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!

Random thoughts that have been in my mind for the past few weeks.

On people: (Sara Ziscardi questa e' per te!)

When I arrived here, all the differences stood out, loud and clear. But after a few months, it kind of became my normal. And well, i guess i thought about it even more when the Spanish kids arrived. Before I came here, I had all these stereotypes, I thought everyone would have dark dark brown hair, say "mamma mia" like Mario all the time, no one takes showers, they eat meatballs and spaghetti and pizza all the time, all people wear is scarves...when in reality very little of that is true, and the part that is, is not the whole story. I mean like in my class, yeah there are people with brown hair, but not like what we think. Almost all of them could pass as Americans.. dress a bit different than us, but you know....

Then when we first got in contact with the Spanish kids, I was kind of expecting them to have dark skin and hair...haha like Mexicans...gosh I'm so bad. But I have realized all of Europe is pretty mixed in appearance, there were super tall kids, people with straight hair or curly hair, red, blond different shades of brown hair...but in the end we are very similar on the inside. The language barrier was a bit difficult at first, I mean i am so used to introducing myself in Italian now that when I did, I am glad I was not blind because their faces told me I was using the wrong language...which the "right" language I am not really sure...a mix of English and Spanish I guess. Although I only spent a few hours with the Spanish kids, they all are some of the nicest people I have ever met, we laughed together, danced (to Portuguese line dances...which no one understood why I had never heard of any of them.)  together, ate together, they took funny pictures together, I mean I guess I have learned that no matter where you are from, teenagers are teenagers who like to have fun.

Piselli  

Nonna Carmen is the best. I have talked about her a lot on here...she comes up and gives me random hugs/kisses, sings and does little dances while she walks through the house, and above all, she makes the best food. Peas. Little balls of green that don't seem like you could change them in any way, besides add a bit of butter. YOU ARE WRONG. So...I will try and give you her recipe but its a bit difficult you know because she uses "just enough" there's no real measurement. 

Put a bag of peas in a pot, turn the burner on. 

+tomato sauce (about what we would call a cup)

+ onion...if its small take about 1/4-1/2...if its on the big side 1/4 or less. and chop that up and dump it in

+ parsley...ours was frozen because it's still sort of winter..she put about a handful and a half in

+ spoonfull of sugar (to take off the little bit of acidity of the tomatoes)

+ a bit of oil

put the lid on and let that get warm and happy...probably about 15 minutes...but just watch it...some of the liquid should evaporate. 

Agrigento

So, if you don't know where that is...

I recommend you search it on google maps yourself because I can't seem to get the link to go to the map rather than just google maps...ah well...YOU CAN DO IT! :D Anyway, hint, its in Sicily!!!! And I am going there Sunday march 10th (this weekend :) ) to next Sunday the 17th!!! I am riding the airplane and bus with Trine. There are a lot of people there and around there from AFS, at least 30...3 girls from the USA whew! Go USA! Hehe! I have gotten in contact with my host family...my host mom works at the school I will go to -_- school...I have two host sisters but will only live with one of them. Morena will be in my class, and Monica goes to the university in Milan. I also have a dad...good story right? :)

Anyway, some of you will be receiving postcards! :D Next post will either be from AG or after it...Ciao! 

Carnevale

Carnavale is a big deal here. It started the 1st of February, and will finish this Tuesday the 13th. Basically its this big time for celebration, eating junk food, dressing up, etc before lent where you have to give it all up...well if your a full on catholic. Like Daniele's parents will only eat fish on Wednesday and also every Friday  I mean yeah that's probably pretty normal for a lot of you. But, I feel like almost no one (unless you live in New Orleans) never really celebrates Mardi Gras....Anyway, that's not important what is important is that its important here. :D Last weekend we went to some random town outside of Este, for their carnival parade. Then yesterday,  I went to Venice with the group from Padova and Wildes. There were SOOOO many people. In the train we were shoulder to shoulder back to back, all the seats were full as well as the hallways of the train. It was crazy sauce  The train arrived in Venice 47 minutes late. I guess because people were making a big deal because they wanted to go but there was no space, or maybe we were too heavy and it went slower...who knows. The actual time in Venice was pretty awesome. I got my face painted, slowly but surly made it to Piazza San Marco where we were there for about 10 minutes. Pretty lame, but there was a train to catch. The day before (Saturday) I went to help Elisa and Giulia out at the church's festa di carnivale, I dressed as Cappucetto Rosso (Little Red Riding Hood). Then we went to Wildes's welcome party!  That's about it...I don't have school today, tomorrow, or Wednesday.

Me and Flora's Host sister Martina in Venice<3