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