So walking down the street last night, reading a txt in a Italian so i was concentrating and then WHAM! walked straight in to a pole

I thought that walking in to a pole was hilarious. Giuseppe was with me and he just didn't say "watch out for the pole" because he just assumed that I would see it. I told him he should never assume things like that with me :P I cant believe he didn't laugh at me more, I was cracking up!

So it's now officially winter here and it's cold. Christmas is coming too but because it's cold and dark early at night it doesn't feel like Christmas at all. good thing I suppose because it means theres less time for me to miss Chrissy at home. I'm becoming more and more fluent in Italian and sometimes I don't even notice when I say something in Italian compared to in English. Very positive for me and it feels really good! and then school again getting better and better and everyone knows me by now.

So have had a good month. around the middle of November, Maxime, the girl from Holland, had her 17th birthday so we had a small party for that at her house with a couple of her friends from school and then us exchangees. Also saw New moon in Italian. Italian makes everything seem ALOT more dramatic. And the kids in the theatre would scream every time someone took their shirt off or something happened that was exciting. Got really annoying by the end but my friend, Titta, and I had great fun mocking them. About 2 weeks ago I had lunch with my Italian teacher and that was good, seeing in to the lives of different Italian families. And then the first Sunday after the end of October, Lorena and I went with my aunt and uncle to Naples to see the Christmas market. Naples is about 3 hours drive away from my town so it is the closest major Italian city to where I live. We left home around 7.30 in the morning and arrived in Naples around 10.30. We first went to the part of town where the market was held, had a look at the stalls, bought some souvenirs, had a look at some of the really beautiful churches around the area (these ones had frescoes covering the walls and ceilings. I have pictures of one and I will put them up on facebook and maybe a few in here) then got pizza (yussss! pizza in naples!) and went to the marina to eat it. Neapolitan pizza is definitely better than that stuff we have in Gravina and the stuff in Gravina is pretty good too. It was good to visit the sea again, smell the sea air and be around the water. I really miss it. After we had eaten we went for a drive around the Amalfi coast which is just south of Naples. It's an absolutely beautiful area. The drive was long though, winding in and out of the cliffs but it was worth it and again I have plenty of photos. Sometimes I think I'm secretly an Asian tourist with the amount of photos I take. We got home that night about 10.30 and it was a great day, seeing some more of Italy. The this Saturday my friend Massimo, who is a native of Denmark, and lives in a town about 3 hours south of me with AFS, came to visit for a few days. It was great to see him as we haven't seen each other since camp about 2 months ago. So Saturday night, Massimo Lorena and I went out for a drink, Sunday we went for a trip around my town and some pizza at Lorena and my favourite pizzeria(we frequent it about once a week) and Monday we tripped it to Bari for a day of shopping and meeting up with all the other AFS exchange students from around our area. In the end we had about 10-12 of us there. I got to see Ashika from NZ again and that was really good. Talking on Skype and hearing a kiwi accent in person is very different. We all had a great day and I think now that we have done this more trips with all of us together are sure to come. It's relatively easy to get to one another because of the train network, we just have to get permission from our parents to travel to the other towns, which is sometimes difficult for some. But it was a great day, wandering around, shopping, talking, and eating fast food (some of us haven't had it in 3 months!). We had Monday and Tuesday off for a religious holiday and we made the most of Monday for sure. other than that Lorena and I are forever going out. We never seem to run out of things to talk about and it actually feels weird to not talk to her everyday now, as we usually do. We know each other far to well now too and its nice to have someone there again who really knows me. I also do A LOT of baking for my family. When I get bored I bake for something to do and I have now made chocolate chip muffins, chocolate chip cookies, shortbread, pikelets and something that resembled lolly cake (it wasn't due to my shit baking, they don't have condensed milk in supermarkets here. They don't even know what it is).

So in the next month we have christmas. On the 24th we go to Mass at church and on the 25th we go to my Papa's mothers for lunch. And they don't celebrate boxing day so thats it. Maybe we will have another day in Bari or Matera with the exchange students and on the 23rd there is a Christmas party that Lorena, Maxime and I want to go to. We also finish school that day and have 2 or 3 weeks holiday, which I'm thoroughly looking forward to.

