General Update

I am just giving a general update..

Nothing special has gone on since the manifestazione.

Yesterday night (Saturday night) I went with my host sister, Dallas, and some

friends to Aosta, a little city about an hour away. We went because some of

my host sister's friends are really into rap, and there was a free concert.

It was really good, but I couldn't understand much. But my friend said that

this was better because the rap was horrible, all they were singing about was how they

were singing rap. Haha.

Today is basically a recovery day. I stayed up til 3AM last night, and I am

a person who generally likes to sleep. I mean, I take naps here everyday. Something

about being in a foreign country makes you extremely tired.

On a completely unrelated note, it seems like here, the sun goes down way earlier

than usual. At 3pm theres already long shadows cast on the ground. And by like

4 it starts getting dark! This is craziness.

School has been going pretty good. It is extremely, extremely boring at times

though. I am beginning to like my classmates more and more. They are crazy, and they

can always make me laugh. Even if I come to school with a scowl on my face, they'll have

me laughing within ten minutes.

My Italian. Eh I am getting extremely worried. While I am understanding more

and more, my talking skills are still somewhat, bad. But I mean, today, I could

almost understand everything that was being said during lunch. I am also

studying at home now. Learning a new language is really a pro-active and

hard thing, even if you are in the country.

It's also bad that people will speak english to me all the time. Even if

I start a conversation in Italian, I'll get a reply in English. Partly because

my Italian was probably so bad. I also think some people can look at me and

just guess that I don't speak Italian well.

Manifestazione

A few days ago I went to Turin for a manifestazione. That means a protest. I had never seen anything like it before. Maybe on the news once in a while, but in America these things aren't that common.

We woke up at 6 in the morning, met a bunch of people from school at the station, rode the train for an hour, and finally we reached Turin.

At first it seemed like there weren't going to be any people there. Which was a little disappointing. But as soon as we all started to get ready to march down the streets, I realized there were actually a lot of people!

There were signs, police, megaphones, and cameras. It wasn't a riot or anything, but still I thought it was pretty intense.

We all marched and chanted. We marched and chanted to the news cameras. At one point they started a fire in the middle of the street with a bunch of papers. This made me a little uneasy and I kind of stood back for that one. It was a lot of what you see in the news.

It was for, among other things, to get more money for schools. But like I said it was for a lot of different things. There were also university students and factory workers there. All in all I'm not sure if it made much of a impact. But to make a difference, you have to try.

You can't just sit back at home and wait for things to change. You have to get out there and try to make it happen.

That's one other thing I've learned since being here.

Leaves are falling...

Two months since I left Traverse City, Michigan.

Two months without my family or my friends.

Two months without the luxury of familiarity.

So odd... the first two weeks I was here it was like

hell on earth... and now I don't want to leave..

I already feel like I've changed so much. Thinking now that when

I'm finished with all of this I have to go back to high school in

America and be a kid again. What? I'm adult aren't I?

I feel like one. And going back to be a senior is a strange

thought. I don't even want to think about it.

Who knew that in a couple few months you could make

yourself something in a place where you had absolutely nothing.

Moving on... let me talk more about my life as of now.

Wake up, get ready, greet the baker as me and my host sister walk out

onto our street, walk to school, arrive late, sit down, try to follow, get tired,

try not to sleep, meet my friend at break, wait til school's over, come home,

eat, and find something to do.

Finding something to do... sometimes quite a task, other times I feel like

I am doing something every day.

For Halloween I went to a party. It was pretty epic. I had a lot of fun!

Here there were many things to do. There were discos and such dedicated

to Halloween. On my way to the party I saw about 2 trick or treaters. It's

not really something you do here.

My weeks are usually me just waiting for Saturday, by far the best night of the week.

Sundays are usually lazy and nothing much happens.. We usually will go to

nonna's and nonno's house for lunch.

However this Sunday I may be going to Turin with all the other exchange

students in my chapter. (To the Right)

Ciao - out.