ho cambiato mia orario ancora (i have changed my schedule again)

So as you all know from 2 posts back I had changed my schedule to better fit my needs and understanding level but after having this schedule for about 2 weeks i found out that I wasn't totally happy with my schedule so I have decided to change it once again. I have decided that I wanted to take more Spanish (with the first year so it doesn't clash with my math and physics) and a little less French and Italian so that I wont totally lose all of my Spanish while I'm here in Italy. I have made a few changes so that I can have 3 more Spanish classes and 2 less french classes and 1 less Italian classes. I am very happy with this schedule.

Lunadi (Monday)
1) Italiano 1C
2) French 1C
3) French 4C
4) Italiano 4C
5) English 4C

6) Gym 4C

Martedi (tuesday)
1) Science 4C
2) Italiano 2D
3) Spagnolo 3C
4) French 3C
5) French 2D

6) Math 4C

Mercoledi (Wednesday)
1) Spanish 3C
2) Spanish 3C
3) French 1C
4) Gym 4C
5) Science 4C

6) Science 4C

Giovedi (Thursday)
1) Italiano 1C
2) Italiano 1C
3) Italiano 2D
4) Math 4C
5) English 4C

6) Religion 4C

Venerdi (Friday)
1) French 4C
2) Italiano 4C
3) Spanish 3C
4) Science 4C
5) French 1C

Sabato (Friday)
1) French 1C
2) French 2D
3) English 4C
4) Italiano 1C
5) Math 4C

Well I should give you a couple updates quickly. I have bought some books for school now. I have a Spanish book and a French book so it makes it easier to keep up with the classes so that helps. My Spanish teacher took the time to catch me up on what they have learned because I have forgotten all of my Spanish the 3 months that I've been here. Plus because Italian and Spanish are sooo close they learn more in 3 months then I did in basically 2 years. So I think even though I'm in the first year ill come back knowing more then the last year does when I return to the USA. I'm excited to have my Spanish class because I'll come back with a little more of another language. YAY.

My birthday party starts in about 2 hours and I'm super excited!!! 4 AFS girls are spending the night tonight and 2 others are coming to the party and then 4 friends from school are coming, well I'll update you on that after I get back on vacation in which i leave for on MONDAY I'm super excited...well this week is hopefully going to be amazing..

Ciao

Quasi 3 mese (almost 3 months)

Wow, so as the title of this article implies I have been in Italy for about 3 months already!! while this post does not have a specific reason like a lot of my posts do, ie.. changes or parties, i thought that I would give you a quick (are any of my blog posts quick reads? I'm not so sure about that lol there pretty long) update on life here in Italy thus far in the 3 months I've been here.

My Italian has greatly improved which is amazing because at times i thought that i would most certainly have the vocabulary of a 2 year old forever. Although now I can have a proper conversation with someone one-on-one. When I'm talking one-on-one with someone i usually have no problems communicating what I need to. Some times its weird because I will get stuck on a word that I don't know so I will describe that word with a whole bunch of other words and hope that the person gets what I'm trying to get my point. (Ill give you an example, if I was trying to say elephant but i didn't know the word i would say something like, BIG animal, lives in the zoo, has big ears and a HUGE nose, naturally in in Africa, and afraid of mice.) i only have to do this a couple of times, ok maybe more then a couple, in one conversation now but that is a far improvement from the first and second month of my exchange. Honestly the first 1 to 2 months of exchange is like one GIANT game of charades. While it was fun while it lasted it really was frustrating when you really needed to get a point across and you don't have the vocabulary to say what you need or want to say. And having all little kid conversations all day long for 2 months gets seriously boring, or having the same conversation over and over with different people gets really boring. but in the first two months it was nice to have those conversations sometimes because I knew that I would be able to get through them with out a problem because people pretty much asked me the same questions so I kind of have scripted answers for them so that is nice. But now its nice to be able to get through a new and deeper conversation with out having to use my dictionary every couple of sentences. Now when I have a conversation I might need my dictionary once or twice but i can usually make my own definition with other words and then the people can guess what I mean so that's nice because people get frustrated when you have to stop a conversation to check the dictionary for a word that you don't know. So now that my Italian is getting better its easier to have conversations with people, but there is one down side to understanding and speaking more Italian. I can no longer speak or write in English.