Write again after Christmas!
Ciao!!

“I’ve been having these really strange dreams lately; I think it’s the Nutella” Ashika Dayabhai.

The quote above is care of my friend Ashika from Welly who lives about 2 hours south of me. Now everything is the nutella’s fault. Feeling sick? Must be the nutella. Headache? Nutella!

So it has now been a month-ish since my last post and I can’t say I’ve really been doing anything overly exciting, if that’s possible in Italy. My routine continues, school, eat, homework (I am still not getting any), go out and then sleep but I still don’t mind it. Makes things feel more like home, more comfortable. My Italian is remarkably better now and I can carry a conversation (a basic one, obviously not going to be one about world politics) without translation. I even got the compliment from Douglas on Skype the other day that “you don’t sound like a total retard” so that was nice of him. I started my timetable in the first week of November and I'm doing first and second year classes mostly but I still don’t really understand a lot. The teachers respect this though and some give me separate work to do sometimes or one, who I know from church and who speaks reasonable English, helps me by myself when the rest of the class is doing their work. I actually love going to my young classes because they talk about simpler topics then what my older classmates do which makes it easier to participate in the class discussions. Now when I walk down the hall I have so many people say hi to me, because of all my different classes (I have about 8) that I feel so popular! A lot of the kids are Reuben’s age and their English isn’t so good which I guess is really good for my Italian; since it’s the only way I can communicate with them. It was really funny when I first started the classes though. They were all waiting for someone who was brave enough to start talking to me but once someone did, they all crowded round to see the strange chick who wears skirts to school. So overall school has gotten a lot more interesting. Not sitting in one class for six hours straight helps and when I change classes I often see my friends from other classes in the hall and I can talk to them for a bit (they aren’t actually suppose to be in the hall between classes. Most of the teachers don’t mind though). My French teacher still continues to be my favourite and yesterday she took me to the staffroom/learning-centre type thing and gave me a lesson by myself on French while the rest of the class had a meeting. The fact that I like French is very evident in that I got a 7 ½ out of 10 for a class test which is really good considering I have only just started, and I'm learning French in Italian while my native language is English. Ah, I feel so multilingual!
I have started to make some good Italian friends now too. Not that I don’t like Giuseppe’s friends and classmates, it’s just that it’s nice to make friends without him being there, more satisfying in a way knowing that they have chosen to be my friend instead of me being forced on them. His friends tend to underestimate how much I understand now too, since they saw me in the beginning, and just ask him the questions instead of trying to talk to me, which I completely understand is easier for them but a bit boring for me. So with these friends, Lorena and I have been to Bari (the big city near me and the biggest in our region, I think) to shop and to the Michael Jackson movie. I loved Bari. I miss the big city like that. Gravina has a reasonable population but it has the feeling of a small town. Everyone knows each other and there are festivals every other week which doesn’t really happen as much in bigger cities. My friend, Titta, knew a book store that had quite a selection of English (for me) and Spanish (for Lorena) books as well as music and movies. Kind of like Whitcoulls except 3 times the size. I could have spent hours in there choosing books (and then bought half of them) and music but I managed to control myself and walk out with only 2 fat books (I thought the fatter the better. They will take me longer to read). I also had my first trip to H & M, a chain store which is worldwide but we don’t have in New Zealand. I love it!! And again I could have bought a lot more than I did. H & M are about the same as Glassons is and I think that when I get home, a majority of my clothes are going to be either from Terranova (worldwide store also, again not in NZ) or H & M because everywhere else is just too expensive. It’s about the opposite of New Plymouth actually. Imagine that all the designer shops in NP were cheaper shops and the cheaper shops were designer and you pretty much have the situation that we have in Gravina. Makes for VERY easy shopping trip. And the Michael Jackson movie was good, more of a documentary about what happened in his concert preparation before he died, than a movie. I wouldn’t usually have gone to that sort of thing but it was in English with Italian subtitles so I was keen.
Been going to a few parties in the last few weeks too. Last week end there was an 18th for a friend of Giuseppe’s on the Saturday night (was the first party I’ve been to where there was any decent amount of alcohol. Don’t worry Mum, I only had 2 little plastic cups worth and that didn’t even effect me) and then the Sunday after was Nonnas 80th birthday so we had a big family do for that. It was a lot of fun and Italians know how to throw a good family party. We would eat one course, do some dancing, eat another course, dance some more, eat the third course and then dance again and it would continue like this until we had eaten everything and it was time to go. These parties usually start around 1pm and continue until 7 or 8 pm and every hour or so we have something more to eat. But because you’re not eating all in one go, it doesn’t really feel like that much, more like grazing than eating. And last night we went to another for a girl from church, who is also at school with us, and had an 18th on Wednesday. This party was more like a dinner party with dancing, not the average NZ teenage house party like the one the previous weekend was though.
So all in all, feeling a lot more settled now. It feels like home and I haven’t had much home sickness in the last few weeks. Like every now and then I’ll be like “oh I wish I could go see so and so” or “eat (insert good NZ food here)” but I think maybe the worst has passed, well I hope so anyway. Touch wood. I don’t want to speak too soon.
Ciao for now (tehe it rhymes! Yeah I know, my sense of humour is generally lacking now)
Ps. Hi Paige! Sorry if one of my friends is reading this and they wanted a mention. I just know that Paige is reading my blog.

