so

i'm not dead.
just busy.
and forgetful.
since the last ive been to rome, germany and pretty much all over the place.
im sorry to say that ive been having some trouble again on the home front (i wont say much), but as it goes i only have 15days left until my mom comes and go around italy.

im super excited to see her again, and though i will miss italy, i must say i feel ready to go back home again.

germany was sweet, by the way. if i could re-pick a place to go on exchange it would definatly be there. love all you germans! italian school is a downer too, but that also is almost done. a week from today i can say NEVER AGAIN! to the italian school system.
it will be a wonderful, wonderful thing to say.
the weather is getting unbearably hot here, with concrete everywhere and the buildings so high it feels like no wind will ever come through. the metros have started to stink again... you know summer is here when that familiar scent drifts up from the bowels of the city. and seeing as italians (i cant say europeans in general becuase i really havent gotten too much outside of italy- and at this even northern italians in general) dont care so much about deoderant and its wonderous uses.


gotta go! ill maybe put some pictures up later.

Venezia

Venice.

What is there to say? It was beautiful. I went for Carnivale and there was a TON of people. I didn't stay for very long, but I did see some pretty cool things. Saw the canals, the tiny streets, the gondolas, and even a sunset. I went to a glass blowing shop and saw them make a vase (and a cat!). Saw the crazy, wild, beautiful and scary costumes. I went with alot of other Rotary kids and got to meet some new ones. Bought an (overpriced but worth-it) mask. Came home very, very tired and with lots and lots of pictures.

Enjoy them.

A cool gondola. I would have gone on a ride, but it would have costed me 80€ (100$, for all you americans.)


A famous bridge, from what I was told. I took it from a Venezian bus (which was a boat.)

Venezian Sunset.
Mask I bought!

All of the Rotary Youth Exchange students who came. Alot were from my district, but there were also alot who were not.

Look at all the people! It was insaneeeeeeee.

I took a picture with some of them.

Some canals.

Some more.

Me infront of a canal.

Gondola/Canal.


Me and two other exhcange students infront of a crowd.

(ALL OF THE ROLLOWING PICTURES I'VE BORROWED FROM OTHER EXCHANGE STUDENTS. THANKS TO ALL OF YOU WHO TOOK THESE)







So I hope everyone is doing well and liked my pictures. I'll have a album going up on Facebook soon and when I do I will link it here so you can see all of the pictures.

un bacio,
Jody

A quick update

as I prepare myself for an epic Venice post. Life in Milan has been going great, though with my current host family I've been having some problems and will be swiching by the end of this week to a new family. We just didn't click, and we had bad communication and even though I tried to make it better, it was kind of like putting a band-aid on a cut that needed stiches.

School is going well in the aspect that it is more than half-way over. I am doing more work, and studying more, which is still difficult because even though I understand mostly all of the Italian spoken to me there is still alot to learn. And seeing as my vocabulary consists of mostly conversational things, and it doesnt quite extend to things like Art History vocabulary (which makes me depressed every time the prof (teacher) gives me more to study). I still use my dictionary quite a bit in school. But as far as speaking goes, I understand about 95% of things said at the dinner table, and am able to have a conversation. Which for me is a pretty big accomplishment, seeing as when I arrived I understood almost nothing and had trouble saying "Arrivaderci!" (goodbye).

Its a little crazy to think that I've been in Italy 6 months as of yesterday, and that there are only 4 months left till I depart to go back home. I am both excited and not at the idea, but I figure that I'll deal with it when the time comes. I hope I'll be ready... I'm already planning what I'm going to do immediatly after arriving home. I have my first week planned out (Which is mostly going to the beach, taking my dog with me everywhere, getting tan, re-learning how to speak english and finding all the places where I can buy good italian food.)

The weather has been warming up here, I think we are starting spring!!! It's such a different experience for me to have the seasons, I thought that winter was going to be the only super different one but spring came up and suprised me! The sun came out and I got a little pink on my cheeks the other day! Alrighty, time for Venice.
Talk to you all later.

Christmas In Milan

So since my other long post about Italian culture and being an exchange student is still a work in progress, and I dont feel up to writing a very long post, I uploaded some pictures of Milan at Christmastime! They are all very random and out of order, so bear with me...
This one is just to prove that there are some sunny days here, though they are all cold and the sun doesn't warm you. Plus pretty picture of the Castello! This is during the day, without the lights lit.
Here's the castello with all the Christmas lights! It was hard to get a picture with all the lights on at once because they played Christmas music and the lights would flash in tune with the music. Flash, fade, and do all sorts of cool things. The two smaller towers on the sides would actually change colors, but I didn't get a picture of those.