As you may have noticed as my posts get later and later into the year my English is slowly disappearing. I have been speaking more and more Italian therefore less and less English so I am starting to forget English words and English grammar. When I speak and write in English now i tend to leave out the subject of the sentence, (because in Italian the subject is told by the conjugation of the verb so it's not needed) I use too many articles (the) (because in Italian you HAVE to use an article before every noun) now in English because I'm starting to mix up English grammar and Italian grammar. I'm also starting to talk like a person who speaks English as a second language. I caught my self saying "I have not understood" because to say "I don't understand" in Italian you say "non ho capito" which directly translates to "I have not understood" which is something a foreigner would say not a native speaker. So I would like to apologize to all of you that have to read this blog because I know that my writing and grammar skills are not like they used to be when I started writing my blog.

School is getting better. It is still boring, but well I'm sorry to all teachers reading this blog, I've come to the conclusion that school is pretty much boring every where in the world. Although I do have to say school in Italy is really rather boring but I am starting to get to know more people in the school and become closer to the people so when I walk down the halls now I see way more people that I know and way more people say hi now so its less lonely at school only knowing like 13 people like I did before. I'm also starting to make more friends then I had before. We're not super close but it is getting better so that's good. I'm also starting to understand classes more so it helps make school less boring now that I actually understand some of whats going on in most of my classes. although I'm still totally lost in physics and math lol.

My family is just as amazing as they have been these last 3 months. I truly do love my family here I got really lucky and a good normal family chose me. We are an amazing fit honestly. They help me out so much. I think that they are the main reason that I have not been very homesick in these three months. Since the very first day that they brought me home they made me feel like part of the family and not like a guest. I think that was the best thing that they could have done, its made me feel at home here even though I've only been here for 3 months. I know that I am truly going to miss them soooo much when I have to leave its one of the saddest things to think about is to leave this family.

Ive covered all the normal topics so i guess its on to the topic of feelings. Oh my. everyone reading this blog knows that teenagers have crazy emotions to begin with but then you add exchange on to that and everything kinda goes haywire for a while. I truly have not really had that much of a problem here which I'm very grateful for. Although it is complicated being away from home, away from everyone and everything that is familiar to you. You also finding yourself homesick for the most random things. Things that you took for granted when you were at home. Like big bear hugs from your parents. I think i can agree this is one thing that every exchange student misses. Also just emotions are weird especially when you really don't know how to express your self properly. When you don't know the language its hard to express yourself and emotions tend to all build. I write in my journal every day so that really helps me i think. Over all this has been a fun exchange .I really have not had many hard times so that's good and I've loved sooo much of it so far and i can not wait to find out whats going to happen in these next 7 months.

Well my next post will be about my birthday which is in 4 days and then families and I are going on vacation to Pisa, Palermo and Florence that is coming up next Monday. So I wont be updating until after that probably so It will be awhile. I love and miss you all

Ciao

Changes

Well a lot has happened all over the world in this last week and there have been a few of those things that have personally affected my life. I guess that I will start with the small thing and lead up to the big thing. (this is going to be like all of my other posts, long hahaha, sorry)

Well the small thing that has changed in my life since my last update was my school schedule. My English teacher and french teacher got together and made up a new schedule for me because there was no way that i would be able to follow the Philosophy, Latin or History classes (actually I was following my history lesson pretty well but my History teacher decided she didn't want to deal with someone who couldn't follow fully that i could stay but she would prefer me to be moved to another class, so i made the decision just to leave because its easier then having a class where the the teacher didn't want me there) so those two teachers got together to try to fix me a personalized schedule. There was also a conflicting problem with changing my Spanish classes. I knew that I wanted to take extra Italian classes with the first year students because there class was all about grammar and I knew that it would help me if I took a class on grammar. So I was given the option that I could cut the amount of Spanish classes I was taking and take French and the grammar class and another Italian class or keep the Spanish classes and only pick up French. So I decided to cut my Spanish classes and take french instead for 2 reasons. 1) It will help me in the long run to take extra Italian classes that aren't literature because I can understand them a little bit and it will help me improve my Italian faster then taking Spanish would. and 2) I take Spanish at home and French is not an option. I know that when I get back I will be able to pick up Spanish fairly quickly because I will speak Italian fluently but I do not have the option to take French in school at home so I figured that I would take another language here while I got the chance so that I could start learning another language. Plus the language classes in Italy are much faster here in Italy so I will learn a lot of French in just one year and I'm excited about picking up a new language.

This change in schedule is good for a couple of reasons. 1) I will understand more during the day because I'm with younger classes and I'm in classes that i find more interesting so I will want to pay attention more. 2) I get to meet more kids because I'm in classes with other kids besides just my class even if they are younger then me. and 3) I have a better chance of getting better or half descent grades because I'm in easier classes. I'm excited to be able to actually be able to do something in class. I miss understanding whats going on in school. I always took language and understanding for granted in the USA like even if i was zoned out in class i could still half listen and understand everything that was said. In Italy i have to concentrate very hard on every word just to get the general idea of whats being said. I can honestly say that I'm not going to ever take that for granted again. So I thought I would give you a look as to what my schedule looked like before the change and what it looks like now.