One month come and gone

I cannot believe that I have been here for 5 weeks already. It in no way feels like I have been here that long and I still find new things here every day. Yet it feels like I have been here a lot longer too. I feel very settled, getting to know people by name rather than just sight, and school is becoming just like school at home, relatively boring. At the moment, because I don’t understand much, I don’t really have much to do for the 6 hours that I have to sit in a freezing cold classroom. I will hopefully have a basic knowledge of French by the time I am back in New Zealand, which Douglas should be pleased about, because it’s one of the only subjects I understand. I also help with my English class and the English class of my Italian tutor (she teaches English to the students at school and Italian to me after school in private lessons). Giuseppe and I have the same English teacher and she wants me to go to his class sometimes but I am yet to do that. I have attempted to do economics and the economics they do here also includes accounting. Lucky the accounting they are doing at the moment is equivalent to the accounting I already completed in level 1 so it makes things easier to understand when the teacher is trying to explain to me in broken English. My art history teacher was also pleasantly surprised with my increased knowledge of Italian so I'm glad that it has become noticeable. But as of the start of November I will be changing timetables again (it’s already happened twice) to do simpler classes for French and Italian while having German, PE and English with my normal class. I will also have a multitude of free periods to do “individual study” but we all know that in NZ that codes for “mess around and do nothing” (unless things have changed in the last 5 weeks but I doubt it from the pictures I have seen on facebook :P) but I may actually use these ones to do homework so that I won’t have to do it at home. If I haven’t already I will again mention the fact that students here study for a living. It’s crazy. They go to school for 6 hours straight (to be honest they don’t seem to do much more work than I do in class, well my class anyway), go home for lunch, then study for another 2 or 3 hours straight. They do all this study because they have these things called oral interrogations and they are scared shitless about them. Basically what they are is the teacher randomly picks students to answer questions about the work they have been doing in class (but in class they have only really touched on it and most of the work has been done in study) and they are given a mark on their answer from 1 to 10, 1 being the lowest. Generally only marks from 3 to 8 are given but if you get a bad mark (below 5) then its affects your entire year and you have to study like a demon until the next interrogation to get a better mark. From my understanding if you get too many bad marks then you may have to repeat the year. Now we all complain about NCEA being crap but in this instance I think we have the better system.

Now for an update about what I’ve been doing. There’s not really much to report apart from the visit to Milan and Como and camp in Castellaneta Marina. Life here is settling in to a nice rhythm. Get up, go to school, be bored for 6 hours, go home (it’s a long walk. The 100 metres round the corner from school is tough. I’d actually say climbing the 6 flights of stairs to our apartment is more difficult), eat, wash the dishes, be bored again for another 2 hours (unless I'm on facebook which is becoming more and more often) because everyone is studying, then do something in the evening, generally have an Italian lesson then go out with Giuseppe or Lorena, the girl from Paraguay also in Gravina, go home, eat and then sleep. I know it seems sad that I can predict my days like that but it is extremely comforting to know what I'm doing each day after a month of not knowing and getting used to things. I don’t feel stressed about it when I don’t know but I just like knowing stuff, having plans.

