Holiday Post Part 1 (Christmas and Internet Struggles)

Well, this is it. The last day of 2011. Tomorrow it will be 2012, and I will start a whole new year in this paese di merde (Roccamandolfi, IS, Italy). To be fair, Rocca is very beautiful, and I enjoy seeing all of the mountains and ice and snow and such - from my seat next to the fire. As a friend of mine put it when I told him I was in Rocca for the holidays, he said "Oh! Mia migliore amica sta lassù.... è una pecora." (Oh! My best friend lives up there.... she's a sheep.) It is an incredibly, incredibly small town, dwarfed even further by the huge mountains surrounding it. We got here Christmas Eve day, and ate the customary dinner of fish and other seafood before opening presents and eating panettone. I got some great junk food and fuzzy sweaters from my family in the states, and some earrings, a scarf, a hat, some perfume, and a photo album from my italian family. The photo album was a really great idea that my host mom had where she took some photos my dad had sent her and printed them out and put them in a photo album that is half empty, waiting to be filled with photos of my italian family and me :) Speaking of photos, I really haven't been taking photos recently. It's beautiful here, and it would be nice to document all of the stuff that is happening (or not happening) but it has started to feel strange. Part of it is the increasing out-datedness of my camera, but most of it is the feeling that there isn't a need to document this, it just feels so much like everyday life. Which i guess is good for me, but not so good for everyone who wants photographic documentation of my life in italy. Sorry guys, I'll try and get back to it. I also went to midnight mass on christmas eve, which was cool. Mostly it was just strange, even more so since it was the first church service I had ever been to in my entire life - but a priceless cultural experience nontheless. There is a lot of standing involved. A lot. Especially in the middle of the night, when it's freezing cold. For the past few days I've just been hanging around the house or the town with Miryam and Anna, who is her (our) cousin who's a year older than me, and who I have some classes with at school. But Anna is in Prata tonight so Miryam and I have been left on our for New Year's and we're going to some... thing in town. The whole concept of new year's is quite different from anything I experienced in the states. In america, it's more about hanging out, having drinks, waiting for the ball to drop. I mean, people definitely go out, go clubbing and such, but in Italy.... oh jeez. People go big for new years. Pretty much every one aged 16 - 30 goes clubbing, or dancing. The big clubs have special events these nights, and tickets to get in range from 20 - 45 euros, more or less. The whole idea of clubbing, dancing, getting drinks with friends is still kind of weird, but four months in the wierdness is wearing off and I'm starting to master spending hours in heels. Oh! I got a haircut a couple of days ago, and opted for the crazy italian haircut. Well, i dunno about opted, more like just let the hairdressed do what she wanted, but I know have awesome spiky punk-rock hair that makes wearing cardigans difficult because of the incongruity. Pictures to follow in the near future. Well, tomorrow I'm off to the house of Miryam's dad where we're staying until the fourth, and then it's back to Isernia and civilization. Hooray! Now to start on all of my homework that I have to finish by the ninth.... Happy Holidays everyone!

