2 months later

I've been in Italy 2 months now. Pretty exciting yeah? School has become somewhat of a routine, a miserable one but still a routine. My class, 4E, is excellent, and are definitely nothing like the other classes at my school. Nobody studies, and we mostly spend the day throwing things and messing around and pissing people off. But unfortunately I have to rotate classes and I don't spend the whole day in my classroom. My school assistant is a bit dumb, and with the schedule she put together every week I have 7 hours of math, 6 of chemistry, and 6 of Italian with the freshman. Kill me. This assistant is also my English teacher and she has decided that I need to learn Italian English because it's different that American English. Crazy.... My Italian is coming along pretty well, I can understand most of what people say to me or at least the idea, and even if I don't understand I usually just smile and nod. But luckily all of my teachers think I'm stupid so I don't have to do any work. Sometimes they will be teaching a lesson in Italian and after talking for 5 minutes straight they will translate one sentence for me and then ask me if I understood. They are quite intelligent and helpful.
I have also realized that most of the things I read about Martina Franca before coming here turned out to be lies. The weather is NOT nice, you can't see the ocean from the top of this 'hill', and although it may be an important town for its clothing industry, the fashion here is one of the ugliest things I have ever seen. Unless you like tennis shoes with rubber wedges and a lot of hello kitty and Minnie Mouse....
This isn't to say that it's not beautiful here, just not like they say it is. The historical center, which is the old area of town, is really really cool, but the rest of Martina is like any other town. Except dirtier because everyone throws their trash on the ground.

Finalmente, sono qui.

The orientations were horrible. Complete and utter misery. We spent five days in hotel rooms, classrooms, airports, airplanes, and more being lectured on things we've all heard a million times... Finally on Sunday I woke up and took a 6 hour bus ride (pleasant compared to the orientation days) to Taranto with the other 10 or so exchange students in my town, Martina Franca. When the bus arrived at the station in Taranto all of our host families were happily waiting for us. My host family picked me up and we had a short car ride to Martina and arrived there around 3:00. Then we ate a huge lunch of pasta, sausage, bread, cheese,  fruit, pastries, and more in the Fumarola's beautiful summer house. After lunch I went straight to bed and slept until 11:00 the next morning. We had another big lunch together at two o'clock, the usual in southern Italy, and then I unpacked all of my things. After lunch Daniela's two best friends, Sara and Anna Maria, came over and we made crepes with nutella and watched a movie together. Then we had dinner at ten o'clock and I went to bed. The next day Daniela and I woke up early to get a ride into town where we met Sara and Anna to have breakfast, walk around the town, and take pictures. That evening we all went out to a pizzeria with Daniela's classmates because it was the last day of summer. The pizza was delicious and Daniela's friends were all really fun and tried their best to speak english to me. So not much exciting has happened since I've been here but Italy is beautiful and my Italian is coming along little by little. I start school Monday, so I will probably have more to talk about then.

What I Know So Far

In November, I applied to be an exchange student to Italy through AFS. I was accepted shortly after, and then I began what I expected to be the long wait to find out where I would be going and who would be my host family. Then, one day in February I came home from school and my mom said she had something to tell me. She had received an email from AFS that had my host family's name, location, and basic info! Stoked. The email told me that I would have 2 host sisters, one my age and one older, and a host mother and father, and that I would be living in Martina Franca, Italy. Martina Franca is is in the south of Italy, on the heel of the boot, and it is a town of about 50,000 people. The weather is really nice year round(EDIT: this is not true. the internet says it is but now that i am here i have realized that is complete crap.) and there are a lot of beaches around(also not exactly true, i've been to the beach once), which I'm looking forward to so much. My school is called Tito Liveo. Also, my host family has a swimming pool (it's been empty since i arrived)! So I was so excited to find all of this out and I found my host sister, Daniela, on Facebook and I have talked to her as best I can with my minimal Italian! Then, about a week ago, my Visa application packet came in the mail, and it had my departure and return dates in it! I will be leaving New York on September 9th, 2010, and leaving Italy on July 10th, 2011! I can barely wait to leave, but I guess 87 days isn't too much, and summer will make it go by faster!

Until I find out something new, Ciao!

Alison