Well for starters, as most of you will already know, we went to Como for a wedding of one of the cousins on my Pappas side of the family. We didn’t actually see any of Milan apart from the airport (god I hate airports now) and the motorway (they have great motor ways in the north) because where we were staying was only 20km from Como which is about an hour north of Milan. The towns are called Ponte L’Ambro and Erba (they are really close to together and the family is spread between them) for any of you that want to have a squizz. They were absolutely beautiful and the scenery was very much like that of New Zealand, which actually set off a little bit of homesickness. We flew up on Wednesday 7^th of October and flew home on the Sunday after, arriving in Milan at about 10pm and despite the fact that the drive home should have been about an hour, it took about 2 and a half because of some roads works on one of the lanes of the autostrade that held up all the traffic, and there was plenty, despite the time. So we eventually got to where we were staying in Ponte L’Ambro/Erba around 1ish and fell in to bed at about 2 – 2.30. It was an incredibly long day. On Thursday, we visited Lake Como which is a lot bigger than I expected. There are a lot of towns around the outside of the lake and it would take about 4 or 5 hours to go around the whole thing by a relatively fast boat without stopping. After a bit of a look around Como, we went by boat to one of the more famous towns on the lake, called Bellagio. It is one of the most authentic looking Italian towns I have seen so far (probably after Gravina which is about as authentic as you get) and is well worth the long boat ride to get there (2 hours one way but you can drive, it’s just better to go by boat because then you get to see all the towns, from the boat, along the way). So we had lunch there and then looked around and boated back to Como for another look there. And for Moni and Paige the best gelato flavour I have had here is yoghurt and berry. It tastes good with chocolate. I know that sounds really weird but it tastes great. On Friday we had the wedding and of course it rained. The only day it rained while we were there was the Friday, unfortunately for the bride. But she looked beautiful anyway as they always do. The ceremony was pretty standard to someone who didn’t understand anything but Giuseppe said that it was an evangelist ceremony (the couple are evangelists). The reception after pretty much consisted of eating for about 3 or 4 hours and then dancing for the rest of the night. There were like 6 courses from memory but they weren’t big portions so it was easy enough to eat it all when it was spread over such a time. I went home with the aunt (she speaks fluent English and is so lovely) we were staying with and her daughter around 10, but they told me in the morning that about an hour after we left, everyone was looking for me to sing an English song. Thank god I missed that one. I think if they heard me sing, they would be glad too. Saturday we didn’t do a lot apart from, you guessed it, eat. We went to the mother of the brides (my Pappas sister) house for lunch and then drove to the newlywed’s new house just outside Milan. It was a 3 room loft basically. VERY small. If they have a child they will have to move, that’s how small it is but from everyone’s reactions it was a relatively normal sized house for them to have moved in to. Sunday we only really went for a walk around one of the smaller lakes north of Ponte L’Ambro/Erba. It reminded me a lot of Lake Mangamahoe but with paved cycle lanes and walking tracks around it. We flew home at about 6.30 pm that night, arriving in Bari around 8pm and back in Gravina at about 9pm to the very welcome sight of my bed.

Camp for 4 days in a seaside town in a 4 star hotel sounds like my sort of camp! Well it was fantastic. I loved mostly every minutes of it. The minutes I didn’t were the ones when I had to wait for the South Americans for vacate my room so I could sleep. They were in there because my roommates were friends with them. Now I didn’t mind having them in there for the first 2 nights because I wasn’t in there until a bit later anyway but on the third night I just wanted some sleep so I could function. Over the course of 3 nights I had 12 hours sleep. But the rest of the minutes were great. I got to see Taylor from Aussie, Julianne from Denmark and Ashika from Welly again which was awesome coz I really missed them. And no matter how much I love my friends in Gravina, they will never match up to being with other exchange students. There’s just that bond between them and the ability to be best friends after only knowing each other for a few days and the whole shared experience thing just adds to that. Unfortunately my friends from this camp (mostly Scandinavians and Americans who had just as shit Italian as I do. Go natural and just as good as natural, English speakers!) live south of me by about 3 to 4 hours so if I want to see them I have to convince AFS and my host family to let me go. The thing I enjoyed most about being with them though is that I could just not worry about anything. I didn’t constantly have to worry about someone not understanding what I said and what people would think about me (we are ambassadors for our country after all) and we also had a little more independence than I’ve had at home (not that I'm not independent I just like taking care of myself). We got given rooms, told times and we were the ones responsible for ourselves. So at this camp we did more orientation about being exchange students and adjusting to a different culture. But the free times were the times we all enjoyed most. I think most of us would have been happy with 4 days in a hotel together without any orientation, just hanging out. I doubt we would have gotten bored once. There were about 50 of us there from around the Puglia and Basilicata regions. We left about 8.30 am on Monday morning (18^th October) and got to the hotel about 11 and left Thursday (22^nd October) at about 2, arriving home at about 4.

