September 14th, 2009

Hey Everyone :)
I decided to start a blog so you can all keep up with what I'm doing here in Italy and so that I won't get a million emails every day asking what's going on :)

To start off, the trip over here was a long! I left New York at 6pm last thursday and finally landed in Zurich, Switzerland on friday around 8am. With the time difference and everything, the flight was about 8 hours long. We then had a four hour layover in Zurich, and then boarded a one-hour flight to Rome. When we landed in Rome, the group of about 45 of us from USA were divided in half. While the other half left for the orientation site, my group stayed at the airport to wait for the kids from the Dominican Republic. We were all so tired and just wanted to sleep; many of us just sat down next to our luggage in the middle of the airport. Finally, after about an hour, we got a call saying that the Dominican Republic kids had missed their flight! We then had to wait another 30-45 minutes for our bus to arrive so we could take a two-hour bus ride to the hotel, thanks to rush-hour traffic. Most of us just slept the whole way, not that it was very comfortable. FINALLY we arrived at the hotel around 7pm, which meant that we'd missed almost all of the orientation for that day. Everyone cheered when our bus pulled up because we'd finally made it. Of course none of us wanted to participate in the orientation because we were so tired.

By the time we arrived, we had a little less than an hour to put our stuff in our rooms and start to talk to the other kids from around the world before it was time to go have dinner. At 9pm, everyone (about 400 kids) met in a huge tent near the hotel and orientation began again. Everyone was put into groups based on where they were travelling, which meant kids from many different countries were mixed together. Our group from the United States, however, had to stay together since we'd missed the beginning of the orientation. That was a little dissappointing, but at the same time it was nice because they made sure to go through everything quickly for us so we could go to bed. We finally left for our rooms around 10:30 and most of us went straight to bed.

The next morning was a bit hectic. Everyone had to be out of their rooms, with keys turned in and bags put in this one giant room by 9am, no matter what time you were leaving. I was in group "F", so I didn't leave for the train station until 12:30. Some groups, however, left as early as 6 or 7am. I felt bad for them! I think it was because they had to longest distance to travel. One of my roomates had to get up at 5:30 to get ready. After her alarm went off I put earplugs in so she wouldn't keep me awake :)

Finally, after I said goodbyes to all of the friends I had made from the US, Finland, Germany, France, Argentina, Swedan, Denmark, New Zealand, Egypt, India, etc., I boarded the bus for the train station! I sat next to a girl who is staying in the same city as me. She is from New Zealand, and we also sat together on the train :)

The train station was a little crazy.. When we got there, we had to wait for the second bus for our group, which took about 15 minutes. During that 15 minutes, a girl from China's laptop bag was stolen! I felt so bad for her. We were warned to look out for "gypsies" and I had heard about pick-pocketing and people stealing bags in Europe, so I kept a close eye on my bags. I've actually been pretty paranoid about things getting stolen ever since I landed in New York. Anyways, we finally met up with the other group and started walking to the station. We walked for a few minutes, and then a few of us started to notice that we couldn't see the front of the group... We had just been following the Chinese students in front of us and they had been kind of guessing where the rest of the group might have gone. That really frustrated me. Why the heck didn't they stop and ask our adviser behind us where to go?! Ughh. We eventually stopped and waited for everyone to join us and then we made a big circle with our group and all of the luggage inside the circle so we could watch it. Standing there for that hour was actually kind of scary.. I had a hand touching every bag so that nothing would get stolen. And the gypsies (not like Hunchback of Notre Dame gypsies) kept coming over and asking us for money. This one lady came over with her sleeping kid saying "I have child, please give money! I have child, please give money!" I just wanted to yell "If you need money for your kid, maybe you shouldn't' buy such expensive clothes!" Hah. Anyways, we finally walked over to board the train. Don't ask me why, but for some reason our advisors waited about 5 minutes before the train left to take us over there, so we were being yelled at in Italian to hurry up and were dragging our HUGE bags through the train looking for our seats while it started to move. So many people were glaring at us and it was just horrible.. We eventually got stuck in the front of our cart, and eventually just started sitting in whatever open seats we could find. My friend from New Zealand sat next to me and across from her was my hotel roomie Suzy :) Across from me was some woman who only spoke Italian, so we had a fun time trying to practice our Italiano on her. She thought we were hilarious and she was very nice.

My train ride was only an hour and 15 minutes, thankfully! The five of us getting off in Caserta, Italy were the first to get off and meet our families :) Unfortunately mine was the last to arrive, so I had to wait at the station nervously for about 5 or 10 minutes until they got there. I realized as soon as they started talking to me how difficult the language barrier would be. The only english-speaking person in my host family is the mom, Monika, and she barely speaks any. Thankfully she speaks french really well! She asked me in the car if I spoke any and I breathed a heavy sigh of relief because I took two years of french in school. Another thing I became aware of during that first car ride was that Italians really do live up to their reputations for being crazy drivers! And they don't really wear seatbelts either.. It was a little scary.

Finally we arrived at the home of my host family, which is now my home too :) I have my own bedroom, which is completely covered in Whinnie the Pooh decor thanks to it previously belonging to my two younger host brothers. I am actually very grateful to the family for the room though, because all four brothers now share a room. I also have my own bathroom! I would have never expected that, and I'm happy to share, but the family is insistant that it is mine and how can I not accept? :)

I'm not going to make this too much longer, but I'll give you all a brief summary of the family :)

I have four little brothers; Luigi (7), Mattia (5), Gabrielle (4), and Simone (2, soon to be 3 on the 20th). They are all very sweet, but I'm definitely starting to get to know their personalities. Luigi is very sweet and likes to learn. He is extremely fascinated with my Italian-English dictionaries for some reason, although I don't even know if he can actually read them. He and Mattia are starting to become my favorites because they are very quiet and sweet compared to the others. My first impression of Gabrielle was that he is very sweet and curious. The night that I first got here, he stared at me the entire time we ate dinner. It was pretty cute. But now I've learned that he is pretty much the loudest and whiniest of the four. Don't get me wrong, I like him, but he cries whenever he has any emotion. I wonder sometimes if he cries like that because he's happy too! It's crazy. He is throwing a fit as I type. Simone is very cute, but he does fuss a lot too, although not as much as Gabrielle. I feel bad for Simone sometimes because Gabrielle tends to pick on him :(. Oh and Simone likes to run around completely naked... which I'm trying to get used to but it's hard because I've never lived with boys before.

By the way, these kids keep trying to talk to me like I understand them. I just keep repeating the few words I do know and they still say full Italian sentences to me! I have no idea what they're even talking about half the time, but sometimes I can kind of try to guess.

My host parents are named Mariano and Monika. They are very nice, and they teach me plenty of new words (nuova parole) every day. I've started a list in my journal. Mariano is in the Italian army. His base or whatever is right next to the condo they live in, and he just got home. He brought me an Italia patch like the one on his uniform :)

Monica is a housewife, and her job with these four boys is hard enough.. Taking them all to school this morning was quite the task! She is very nice and seems to be picking up the english words I teach her very quickly. She'll tell me something in Italian and then I'll tell her its name in english.

Well there isn't really a lot more to say. I've only been in this town for two and a half days, and I haven't seen much of it. We did do a lot of walking around a certain area this morning looking for the place that we fill out and send my residence papers, but that's about all I've seen. Monika bought me my first gelato today! It was so yummy :)

Well this is the end of my first blog! I hope you enjoyed it :) I'll try to keep everyone updated as often as possible.

-Zoë