New years twice and the befana

Well since I have Christmas done I thought that I would get started on my blog about New Years...just 2 weeks after the fact.. I'm sorry that I've been so laid back on getting my blogs up I promise that I will start being better about it. The holidays were just kind of hectic and well I'm going to use that as my excuse and not the fact that i was a little lazy and didn't feel like writing almost 3000 words (that's how long the natale post was) on to the computer. so here is what i did in on New Years and what the heck the Befana is.

Well me and ele went to the party that my brother was hosting in Sant'antioco. I invited Lilla to come to the party with as well. We ended up getting to the party about 7:30 ish and there were already people there but because me and ele had slept in that day pretty late and we had to go get Lilla from the train station before we went to Sant'antioco none of us were ready yet so we had to get ready at the beach house. In that house there are really 2 houses. Our house that is upstairs then the house of my Nonna which is downstairs and that is were we were going to get ready and where we were going to be sleeping. Well there was only one problem with that. It was locked and the only key was upstairs so one of us had to go upstairs in the middle of the party, find claudio, and get the key. Well I was nominated to do that so I got to go upstairs while i was totally not ready for the party and search for claudio and the key. Me Lilla and Ele went downstairs and finished (well really we started) getting ready for the party which took us about an hour. Then when we did finally go upstairs we spent most of the night outside because it was SUCH a nice night. I must say this was the best weather that I have ever had on a New Years in my entire life. there was no snow and i was outside in just a sweatshirt the whole night. Which i must say was AMAZING. Ok ill admit I'm bragging just a tiny bit right now because i know that most of you reading this are drowned in snow (can you drown in snow?) and are getting off of school because of "cold days" and my New Years was amazingly warm. but i will stop bragging now because i think if i continue my mom might come here and personally kill me. sooo moving on.

During the party ele had set up the "thing where you sing along to the songs while reading the words" that I totally can not remember the name for right now..soooo..awkward moment.. It was really amusing to listen to all of Claudio's friends singing along to songs that i had never heard of because most of them were in italian. that might explain why i had never heard of them before because i haven to been able to update my Ipod since i got here because well if i load it to my computer here all of my music that's on there now goes bye bye.. sooo no new music for me.. damn.. well any ways.. It was really fun to sing along to them with them because now i understand what the songs are saying and i can actually pronounce the words that are written on the screen (ok .. and now for a shameless plug for the Italian language and how amazing it is.. you read EVERY SINGLE WORD exactly how its written.. its not like English.. you write the word "the way it sounds".. again there is an English word for this but i cannot for the life of me remember what that word is... ) My mouth has adapted to the new sounds that i need to make in the Italian language which is nice.. Well we were mostly singing these duet things where the guys sing one part and the girls sing another part and were mostly pretty sappy but it was fun just the same. a couple of Claudio's guy friends have really amazing voices so that drowned (i have never in my life used the word "drowned" in the same story 3 times lol) out our voices which pretty much sounded like dieing turkeys..

Well for dinner everyone brought some food. mostly "pasta you cook in the oven" (gahhhh such a bad day for English..but its the one with the noodles that are really thin and wide that has cheese and sauce between them and just you cook it in the oven but that's all i can think of because in italian you say "pasta al forno" which means "pasta in the oven"..but there's another word for it that i cant think of...) but i was surprised that there were vegetables there too. i was surprised because it was all kids 19-22 years old and i didn't think they would bring veggies but well there were veggies and some meat as well. All of the food was really really amazingly yummy. I love italian food, who doesn't tho? really its like amazing! Well after dinner we all went back upstairs and we continued to sing and have fun like that. Me and Lilla and Ele were talking to some of Claudio's friends who were all really nice to us...We were just talking for alot of the night which turned out to be soo cool because we were talking all in italian and i could understand everything. Ive also decided that giving champagne bottles to 3 different 20 year old guys is probably not he smartest idea ever because they all started shaking it when our count down got to 30 and by the time we got to 0 and they opened them we all got a champagne bath. It was alot of fun though. oh and the traditional "kiss at midnight" thing they do that here too but you kiss everyone with that 2 cheek kiss thingy. But because of all of the champagne your face ended up VERY wet and stinky by the time you have done that 2 cheek kiss thing with about 30 people lol. After that there were some fireworks that were set off over the sea and that was really pretty. then we talked some more..and then we ended up going to bed around 630 AM which was really late but we were having fun so we didn't go to bed till late.

Well we woke up at around 1 pm which is actually earlier then i thought that we were going to wake up. i was actually dreading going outside because i knew what a mess we had left the house in and i was NOT looking forward to going outside and having to clean it all up. well me and Lilla and ele got ready to go out side but when we got out there ...... IT WAS ALL CLEANED. it turns out that 2 of Claudio's friends (who i still don't know who they are but it doesn't matter i love them..vi amo! (means i love you (but like you all..plural..idk)) had cleaned up the entire house. so me and Lilla and ele decided to go down to the beach so Lilla could see it . And i know i said i was done bragging but just once more. i walked down to the beach in jeans and a TANK TOP and i was still hot. i would estimate it to be around 75 or 80 degrees on JANUARY 1ST can you believe that?? well we went down to the beach which was fun and when we got back we had to do a little cleaning and then we had to go back home because Lilla had a train to catch back to Elmas.. well that was pretty much my new years..

I actually celebrated New Years 2 times this year.. how did i do that? well I had another new years party for AFS on January 3rd at the house of a volunteer of AFS. We all rode the train of the bus in my case to a city called Iglesias which is like 30 minutes from my house and then we all listened to music and talked. It is sooo different then our first couple of parties, because we all actually speak Italian now which is sooo cool... well we had pizza for dinner which was really really yummy. It was all of the kids in my chapter plus some volunteers which were really cool.. I don't really have much to say but we did talk and listen to music and take some stupid pictures that i will post when i have some more time.. and it was another really late night for me cause i went to bed at about 6:00 AM because we were all just talking and just chilling ..and idk..that's basically it.. the next day me and Nicola (the volunteer whose house we stayed at) and Nicolàs went to the beach before he took us home...and that was my second new years... and now for that elusive befana??

Well in Italy your Christmas vacation from school ends on January 7th every year because there is a holiday on January 6th. This holiday is called "The Befana" basically the Befana is kind of a mix of Christmas traditions and Halloween characters all in one holiday. well i will explain. On the night of January 5th the little kids will hang socks (think stockings) on the mantle of the fireplace and then the Befana will come down the fire shoot and put candy and other small gifts in to the socks. And i know your probably all thinking of a pretty woman right? NOPE she is UGLY. she is old and has a huge nose and is dressed like a stereotypical witch (think Halloween) and she rides on a broom stick. Well in Italy this used to be the holiday that we used on Christmas. They just recently started using Santa clause (babbo natale) to bring the Christmas presents. Before babbo natale the Befana brought the big presents to the kids on January 6th.. Now most of Italy babbo natale brings the Christmas presents but there are still some regions of Italy (Campagna) that use the befana to bring the presents.. Well that is a quick overview of the befana

Well i just reread this blog and i would like to congratulate to everyone who suffered through my horrid English grammar and forgetfulness of my used to be good English skills and made it to this point..

TI VOGLIO BENE (i love you..for friends and family)