The Immaculate Conception and Other Things I Don't Understand

Well, it's Tuesday morning and I'm currently on one of the couches in the upstairs common room, surrounded by a mountain of tissues. That's right folks, I have once again succumbed to sickness here in the land of long life and red wine. I think it mostly has to do with changing houses and new living arrangements and food and stress, but chissa, maybe I'm actually turning into Marvel's new superhero, The Nose. I am taking advantage of not being at school to write this blog post (obviously) and to study for all of the tests and interrogations that are happening before break and the end of the semester at the end of January. I was trying to think of what to write about, and I really liked Chandler's blog post that included random snippets from her journal that she's keeping while abroad. I'm also keeping a journal/diary/dayplanner/scrapbook while abroad, and I'm getting pretty close to filling it up. The first time I wrote in this journal was the 30th of August, and I can hardly believe how much has changed and how far I've come in about 3 and a half months. 9.8.11 I'm sitting on the plane as I write this somewhere over the atlantic, and according to the pilot, south of newfoundland. Because we're flying Swiss Air everything is said in English and then repeated in German and French, and being able to understand the French makes me feel a little better about my lack of Italian knowledge. (....) In about six hours we'll be in Zurich! Then we have a 90 minute layover until our flight to rome, it's still surreal. 9.9.11 There are distant fireworks in the background, and i wonder if there is a holiday or celebration in Rome. There is still so much I don't know about this place. (...) A crowd of people is playing clapping and singing games outside, and I feel a little alone in my contentedness. Things to Remember: Sometimes you will cry yourself to sleep whiile trying to read an Italian book on Aristotle for your philosophy class, and sometimes you'll be flying through the countryside singing along to Frank Sinatra's Mack the Knife - everything has its ups and downs. 18.9.11 The weather changed today. the clouds moved me to the window where silence settled as my fingertips soaked up the condensation as it fell, fell. 26.9.11 It's raining here again. I can see it out the open window of four D, blurring the windows and laundry lines of the apartment building across the street. (...) I spend so much of my time taking pictures, but I feel like they can not capture the strange beauty of this place. (...) Drinks here are never served cold, and I would kill someone with my bare hands for a really good ICED americano. I've had good espressos here, but it's always a top, a five second diversion from where we've been and where we're going - i desperately miss spending hours at driade, or weaver, or opene eye, nursing a drink and reading or writing. 26.10.11 Just read three pages of my french grammar book before realizing that it was in italian, not french. ohjeez. 27.10.11 I miss you most bare-foot and blurry eyed, watching my breath curl out of my open window and wondering what impression i left on that town. i miss you most with cracking fingertips and scuffed boots - wishing for someeone to wish for. 4.11.11 Today my italian teacher spent 15 minutes explaining to me what a sonnet it. I've never been so frustrated in my life. 4.12.11 You never quite know what vicious lengths listening to The Fray will drive you to until you're stuck in a car with four small children with nothing else to listen to. 7.12.11 Today is the three month anniversary of leaving home to study abroad in Italy for my junior year of high school. Today is also the first time that I've ever eaten lungs, but that's relatively insignificant if you're not my conscience or digestive tract. Well. Those are some choice extracts from my journal, although the full effect of all the doodling and highlighting and randomness that goes on get's lost when everything is re-typed into a blog. Alas. Oh yeah, if you didn't know (by this point I just kind of figure everyone does) I changed host families last Wednesday. For a lot of complicated reasons, most of which stemmed back to a difference in cultures and lifestyles that was too large to mend, I left my first host family and am now spending the rest of my exchange with another family. They live in Isernia, and I attend the same school. The family consists of Anna-Maria (the mom), her mom and dad, Lorenza (her 9 year old daughter), and Miryam (her 14 year old daughter who goes to school with me). Things are good - they live in a large-ish house with a big yard, and they keep a lot of animals and grow a lot of their own food. Miryam and I like a lot of the same books and television shows, and I'm helping Lorenza learn how to read sheet music. Anna-Maria works a lot but the grandparents are always at home, and I'm in good spirits (except for the being sick thing). Well, I have a lot of studying to do for all of my various tests, so, until next time. Ciaociao Helen

And Winter Slams Its Fists Against The Windows (Old post re-posted)

Well, it's me again, coming to you from Isernia (as always). It's Tuesday and I have a lot of studying to do for a test I'm undoubtedly going to fail, and an interogation I'll prolly do okay on. I find interogations to be the lesser of the school evils, since you have lots of time to prepare for them, and it's hardly ever analysis, just rote memorization (which I was known for in elementary school. Those poetry recitals didn't know what hit them). The afformentioned test is for History, and the teacher said she wasn't going to make me do an interogation, just a multiple choice test - on 100 pages of material. 100 pages. In Italian. That, as of Monday morning, I had not read. I trucked through 30 pages last night, and am on course to being psuedo-finished by class on Thursday. But yes, school. School is cold. Ohdio how cold. Schools in southern Italy are in general, not the finest institutes of learning. Graffiti is everywhere and the walls and windows are neglected. And there are old fashioned radiators in ever room, but they're turned on very infrequently, and for some reason some teachers make us open the windows - therefore losing any heat that might have accumulated. I've been building up an assortment of warm, fuzzy layers. Currently the older of my two younger host sisters is in the process of dressing to go to the theater for her lesson. This looks a little something like a monkey trying to put a sweater on a wriggling slug while a tiny bird flies around the house in search of... I don't really know. Maria Claudia (the younger) is in the first year of elementary school, which means she's learning to read. Her sounding out words is one of the funniest things in the entire world. Trust me. This afternoon I've also promised myself I'm going to start christmas shopping, since all of a sudden it is halfway through november and most of my purchases will have to be shipped 6000 miles across the ocean. So yeah, christmas presents for my real family, and a birthday present for my mom, and a birthday present for my brother's girlfriend who's turning 20, plus christmas presents for my host parents and siblings. Whew. Lots to do. I feel like I'm constantly losing time here, which makes everything kind of alarming until you realize that even though it's 5 oclock the stores are just opening and dinner is still three hours away.

