CARNEVALE DI IVREA

Time? Middle of February. Place? Ivrea. Smell of excitement in the air. Smell of the anticipation of the return of an old battle. What battle? The battle of the oranges!!

For weeks my little city of Ivrea has been preparing for the Carnival. As in putting up nets all over the city, and posters and flags, and parades!

The first day of Carnival was rather like Halloween. Everyone dressed up and made their way to the centre of the city. There there was a ton of people dancing to music and partying. There was so much life. Everyone was happy and it was crazyness! This was probably the best night of the whole carnival in my opinion. I've never seen anything like it!

Then again the day after was the same thing, except everyone dressed up in their teams uniforms. Again it was very fun (: So many memories made!

Then came the orange battle. For 3 days. This was pure crazyness. Right outside my house there was a battle. Even if you were wearing your little red cap to indicate you were innocent, you still had to watch out because oranges flew everywhere! It didn't matter if you were throwing or not. At one point, i was standing behind the 'safety' net and a orange came and whipped me in the stomach. haha. During the Carnival they served hot sweet wine. It was really tasty.

Everyone would stop throwing at random points and start screaming "munyaya!" I definitely think I spelled that wrong but it's pronounced 'moon-ya-ya' which means the orange queen was coming. Everyone took pictures of her and shook her hand. Also when there were parades during the battle, everyone stopped and got candy that the queen and little princesses and princes threw at the crowd.

After each battle everyone was covered in orange. Everyone. Their hair was dripping wet. Even after I had taken a shower I still found pieces of orange in my hair. People tended to wear their orange mess as a badge of honor. The streets were absolutely covered in oranges. Or more like really pulpy orange juice. So many oranges, and the street outside my house was the worst. Walking the oranges went half way up my calf. Yum.

After it was all said and done, I was a little sad. But then I realized I will probably be coming back to this Carnival for years to come!

I will update more I promise ya'll! (:

The smell of Orange is almost in the air...

Howdy...

Nothing much has changed since I last posted. Only now I am getting more and more frustrated with the Italian language as time passes on. I want to scream. I know I can do more.. I just... can't. It's hard to explain. But I just wish ignorant people will realize soon that I left my friends and family and comforts and came here to learn a damn language and learn more about the differences and the struggles and the similarities. It's not like I don't want to learn. I'm not stupid, thanks.

Anyways at the end of January I went to Milan with my boyfriend and some other lovely people to go to the Arctic Monkeys concert. That was purely amazing and I had a lot of fun. (: It was pretty crazy and it was the biggest concert I've ever been to. *thank you Francesco, wonderful christmas gift (:

That same week I also went to Aosta with AFS. It was really lovely to see some other AFSers. I love AFSers they are such fascinating people. I could honestly sit and talk with some of them for hours. Which is what I ended up doing, because Aosta was extremely cold, and we went there to look at wood.. Yes, wood. Like wood artwork. It was interesting and I liked the spirit everyone had there. It was really cute.

Tomorrow there is a party for the newest arrival to the Ivrea chapter; Caleb. Another American. I'm glad to have another AFSer but I'm pretty sure this won't help me in my quest to learn Italian ):

Anywho!!!!! NEXT WEEK IS CARNEVALE! HOLY S&%*!

Everyone is basically crapping their pants right now. I have to admit, I am too. There are decorations up all over the city. So beautiful, so epic, so... I don't remember my descriptive english words well, but it's pretty cool. Also there are nets over the buildings to protect them from the epic orange battle that will take place. Also, they put sand all over the streets.. to protect them from the mounds of oranges that will soon lay upon them.

The gist of what I understand is to come is; lots of alcohol, and even more oranges. Let's leave it at that.

Okay so I'll update in a bit. With details of every orange I will see hurdled at innocent people. And details of every innocent person hurdled at oranges.

Ciao - out.