Before camp we hadn’t really done much. The flu has done the rounds through the family and Michele and I were the last one to have it. I’d been going to school but it probably didn’t help it at all because it’s so cold in the class rooms. On the Friday and Saturday I wore 5 or 6 layers and still felt slightly cold (though that may have been the flu) and that was with merinos on. I'm not looking forward to winter at all if this is the sort of cold I'm going to have to sit through for 6 hours a day. And they say the south is warmer in winter. Phft! This makes New Zealand look like the tropics!

So after a very long post that has occupied my afternoon to write, I bid u adieu!

Ciao, from your favourite Kiwi in Italy

Tired

Italians have too much energy.
they go to bed late, wake up early, go to school, come home and study, then go out till late and do it all over again the next day. i dont know how i am going to keep up!!
Where do i start? well it has been a busy first 2 weeks. the first week went unbelievably slow but this week has just flown by and i am beginning to get used to all of the customs, foods and routines here. my spoken italian is still not very good but i am surprised at how much i understand now when somebody actually speaks slowly enough and with enough hand gestures. my parents have come up with a special vocabulary for me too. they use very simple words to describe what we are doing or what we are eating etc. my little brother is the same and though he has the most limited english of my siblings, we communicate more effectively then i expected. his words are simplier so they are easier for me to understand. viky, mamma and i use the dictionary ALL the time but we are getting really good at flicking through to find what we want to say.
We had the first afs meeting since ive been here yesterday and it was fantastic to see the 4 other students from the chapter giuseppe and i belong to. 2 of the girls (one from paraguay and one from holland) are in gravina with me but at the school next door to mine. the 2 schools are connected by a common gym but they dont have pe when i do. it was the first time id spoken to someone who wasnt italian since ive been here and it was great to hear different accents. gave me a little bit of a break.
School. its boring at the moment because i dont understand alot but i do work for french and english (i do italian in these periods - my class translates things in to english and i do them in to italian). the french teacher is so great. i dont think the class is too much better at french than i am so she has started with the basics and you would not believe how easy it is to understand her when shes talking about verbs (etc) because the italian, french and english words are all very similar. in my other classes (german, tourism and economics, religion, law, italian language and history, and art history) i pretty much do nothing but read or teach my self italian using my handy dandy little dictionary (thanks douglas).
Today (sunday) we cut and squashed grapes in to wine. it took most of the morning but it was good. it was at the family farm (pappas family) and it was really nice to have all the family there just relaxed with each other. then we had a massive lunch with lasagne (it was fantastic!!).
this week will be pretty cruisy again. we have only 2 hours of school tomorrow then we have some big assembly thing. then on tuesday and wednesday we dont have to go to school because the town celebrate saint michael, the saint of gravina. then next week, Giuseppe, Viky and i are going to Milan for a wedding of one of their cousins so that should be good but im really not looking forward to another plane flight. i am so sick of them it is unbelieveable!
I think thats about it for now. will update u all after milan!
CIAO!!

ps hi paige.
pss does anyone else want shout outs??