Quick Quick

Ciao a tutti - Just a super quick blog post this afternoon, as I have homework to do and things to get in order. It's Monday, and technically Halloween, but it really isn't a big deal here - people are going out tonight, but only because tomorrow is All Souls/All Saints and everyone is off from school and work. The girls and I are also off of school on Wednesday, and it sounds like we might go into Rome tomorrow for a day or two but Gaia and Oreste have conflicting work schedules and it's still not clear. So, the last day of October. I've been here for about a month and a half. Italian is coming along nicely, school is difficult, Isernia is beautiful. As far as pictures go, I have been posting on Facebook, and I know that not everyone has access to those pictures. I tried setting up a Picasa account for public sharing, but the internet and the computer I'm using were making it take ages to upload photos. I'll keep working on putting them up, and for now you can just picture me - in lots of winter clothes - eating a lot of food and doing a lot of homework. In Italian. I'll write a longer post later this week, and if you're truely starved for details you could call my parents and pester them - they're clued in :) A presto Helen

Well, it's been 9 days since I arrived in Isernia, and I'm finally sitting down to write a blog post. I've finally succumbed to Facebook and Gmail, but only go on for an hour after school each day to catch up and translate things that need translating. Life here is.... neither good nor bad right now. I'm massively home sick which I really wasn't expecting, but I am just going to assume that it will pass with time and that things will get better. Italian is really difficult, and frustrating especially since there is another AFS student in my class at school who already speaks Italian. But, as my liason reminded me, her situation is very different and I can't compare myself to her. It reminded me of yoga, where I'm always inclined to put myself down when I can't get into a pose as far as some other people, but I have to remind myself that the whole point of the experience is to not compare yourself to others, but to make the most of what you can do, and to continually strive to improve for personal reasons. So, enough crunchy talk. Okay we'll go through the list: family, school, isernia/italy. Family: My host family is extremely different from my family back home. Here, I have two younger sisters who are quite loud. They cry and scream at the littlest thing, even if they aren't being served fast enough, or if they can't listen to the song they want. They also fight amongst themselves all the time. I think most of the problem is not that they are petulant, ecc, but that I don't know how to deal with it. I am not good with children in the first place, and the fact that I am unsure of my role in the family, and I can't communicate with them exasperates the problem. My host parents are perfectly nice, but my host mother always talks to me in English, which makes me feel like I'm cheating, even though I can't communicate in Italian. But, it will improve. I'm sure. Piano, piano. School: School is really difficult. A bunch of my teachers expect me to understand everything and have people translate everything to english for me which i feel is kind of cheating/going against immersion. The people in my classes are nice, but i move classes during the day and my schedule is complicated and I just feel like kind of an idiot most of the time. I love learning, and being stuck in school all day without being able to learn or participate is kind of just adding insult to injury. Isernia/Italy: Isernia is bellissima. We live right in the historic center, in an apartment right off of one of the main piazzas which turns into a sea of people on saturday night and is home to the biggest clubs in town. Everything is really close though, so it's just a five minute walk to the park in the new part of town where a bunch of teens hang out, and another five minutes to my school. Social life here is really different... kids go out after school pretty much everyday to walk around and get pizza and just see and be seen. Saturday nights are crazy because it's the only true weekend night. People flock to the piazza near my house and are up until all hours doing whatever they want, seemingly right underneath my window. But it's fun and beautiful and I love the town. Also, italian boys are kind of fascinating. They really do dress better, although I can't really get on board with the hairstyle that is currently popular for teen guys. The amount of gelling and spiking going on has reached a ridiculous level. My school is almost all girls, apparently it used to be exclusively girls and even though it's open to both, more guys would rather go to scientific high school than linguistic school. So. Italian is impossible, school is impossible, my family is nice but different, and Isernia is beautiful. More later. A presto, Helen

HOST FAMILY!

