My 17th Birthday in Italy

Someones first birthday away from home does not usually happen at 17 but mine, because I am in Italy, has happened. So I'm going to tell you all about my first birthday away from home and my birthday in Italy. I really have 2 days to tell you about because my birthday happened on 2 days here. The day of my actual birthday and the day of my party.

November 21 - Actual Birthday
My actual birthday was a Friday this year so I had school on my birthday. When I woke up in the morning, the first thing that happened was my sister and my mom came to me and gave me my birthday presents which was really nice. My sister gave me a really pretty necklace that has a charm of Sardegna on it and my mom gave me a book which I cant read yet but I'm determined to read it later. Everyone in the family gave me a big hug and wished me "Tanti Aguri" which is like Happy Birthday in Italian. When I got to school and went in the the class room everyone in my class came up and gave me a hug and the double kissy thing and wished me a happy birthday which was nice cause I know that they didn't forget. After my normal break after 3rd hour the English teacher stops me and asked me to come to the room for a minute which i have no clue why because I don't have English on Fridays. So I went back to the room with her and she had bought me a cake and brought some soda and it was really nice. Some of the teachers were there and they wished me a happy birthday as well. Which was a little strange for me because well, in Italy, when you wish someone happy birthday you give them a hug and a double kiss thing on the cheek. This is for everyone including teachers. so yes I have hugged and kissed 3 or more of my teachers. It was really weird for me because in the states that could possibly be illegal, I'm not sure lol.. The party in school was soooo much fun and the cake was sooo good. I felt really included because well i was a little nervous for my birthday because I've only been here 3 months (not even) and I wasn't sure how close my friends were so just I was a bit nervous. But everyone was sooo nice and they were so great on my birthday in school. Well I got to leave school early on that day because there was a teachers strike so I got to leave at 12:30 instead of 2:00 like my class. While I was in school I got a whole bunch of text messages from different people wishing me a happy birthday: Virginia, Kayla, Lilla, Katia, Hendrikje, and Yue Soo it was nice that people remembered my birthday. :D.

After school seemed a little like a normal day. I talked to my mom for a little bit on messenger trying to figure out Skype a little bit which was rather interesting lol (more on that later) then my friend Katia (an exchange student from Russia) called me and we talked on the phone for over an hour. The cool part was that the conversation was ALL, i mean 100% in Italian. This was my first successful conversation in Italian. Mind you it was with an exchange student but still I'm proud of myself for having a full hour long conversation over the phone, phone conversations are much harder then ones in real life because you can't point to things or use hand or arm movements to help you describe what your trying to say. So yes YAY on my birthday I had my first successful conversation over the phone. She is one of my really good friends on exchange so I plan on calling her more often now that I'm not afraid to use the telephone lol.

After Mamma and Papà got home, mamma said were were going to nonnas house but I wasn't sure why because I usually only ever go to nonnas house with papà because it is his mom but I went with mamma and when I got there, nonna had gotten me a birthday present. It was a ring from the same jewelery company that Ele got my necklace from. It's a company that only sells jewelry in Sardenga. Its a really beautiful ring that I like very much. We stayed and talked to her for about 20 minutes which I enjoy alot. Nonna is really nice :D. When I got home I got ready to talk to my Mom and my friends over the computer which I was really excited for.Well it took us forever to get the microphone to work and then we got my webcam to work but we never did get my mom's web cam to work so that I could see them lol. but I got to talk to Emma and Stephanie while they were on Lunch break from school so that was really nice so we talked for about an hour which was so nice because I miss them alot. Then I got to talk to my mom which was kinda strange because I'm talking to my mom from 6000 miles away on my birthday..

Well for dinner on my birthday we had something that I have never had before. We had lamb. And the way that Italians cook lamb is on this little rotating stick like thing that you put near the fire. So i walk in to the kitchen and I see this big hunk of meat over the fire like were camping or something (not that I've ever BEEN camping, but i can imagine). So I got to try Lamb for supper, it wasn't bad but it wasn't my favorite. Its common in Sardenga because sheep in Sardegna are like cows to Wisconsin.

A little funny about my birthday. I was born at 5:15 PM on November 21 in WISCONSIN. So if you factor in the time difference to Italy. Technically my birthday is not until 12:16 AM on November 22 here. I'm not sure if this is real logic but it works in my brain and makes sense to me lol.

November 22 - Party
So while my party was on a Saturday I still had to go to school which kind of sucked because I really don't like to go to school on Saturdays. But then again I do because I'm not sitting home on Saturdays and it gives me a reason to see everyone so i still have mixed feelings about the whole school on Saturday situation. So basically school was really really boring because I was thinking about my birthday party the whole day and so 1:30 could not come fast enough for me. When I finally did get out at 1:30 I rode home with Claudio from school and when I got home Ele already had everything decorated because she gets out at 12:30 every day. We just had to put the food out and get ourselves ready. While we were getting ourselves ready people started to come to the party. Here is who was at my party: Federica, Sylvia, and Virgina (school friends). Lilla, Hendrikje, Yue, Saskia, Olivia, and Cao-Cao (AFS'ers), Giulia (one of my sisters friends) and then 4 friends of Claudio's: Alessandro, Marco, Demo and Daniele. So the first couple people came but then I had to leave with my papà to go to the train station to pick up all of the AFS'ers at the train station. There were too many so we had to make two trips back to the house to get everyone there. So after a little while of hanging out we all went in to the kitchen to eat some of the amazing food that we had made the few days before. Everyone filled up on some amazing desserts and some amazing cookies and some rollish type thingies.

Then we decided to cut the cake and sing happy birthday. Well everyone sang happy birthday in Italian to me and I blew out the candles, but then we had to sing happy birthday in everyone's natural language. so we had: Chinese, Germany, Hungarian, Dutch and Norwegian, then Italian of course. It was really cool to hear the same song in so many different languages. Well then obviously we cut the cake and everyone ate the yummy cake that me and Ele made. Then Claudio's friends got there so then they ate the rest of the food that was left on the table lol. 5 teenage guys what do you expect hahaha. So then we all went back in to the living room and we started listing to some music and people were singing along which was alot of fun. Then we had this little mini talent show where Lilla danced hip-hop. Ele danced and Hendrikje and Claudio both played the piano. Alot of my school friends had to leave because none of them live in Carbonia so they started leaving the party earlier and so did Olivia and Cao Cao so all that was left was the rest of the AFS'ers and Claudio's friends. But both Saskia and Yue were asleep so me, Lilla and Hendrikje were hanging out with Claudio's friends at the party. One of them plays the Guitar so he was playing the guitar and we were all just sitting and listening to him play and singing along which fun. We hung out with them for about an hour to hour and a half or so just taking goofy pictures and listening to music so that was fun. Well by this point it was already like midnight or so. Every one left the party and Me, Lilla, Hendrikje, Yue, Saskia and Ele all piled in to Claudio's bed and we watched Phantom of the Opera in English and then we all crashed for the night at around 430.

Over all both days of my birthday were very much fun and I enjoyed them both very very much.

My vacation stories are on there way as well as pictures, be sure to check them out. love and miss you all!!