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