Well, I realize that the last time I wrote was probably about a month ago before Sicily...maybe a little less...Since then, life here has been a milk shake of everything. Sicily was amazing! After just one week, I had made friends, and family, who I know I will keep in touch with for a really really long time. The first two days we went to different schools and gave speaches about Intercultura/AFS and our experiences, then we went sight seeing in that town. Wednesday everyone came to Agrigento to see the Valley of the Temples, and half way through it started raining really hard. It was very very cold and wet, but we still had a ton of fun. We went to school (different schools, where our host sibilings went)...thursday evening we all went to a pizzeria (I know your saying "yeah of corse its italy, there are only pizzerias" haha) together with the host families. Friday was free, I went with Morena (my host sister there), Dalila (an italian) and her host sister Nastya from Russia to the mall. Saturday we all went to Polermo, and after that at (10 pm) Morena, her friend Veronica, and I went to town. Sunday Morena and I slept in really late and in the afternoon I left with Trine back to Venice.
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| Agrigento |
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| Licata |
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| An old theater at Canicatti |
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| An antique library in Canicatti |
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| a chapel in Polermo |
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| Agrigento...Valley of Temples |
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| polermo |
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| polermo |
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| A piazza in Polermo |
Welll I guess easter would be the next important thing to talk about...
I experienced a few new things....
1) Holy week...so yeah of corse it exists in the USA....but it was my first one in the church....yeah bad me but whatever. It started on palm sunday...or better...palm saturday because we went to the saturday night mass. Then Holy Wednesday, we went to mass for the day of Jesus's death. Then after that mass the church bells didn't ring untill sunday...Easter. Saturday night we went to mass for the 3 hour long easter mass...my goodness...that was so long. Beautiful, but long. They recited bible verses from Genisis all the way to Revelation...and we sang many songs, did the ceremony of fire and then of water. The one of fire was at the begining, and then the one with water was in the middle...or maybe closer to the end. Nicola was asleep with his eyes open untill the priest "threw" holy water at him and then he was wide awake untill the end of the mass! haha :)
2) Easter eggs. Here they are huge! And inside there is a little "surprise". You give them to all your cousins... look here are a few week recived/bought to give away.
For Easter lunch, we all went to the house of one of Daniele's cousins...man there were a lot of people and a lot of food. :) Daniele is one of 3, his mom is one of 4 I think, and his grandma is still living too. They are all separated by 27 years. You do the math...we had people there ranging from 80 years old to 3 months old. All related in some way. That's pretty awesome if you ask me...
I got an egg too. Ricardo, our cousin who is 3 years old. Ran up to me, gave me this egg and ran away...here are the pictures. The first one is really bad, but it shows you how big the egg was, then the next one is after it was broken, and me opening the plastic egg inside. It had 4 baci chocolates, and a little...necklace I think it was.
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| Luca...Daniele's cousin :) |
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| Almost all of Daniele's side of the family...missing a few people. |
That about sums up my Month. Hope you all had a great Easter! I will go to spain in a few weeks...can't wait to post about that!
