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