Back "Home"

I kind of felt bad about just leaving this blog for good just because my time as an AFS student was over. I feel like now and this next year my AFS experience will continue when we host Giudi from Bari Italy. During the past 2 weeks its been an adjustment, and when I was talking to Wildes (the pretty girl from Main who was with me in Rovigo for the second semester...remember her?) I came to one conclusion that when I repeated to my mom she said I should write it down somewhere because it would be good to look back on in a few years. I guess this summer will be a summer of readjustment, and when Giudi arrives my role will be changed, not as the exchanger but as the host sister. I hope my experiences will help me be a better host sister,  and she will help me see things in yet another way. I mean, besides me, who will look at my journal years from now? Who will look at my blog? I hope many. 

So I have been back 2 weeks now. REALLY hard to believe it seems like much longer. anyway....so I was talking to Wildes I think my first week back and she was saying to me that she is really sad about leaving, and kind of nervous too. This is coming from a girl who has missed things from home ever since she got here...but she told me that now, as she was packing up boxes to send home, that week she had kind of stopped missing everything and enjoying life there so she was sad to think about returning. This I understood, as i have talked about in my other posts, leaving is not easy. But what I told Wildes was:

"once you start accepting your experience and loving your new friends and family, you realize that maybe love exists everywhere around the world. And how what was "home" was only called that because that was the first place you found/knew people who loved you for who you were...but when you find other people who love you and you love them just the same, in another place, you realize that maybe you can live away from the place you called "home" and are able to call other places home...all over the world." 

This is what happens in exchange year...and semester for that matter...you understand this. And I don't think anyone who hasn't been an exchange student has ever experienced this. But I feel like it is important that we all experience/understand this at some point in life.

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I guess when I posted this yesterday I forgot to say what its like being home. It was really really strange the first week. When I got out of the airport at NY, the first thing I noticed was how huge everything was. I said "che grande macchine!!!" (what huge cars!!) I am used to the Fiat 500s in Italy and those sized cars. Mini vans are more like small buses to them, and trucks exist but are few and far between. As we got going and I started sharing stories of Italy, I bet my mom was hoping I would go to sleep soon because for an hour there I wouldn't shut up. haha :) I got home home at like2:30 in the morning, the first thing I realized was how huge our house is. Like I mean its average for an American house, but for Italians its huge. We are so fortunate. The next thing I said was "OH! CARPET!" I have not had my toes on carpet the whole time I was in Italy. Maybe it doesn't exist there or its more expensive, who knows, but I missed it a lot. My energy then was running on nothing but adrenalin. I got on facebook and let everyone in Italy know I got home safely, and I emailed my Italian mom to say the same thing. The next morning I woke up pretty early...8:30. I am not sure why. I spent the day with my mom. Then Friday she went to work, and I stayed home. I began to (and still have not completely gotten over this) miss the huge lunches with i Nonni (the grandparents). Here its so small and there is like nothing. Like your telling me all I can eat for lunch is a sandwich? Or soup? That's just a first course in Italy! Mer. And like yes I can cook it but its kind of sad if you make a 2-3 course meal and then you eat it alone...that afternoon Alessandro came to stay with us. He would stay 2 days and then me, him and Berandette would go to Rehoboth Beach together. That was a fun weekend. But when I got home I realized geez there is nothing to do. My friends all live 15+ minutes away, and that's in a car. There is no going to the town center by foot to hang out with everyone, I mean until we all get our license that won't be entirely possible without the help of our parents. This bothered me for a while. Another thing I still struggle with is mixing up the languages. I will randomly say something in Italian rather than English. Or I would know it in Italian but forget the English word. I am dreaming more in English than Italian now. And I think in all English usually.

2.5 weeks (but it feels more like 2.5 months!) later I am doing well. Excited to get away for the 4th of July. If I had returned on schedule I would have missed the festivities. So that's a plus! :)

Leaving

The title sounds so dull, and sad, but you know, it fits. I found out the "for sure" plans yesterday afternoon. I will be leaving tomorrow morning from the Venice airport, go to Rome, catch a flight at 3 pm to Zurich Switzerland, and then catch my flight to the USA at 525 pm. It will be a long day...but I am pretty sure it will stay "Wednesday" the whole time...whoa. Time change is so cool.

I thought it was awful, the fact that I am ending this 3 weeks early, missing Italian summer vacation....but whatever. I mean, most say "its basically over anyway" and well, maybe it was, but I have grown to love these people so much, last night at the party, made me love them even more. And, well, every second counts, I will make it a point to see them again, but who knows when I ACTUALLY will. Its so much harder to say goodbye when you don't know when you will be able to say hello again.


