing experience was a total and complete disaster, on the daunting peaks of the Rhode Island mountains. So probably I'll be sledding in the Alps, instead of skiing. Tuesday my class goes to Florence for three days!! And Italians know how to plan their school trips, so there's lots of spare time for strolling through piazzas, in addition to all of the Renaissance art-devouring. Then the 18th birthday of Viviana, one of the girls in my class is Friday, and Saturday Serena and I are planning to go to Milan to see Peter Pan. In Italian!

If people want to write letters, my address is towards the bottom of the blog. :)

Baci a tutti!