First week, Rome and VERY long flights and bus rides

hi all
sorry if i havent been keeping in touch as regularly as u would all like but i havent got that much free time. paige u can stop worrying about them eating me now :P
well what can i say. italy is great. im jetlagged and some of the food i have to wonder about what i am eating but its good none the less.
my family are great and extremely patient with my italian which is now slightly better then non exsistent. I am living on the third floor of a three sorty apartment building and my nonna lives on the first floor with an aunt and her family on the 2nd. also some of the surrounding apartments are filled with family. i start school tomorrow (wednesday) and im quite nervous about that. the town is cute and quite generic i guess and i will put some photos up here and on facebook when i get some good ones.
the language barrier is hard. if anyone wants to see me be really quiet, now would be the opportune moment. the only people i hold conversations with are my cousin leo and giuseppe. but my mamma tries very hard (we use my dictionary alot) and my pappa laughs at the way i eat things (spagetti especially) and they both say that i dont eat enough (dont worry mum im eating plenty). when i turn down food they all think its because i dont want to get fat but really its just because ive eaten the amount i would usually eat in 2 meals. the other day for lunch we had (be ready to cringe) horse. it tasted just like beef and sheep but it was different for me none the less.
the flights here were long and i am dreading the flight to singapore from frankfurt with lufthanser on the way home. lets just say my low expectations were easily met. singapore airport was good though and it was hot as. the bus ride to gravina didnt seem as bad as i was expecting after the flights but it was still long and the jet lag had started to kick in by then. i loved orientation and i became really good friends with the 3 aussie girls that are spread around the country. it was tons of fun mocking each other and we were often in fits of laughter and none of the nationalities got any of it. i think they may have thought that we were a little bit crazy.
italy is very different to home though but some of the things are good different and just plain scary different. the driving is one of those things and the not wearing seat belts is something i will never get used to. it not too hot here but i guess that may be because it is the end if summer. its still just as hot as we get in the middle of summer. it rains different here too. the drops are heavier and bigger (if that makes any sense) and the roads seem to fill with water very fast. and all those pictures with the skinny roads - very accurate. our roads are like double the size and we have extra curbs and footpaths.
on sunday afternoon we went to the beach. it was great to see the sea (tehe). made things feel a bit less different for the moment anyway. we went to a seaside town to drop giuseppe at camp so we stopped at the beach while we were there.
not much else has been happening. just sleeping, eating, driving around. mamma and i went to the supermarket on monday and i was surprised at how many familiar brand names there were, they were just in italian.
any questions leave some comments ( i know u want to paige - something sarcastic please haha im missing it :P). and it would be good to get comments too. would show me that this is actually getting read by people and its not a waste of time

love u heaps
ciao!

ITS HERE!!

Well the time has finally arrived!!!

On Wednesday I will leave the green land of Naki for Mediterranean Italy. So for the next fews days its packing, packing and more packing for me. I'm putting it off by writing this even. I used to look forward to packing but have since changed my mind. Its a much bigger task then anticipated but I will obviously have to do it eventually.

I had my leaving thing yesterday too. A surprise picnic that my friends had organised at Brooklands park. Then we drove to back beach for the afternoon. The day was absolutely perfect and the weather matched. It was even nice enough that a few of us got burnt. Yes thats right, burnt at the start of September. Also have a leaving dinner for Doug and I tonight with the family, which Mum and I have been slaving away for all morning. About 25 people coming so our small lounge and dining room is going to be packed!

I finished school on Friday. I think a few of the teachers (cough Robourgh) were pleased to get rid of me because of the distraction that I was becoming but it was pretty sad to think that it was my last day of high school education in NZ. Of course I'll have a whole year in Italy but its not the same. Not the last I'll see of it though. Back there on Monday to say goodbye to everyone and pick up some stuff. I'm sure it's gonna be a pretty sad visit.

This is the last post I will do before I leave and I don't know when I'll be back on but we'll see.

Ciao!

PS. Hi Paige!!

un mese

1 month. yes only one month til I finally leave. It has been a VERY long 2 years and it doesn't feel real yet, like I'm actually going to go. And when I talk with my host family it doesn't feel like they are on the other side of the world.

But then sometimes it does feel like it is all too real. I get a burst of sudden realization that I will have to leave all of my friends and family and go in to a completely different culture with a new family, who I love don't get me wrong, but they are new none the less. It scares me most that my friends will not be with me to laugh at all my crazy jokes, hang out with and talk to when something goes wrong or when i have exciting news and just to share in my general wierdness.