Popular questions of the night last night:
-are you done packing your suitcase? um no, almost yes, but yeah there are some things i need to do. I will do that when I am finished with this post.
-are you happy to go home to see your family? Yes. But it's not easy leaving here either.
-will you come back? Of course, but I don't know when.
-Did you have fun this year? YESSS! Of course! Yeah there were difficult points, but it was an amazing year. I grew as a person, and learned more about myself, and the world. Trine (from Norway) is my new best friend (no grace, your not replaced!). And I now have a new family. We laugh together always, and even though it was tricky at the beginning, now, I can share anything with them. My life would not be complete without knowing them. And my class, 3C, are an amazing group of kids, so nice, funny, a little wacko, but they were always there to help me try and learn Italian from the beginning.

Abraham Lincoln said "In the end, it’s not the years in your life that count. It’s the life in your years.” and, I think this year held a lot of life. I ate new things, went to a ton of new places, met a bunch of amazing people,  and began to figure out who I really am.

I guess I could finish off this blog post, with a bunch of pictures...cuz I think that is probably the cooler part of blogs. I want to say thank you to my parents and host parents for supporting me, my real ones for supporting me in doing this, and my host parents for supporting me all those difficult days. To all the volunteers who helped me out this year. To all of you guys who are debating on going on exchange, go for it. It may be difficult, but defiantly worth it. To those who are going next year, good luck, have the time of your life, these memories will last. To my true friends here, who I found after a little while, who never stopped being there for me. I love you so much, I will miss you, and we MUST keep in touch. I don't want this goodbye to be the end of our story.

Giovanni, me, and Elisa. 

Marco, me, and Nicola

Me and Sara Z. 

Benedetta, Sara Del G, me, Alessandra, and Sara P.

Marta, me, and Eva, a friend from dance.

Various members of the Rosi/Facco family <3

Trine, me, and Wildes

Me and the Barin family. The woman next to me, holding up the little girl was my assistant. 

Laura, me, Giovanni, and Elena Cavalliere (?) the AFS volunteers in my area. 

Music

Okay, so this won't be a normal post, i just wanted to post a few youtube videos of the songs that are popular here. Alot of the music is american....like "thrift shop" "scream and shout" etc. but, here are a few italian pop songs...for those who are intrested....

April :O

I cannot believe that it is ALREADY MAY!!!! Woahhh man, stop the clock! 2 months more! I cant imagine leaving...well actually I can, and I do it a lot, and it makes me stressed out. Like I have seen on  the Exchange Student. page on facebook, I would agree, i feel like at this point, it is very very similar to what I felt before leaving the USA. Looking at the calender, counting the days, a mix of excitement, sadness, and just a bunch of questions in my head. At this point, whenever I think of the USA, look at pictures of my house, it feels like when I saw pictures of my Italian family, my Italian house/city. It doesn't seem familure anymore, more like a distant memory. It's strange, really really strange.

In any case...this month has been great! The first weekend in April I went with my family to a ropes/zipline corse, in the mountains...more like hills...near padova. It was so much fun! I was so nervous all the time that I would fall, but I didn't (and your eally couldn't because you were in a harness and there was always at least one rope attaching you to the line above you) and every time I got the the next tree, a stable position, i let out a huge breath of relief! I made it! I know it's strange that I would be scared...you're probably saying "Sara, you went to another country by yourself, left everything you knew, took on school and all the other challenges, and your scared of falling?" And well, yeah the answer is yes. But in the end it was a ton of fun! :) Alessia and Daniele watched, while enrico and I did the corse, and Nicola was content with just ziplining...and then tried an easy corse with the instructor (because he was under the age/hight limit)...

here are some pictures....

The week before spain I had two oral tests, one for italian on the "exile plot" of the Divina Commedia (Dante), and then another in philosophy. I got a 8 (out of 10) on the one in Italian, and a 7- on the one in Philosophy. Really really awesome :DDD

Then there was the birthday party of Nicola. It was fun for him and enrico, but after the 2-3 hours, Alessia and I were so tired. Alessia said "it's lucky that birthdays only happen once a year" ahahahahaha

Then, before you know, it was time for spain! I didn't take a ton of pictures of the people, more of the places...those kind of pictures are more boring. Sorry. Oh well... The first afternoon we went sight seeing around La Garriga...the town that we stayed in. I cant really explain the significance of the house that we saw, spanish is hard to follow, but i can undesrtand generally what they say. then the picture of all of us with hats underground is not too good, but we were in a underground refuge where the citizens of the town hid during one of the civil wars of spain. Then the other days we went to a museum, house, and a huge church called "la sagrada famiglia" all done by this artist named Gaudi.  (And then we saw other churches...like italy, spain has many many many churches) One house had no angles, it was curved and sort of circular. Then we also went to see the "Palau de la musica catalana" which is like this theater built by Gaudi. Its not huge...but really beautiful.  I really loved it. Here are a few pictures.

March

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.

Agrigento 

Licata

An old theater at Canicatti

An antique library in Canicatti

a chapel in Polermo

Agrigento...Valley of Temples

polermo

polermo 

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.

Luca...Daniele's cousin :) 

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!