All over Milan they've been putting up these Christmas lights (not exactly like these, different shapes and designs) and at first, in November, I was quite confused as to why they were hanging these random things all over Milan. But when they lit them up towards the beginning of December, it really felt like christmas! I'm sad that they are all down.... this picture is of some of my favorites of all the lights that I saw. And it wasnt just in Milan-these kinds of lights were put up all around italy.
Asides from that one, heres some more that weren't half bad:



There was this one tram that was covered in lights! it was quite a site to behold. I think there was only one, but it still ran the regular routes and such. It was just more spectacular than all the others.
I went to a Rotary Christmas concert inside of the Duomo, (Personally I didn't know that you could just book the Duomo like that) it was pretty buuttt boring because they actually didn't play any Christmas music. Still enjoyed the time with the other exchange students though!
This here is the Galleria. Notice the lights inside?

That's a closer up of inside the galleria. And that there in the middle is the symbol/flag of Milan.They put up a huge Christmas tree right in the center piazza. It was HUGE!

But the one we had at home was smaller, but I still think it was pretty cool-
That's my old host family, decorating the Christmas tree.

And on Christmas I went to some of my host family's relatives and we all ate lunch together.
For now, thats about it! More posts are coming, becuase I still have to do New Years and I have lots more photos to share....
Bacci di Milano e Buon natale a tutti!
Jody

Coming soon,

There are several lengthy posts in the making, about christmas and living in milan and new years and lots of other things.
Your going to have to be paitent with me while I finish them up and make them nice and perfect....
But they're coming!
Soon i'll be up to date.
Soon.


Bacii!
Kisses!
jody

A vacation in the Alps

Ciao a tutti! Its been awhile since I've last posted, so I have quite a bit to catch up on! Let me start on the weekend of December 12-14, 2008, when I went to a little town in the Alps with my Italian language teacher and 4 other Rotary Exchange Students (3 Americans and one Australian.) First off, a beautiful picture of the town we stayed in:It was very tiny, but there was a TON of snow! We left Milan Friday afternoon, and we were all very pumped and excited to go. Our Italian teacher, who is super sweet, has a house in the mountains and wanted to take us there for a weekend so we could experience more of Italy. We went with her, her daughter (who is in university, but went to Canada on a Rotary Youth Exchange while she was still in high school) and her son, who is about 25 years old. The place we went to was about 2 hours northeast of Milan. We arrived at her house and immediately made a snowman and I made a snow angel. Some snowballs were thrown, and then it was time to go inside. The street outside her house (though better named an apartment):looked like that. Typical Italian skinny cobblestone street. Facing the other way was a church:and towards the front there was a little open space where there was lots of nice, fluffy white snow. The next day, on Saturday, since we couldn't go skiing (for one, there were too many of us that didn't know how to ski- me and the Australian had no idea how it was done and secondly we didn't have any of the equipment and lastly it was an insurance issue or something.) We went further up into the mountains to go sledding and to play more in the snow. The road up was a switchback kind of road, and it was snowing heavily. Plus our teacher is one of the WORST drivers I have ever experienced! Nothing against her, but it was quite scary going up there... but the snow on the trees and road was breathtaking. Some pictures:So once we arrived up there, parked the car and then walked for about half an hour to a little field thing, we spent the afternoon trying to make a sledding path (the snow was about waist deep and very fluffy!)By the time we made the path we were to tired to actually use it!Thats me with a sled! It was the first time I had ever sledded, and I quite enjoyed it. We went back that night and hung out with the teachers son and his friends.

On Sunday we went even farther up into the mountains, to a place where our teacher likes to go in the summer to picnic. We first drove up the side of this mountain for awhile (thank goodness it had stopped snowing!) We then walked through a tiny, tiny mountain town (Almost too little to be called a town, it was maybe one street.) Me and another American, Halcy, on the one street before we started climbing to our destination:
The way up was very senic, take a look:
The way up was very scenic, take a look:Thats Shannon (or Sharon, we never figured it out) the teachers dog. So we hiked and climbed uphill through the snow (I was sick too, it was difficult!) for about an hour uphill. I ripped my jeans trying to climb over a log about halfway up.... It was unpleasant. But the final picture was totally worth it! This is something I'm never going to forget!The snow was about waist high and nobody had been up there since summertime, so we had to make our own path. We stopped at a house and ate our lunches, a bit of foccacia(some wonderful type of salty Italian bread.... its AMAZING.) This is a picture of everybody!

When we got back to the house we were pretty exhausted. Everybody crashed on the bed....
We then departed back to Milan around 4pm. It was such an amazing weekend.... And so different for me! I'm never going to forget it! Driving home there were some more mountains...

And a last look at where we stayed.

If you want to look at more pictures, i put them on facebook and here are the links: (there are two albums.)
Album #1- http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=44823&l=18e0f&id=816459245
Album #2 http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=44829&l=34447&id=816459245