But despite this, I am getting so incredibly excited its not funny. My absolutely MASSIVE suitcase is sitting in my room. It is literally half the height of the door, probably even bigger than that but thats just a general image. I even asked about what sort of car my family have so that it would be able to get to the house. They have Opel astra (holden astra in europe) so I think I'm safe. Giuseppe thinks so too. And I'm thinking that I may need to start cleaning my room and try and find all the things that I will need to take. This could take a while. Mum likes us to partake in her hoarding of stuff. Not so sure how I am going to fit my life in to 30ish kg though (20 + 7 hand luggage and laptop). I have tried half packing to see how much stuff I did have and I didn't even pack everything and I was over 20 kg so that is a little worrying.

Don't think I have mentioned yet that in october (about 1 month after I arrive in Italy) I am going to Milan with my older host brother and host sister and their cousin, for a wedding of one of their other cousins (they seem to have a lot, which is very cool). So I cant wait for that!!

Some other updates too;

• I will have my own room which will be a first for 10 years. apparently its small but i dont mind. Its my OWN room!!!
• Still don't know which school I am going to. I will just have to wait and see. surprises are good!!
• I have an excuse to go shopping in the first few weeks. I have to find a dress for the wedding and my sister has offered to take me. Should be a very funny trip with her limited english and my limited italian but we will get there, hopefully.
• Something is happening on the 12th of september, just after I arrive in Italy. Not to sure what it is yet, Giuseppe won't tell me but I will put any updates up when I have them.

I have also paid the fees - I have now got $10000 less in my bank account. Another scary reality of exchanges. They cost a lot of money. But they are definitely worth it.

Thats about it i think.

Ciao :) (will hopefully remember to post before I leave)

39 days

3 Months to go!!

Hey all. :)

Thought I'd start making the blog to get used to the whole posting thing.

As you all know I'm going to Italy for a year on an exchange with AFS. So far I have sent my visa stuff away, got a host family and am receiving monthly (at the moment anyway) updates on what i should have done and what i should be getting ready, from AFS

About 2 weeks ago I received my first bit of family information so that was exciting. They are the Morgese family and they live in a small (or so my host brother says. Its bigger then Inglewood so I'm happy) town called Gravina in Puglia, in the south, population 45,000ish.

My host mum is Maria Nicola, 49

Dad is Giovanni, 49

Older brother is Giuseppe, or Peppe for short, who is 18 in July

My younger sister is Victoria, 15 in about a week 

and lastly, Michele, 10, is my younger brother. 

Maria Nicola's mum also lives with them but only for meals and "chilling", as Giuseppe puts it.

Just waiting to get some more information and pictures from AFS about them now but i have been talking to Giuseppe, who is currently in Finland on his own exchange, and they seem really nice. Just working on a letter to my host parents now. Hopefully they know a little English because my Italian ain't so crash hot.

Apparently the summers are hot but I'm good with that, I'm sick of this miserable cold winter that has taken over Taranaki. If its going to be this cold it may as well just snow!!!

I also have flights booked. Flying out from New Plymouth on the 9th of September (09/09/09 hehe) at 6:50 am. Bright and early. Not that I mind. I'm not expecting to get a lot of sleep the night before anyway so early suits me.

My itinerary from then on is as follows (I've converted all the times to NZ); 

Auckland to Singapore Depart: 1200 Arrive: 2250 Flight Length 10 hours 50 minutes

Singapore to Frankfurt Depart: 0305 (10th) Arrive: 1630 Flight Length 13 hours and 25 minutes

Frankfurt to Rome Depart: 1825 Arrive: 2010 Flight Length 1 hour 45 minutes

Thats a total of 26 hours flying. Not to mention the hours spent in airports. I would hate to be the person sitting next to me on the flight to Rome. I'm going to be a cot case.

Just waiting for the bill to arrive now which will be a bit daunting, having to pay so much money, after I've worked and saved for so long to get it all and then suddenly, POOF!, like a 3rd of its gone. Oh well. Has to be done. But i can definitely say I am going to HATE paying for a deposit on a house.

Map of Southern Italy. Gravina in Puglia is where i will be living.

Any whom, will put updates and pictures up as soon as I have them

Ciao =D

92 days!