BEFORE:

Lunadi (monday)
1) Philosophy
2) Spanish
3) French
4) Latin
5) English

6) Gym

Martadi (Tuesday)

1) Science

2) History

3) Italian

4) Spanish

5) Spanish

6) Math

Mercoladi (Wednesday)

1) French

2) Philosophy

3) Art History

4) Gym

5) Science

6) Science

Govadi (Thursday)

1) Latin

2) Italian

3) History

4) Math

5) English

6) Religion

Venerdi (Friday)

1) French

2) Latin

3) Art History

4) Science

5) Philosophy

6) History

Sabato (Saturday)

1) Spanish

2) Spanish

3) English

4) Italian

5) Math

NOW: (the numbers and letters after it are the class I'm with, 1 is like freshmen and up from there)

Lunadi (Monday)
1) Italiano 1C
2) French 1C
3) French 4C
4) Italiano 4C
5) English 4C

6) Gym 4C

Martedi (tuesday)
1) Science 4C
2) Italiano 2D
3) Spagnolo 3C
4) French 3C
5) French 2D

6) Math 4C

Mercoledi (Wednesday)
1) French 4C
2) French 2D
3) French 1C
4) Gym 4c
5) Science 4C

6) Science 4C

Giovedi (Thursday)
1) Italiano 1C
2) Italiano 1C
3) Italiano 2D
4) Math 4C
5) English 4C

6) Religion 4C

Venerdi (Friday)
1) French 4C
2) Italiano 4C
3) Italiano 2D
4) Science 4C
5) French 1C

Sabato (Friday)
1) French 1C
2) French 2D
3) English 4C
4) Italiano 1C
5) Math 4C

So that is my new schedule and I must say I do love my new schedule. I'm excited that I get to learn French and that I'm in extra Italian Classes because it will help me learn the language faster. And I love being in classes with the other kids. SO that is the change that happened to me personally now I want to talk about the big change that has happened in the , well i was going to say USA but that wouldn't really be correct, in the world.

So unless you have been living in a cave for the last few days you know that Barack Obama was elected the new president of the United States of America. I thought it would be interesting to tell you how my view of the last 2 months of the elections were from an over seas point of view.

So these last 2 months every couple of days there would be something on the news about the election that was going on in the States. I would never totally understand what they were saying but I could get the general idea about what they were saying because I already knew what they were talking about. For me it was really interesting to hear about news from the USA so often on the news in Italy because I know for one in the USA most of the news is not international but domestic. So basically for the last two months I have been hearing about the election on the italian news and reading about it on the internet. Then there is when i first meet people one of the first things that they would ask me is "Obama or McCain" Which was interesting to me because people in the states do not usually ask you this question right out because it is generally seen as a more private choice and private matter. So that is what has been happening in Italy about the elections for about the past 2 months. Which brings me to November 3rd.

So on November 3rd In Italy I was very nervous and planned on doing nothing all day but watching American News on the computer so that I could keep updated on what was going on with the election. But with the time difference when I got home from school at 2 pm it was just 8am in NYC so the elections were just starting but it was very very interesting to watch and listen to the news because everyone seemed to have different opinion even though they were all looking at the same data. I have found that since I have been in Italy I have become a lot more interested in government, politics, economy and just the world in general. I'm not sure why this is but i most certainly have. maybe its because I've seen more of the world now and I've gotten to meet other people and now i want to see how the world works together and that stuff, or maybe that's too deep and I'm really just growing up now and i realize i don't live in perfect lala land and I want to see what kind of world I really live in. So I watched the news for a couple hours after school but because of the time difference the good part of the elections 8pm-11pm are in the middle of the night and very early in the morning here in Europe so I did not get to watch any of that news coverage because I was asleep because I had school the next day. So I went to sleep very nervous thinking that when I woke up the USA would have a new president.

When I woke up the first thing that I did was to turn on the computer and open up MSN. That is when I found out that Obama was the new president of the USA. When I went to school no one knew about the outcome of the elections yet so when I told them that "Obama won" every one seemed and was so excited. Italy is very Pro Obama. And that is basically what happened all day. Except people when they would see me felt the need to tell me that Obama won because I'm American. SO i heard it about 10000 times that day. well i will skip ahead one day just to add that even in the Italian news papers something about the elections and something about Obama was on EVERY page of the italian news papers. I found it very interesting how global this election was.