This is a couple days late, but I just recieved the rest of my host family info yesterday, so I'm not *so* behind. Here it goes. I will be staying in Isernia, Italy, which is in the province of Isernia. It's in the southern part of the country, about an hour and a half south of Rome and an hour and a half north of Naples. It looks beautiful1!! I'll be staying in the old part of town, which was first settled 700,000 years ago. whew. I asked for somewhere with history and I got it! Both of my host parents (Oreste and Gaia) work in a law firm which makes up the first floor of their apartment. They have two younger daughters, Francesca and Maria, who are 6 and 8. I've just seen pictures of them and they are so cute :) I'll be going to Liceo linguistico "Vincenzo Cuoco", which is in the new part of town, but only a 10-15 minute walk from my apartment. They love to cook and they have a piano, which is really nice, and I might even motivate myself to play while I'm there. Right now I'm a bit overwhelmed, it seems so much more real, but I'm getting more excited and nervous as it gets closer. 48 days until I leave here for the strangest and most wonderful 10 months of my life.

JUST GOT MY ITINERARY FREAKING OUTTTTTT. Orientation on September 7, depart September 8th, layover in Zurich, ARRIVE IN ROMA SEPTEMBER 9, 2011. OHMYGOSH I'M SO PUMPED!!!
(i'll try and write later but right now i'm too jittery and excited to be eloquent)

Luggage and Visa and Predeparture Orientations Oh My!

First, I would like to say that there are only 17 more days until my 16th birthday. Yayyy. Anywho, today I went luggage shopping. Originally, my dad and I had picked out a bunch of rolling duffel bags online and we were going to choose one of them, but we found out today that the maximum dimensions (every dimension added together) has to be less than or equal to 62 inches for checked baggage. So, that eliminated a bunch of choices (I guess that's why they were on sale... no one could use them!) We then looked at regular suitcases online, but I really couldn't imagine what it would be like to roll one of these behemoth suitcases around, so my mom and I decided to go to Kohls and look at their luggage. We weren't expecting to buy anything, but ended up falling in love with a giant orange rolling duffel. It's exactly 62 inches, and has a capacity of 4.8 cubic feet. And it only weights 11 pounds! By far the best of all the ones we looked at. Plus, it was on sale for only $120. All in all it was an extremely successful shopping trip.
On another note, I got my visa information Friday night. I looked through all the instructions from AFS (the document is like 25 pages!) and we're going to contact the consulate in Philidelphia this week to get my paperwork started. Sadly, I have to wait to get placed before AFS Italy can even send me the documents I need to actually get the Visa, and that's supposed to take ages. I just hope I can get mine before I'm supposed to leave :/
Finally, I went to my PDO last Saturday. Even though I already knew pretty much everything we talked about (I'm constantly on cultures-shocked and have basically memorized the AFS website) it was still fun to meet the other outbounds. No one else is going to Italy, but there are two boys going to Indonesia with YES abroad, and one of them goes to my school! It's nice to have someone to conspire with. Plus, I got to meet up with all the kids I had met at their mid-stay orientation in January.

So that's pretty much it. I'll be sure to update as soon as I get my host family placement. It's only been like... four months :p

Ciao a tutti!

I'M ACCEPTED TO AFS ITALY. AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH. this is one day late, but Thursday around 7 oclock I got a call from Walter, my application advisor with the news that I had just been garunteed a spot by AFS Italy, and that they were now looking for a host family for me. I can't believe it. It feels so much more real, but I can't even wrap my head around it. It all happened so fast! Pretty much only a week went by between me getting accepted by the U.S and then by Italy. From what I hear, I'm one of the very first, so not putting things off is worth it, I guess. I got an email from Walter last night saying that Italy is trying to find me a school and needs an updated copy of my transcript from this semester, which is kind of stressing me out, because on my last report card I had a C in AP US History. But then again my weighted GPA is still like 3.9 or 4.2 or something, so that's really good. I wonder why they need an updated transcript? I dunno, but it must mean things are moving right along. Il mondo è pieno di amore oggi! Ciao a tutti!!

Instant Day-Maker

Yesterday, upon arriving home from school, I opened my email to find out that... I WAS OFFICIALLY ACCEPTED BY AFSUSA!!! My application has been sent to Italy and I should know in the next 4 - 6 weeks. Naturally, I started screaming and dancing and ran into my dad's office... where he was on a phone call. Oh well, my news was more exciting. SO. I guess I'll update again once I'm accepted by AFS Italia, whenever that may be. SO. HAPPY/EXCITED/KEYED UP/FULL OF ENERGYYYYY :D