SO that is a semi-foreigner American got to view the election for the history books. Hope you enjoyed reading about the changes in my life that have all happened in the last 4 days. Ciao

Halloween Party and Exchange students

Yes I am updating again lol, October has been a very event filled month.

So me and my sister decided about 2 weeks ago that we were going to have a Halloween party. about a week before the party, so a week before Halloween, we started cooking all these different cookies and cupcakes and figuring out how we were going to decorate the house and everything. Which was a lot of fun but also a lot of work for food we had: Ghost, pumpkin, bat, mummy and headstone shaped cookies, a grave yard themed pizza, Halloween shaped sandwiches, Halloween colored cupcakes, a gelatin face with the brain coming out, and little hot dog mummies. (for pictures check out my picture web sight) We also decorated the house with ghosts, fake dust, paper cutouts in different shapes, and a headless woman (again for pictures check out the picture web sight).

Ele invited all of her friends and I invited all of the AFS kids but only Lilla, Hendrikje, and Yue were able to come but we had soooo much fun. The party was a lot of fun because there was a lot of great food and there was music. We brought the sound system from Sant'Antioco back up to Carbonia so that we could all sing along to songs at the party. Singing along to the sound system was a lot of fun because we all sang at one time so that no one sounded horrible. Then we all danced around to the bad euro-pop music that is so popular here right now and just over all the party was a lot of fun. The food was amazing and the people here were amazing. but what made my party so good was the exchange students that were there.

If I do say so my self, not that I'm biased or anything, exchange students are the best people on this planet!! It was so nice to be able to talk to Lilla, Hendrikje, and Yue about everything that has happened in these last 2 months, OMG can you believe it??? its been 2 months already!!!, well I most certainly cant believe that it has been 2 months already. well for most of the party we all hung out in the kitchen or in my room because well it helps to talk to exchange students. we all know what the other one is going through and you don't feel guilty complaining to other students as you do when you complain to an intercultural volunteer. its just really nice to be able to talk about family, feelings, things that are different with someone that actually understands what you are talking about. No one but an exchange student can actually understand what they are going through. While the adults in the program can say they do but really they don't, its only the kids that went on exchange can relate. its such a crazy insane life choice that we all made and such a unique experience that we are all having it is something that only we can understand. Well we all talked for a couple of hours about everything that's happened in the last 2 months and i have to say it makes you feel really good to get everything of your chest and to have the other person understand what your complaining about or why your sad. So honestly this has been one of the best time that I've had in Italy. Just being with other exchange students automatically means a good time. Because we are just the funnest people. We all know what we are all feeling. just seriously i love hanging out with the other exchange students. we made plans to meet and everything because now that the lessons are over we don't have to see each other 3 times a week like we did when we had the lessons for italian in cagliari (IM SOO HAPPY THEY'RE OVER) but we all still want to get together because we do want to stay close and its nice to just sit and talk to the other kids for a while. So we made plans to meet in Cagliari and do things like shop and get pizza.

I already know that I'm going to be VERY VERY VERY sad to leave all of these kids that i have become soo close to in just 2 months. Even in Sassari when we were together for just 4 days it was sooo hard to leave and I''ve gotten so close to the kids in my chapter that I'm starting to realize that maybe these are the friends that its going to hurt to leave the most. and i know that i have 8 more months but you can't help but think "after these 8 months am I ever going to see these people again?" I mean I now have friends from all over the globe: Hungary, France, China, Japan, Chile, Germany, Russia, Iceland, Norway, New Zealand, Australia, Venezuela, Colombia, and Paraguay and sooo many more. Am I ever going to get to see these amazing friends that I have made again? Its going to be soo hard to leave them because its so easy to make friends with an exchange student. Exchange students are soo open and soo accepting to just about everything. And because we are all living the same crazy life for one year we all become friends sooo quickly. Even Just today when Lilla, Hendrikje, and Yue were going home i didn't want them to leave because we are so close, its just really sad to say good bye even when you know your going to see them again, I don't even want to think about how its going to be in July when we're all in Roma and slowly one group at a time leaves for the airport to fly home and you have to say goodbye to all of the amazing friends that you have made this year. I honestly think that saying good bye to all of the people here and leaving Italy is going to be harder then saying good bye and leaving the USA was because when i left the USA i knew that i would see all of these people again 10 months and that no matter how much i missed them that i would get to see them again just 10 short (and i mean very short, time flies when your on exchange) months later. But when I leave the other exchange students come July in Roma I wont know when or if i ever will see these kids again. it is going to be very sad and very hard, but I wouldn't take back being friends these people even with the painful goodbye because they are some of the best friends that I've had and i know that some of them could even last my whole life.

Over all my Halloween part was alot of fun because i got to hang out with exchange students.