Monday, November 19, 2012

Normal day in the life!

So I don't think I've ever described in major detail what my daily routine is! All my friends back home in the United States seem to think my life is extremely glamorous and exciting just because I'm in Italy but really, it's very normal! I'll go through everything that I do during a normal weekday (:

7:00 am - I wake up. It's nice that I'm able to wake up more than an hour later here. Last year for school in the States I normally woke up at like 5:45 am.. This is SO much better! Anyway after I wake up I brush my teeth, get ready for school, all the normal stuff!

7:30 am - I'm normally done getting ready by now so I go downstairs and eat breakfast. Normally Nini, my host dad and I eat together. My host mom is so sweet she gets up earlier than everyone else and sets the table for us every morning. For breakfast I usually eat a bowl of cereal and my host mom makes fresh squeezed orange juice for me too (: But cereal isn't really the normal Italian breakfast, The typical Italian breakfast consists of a cup of tea or coffee and cookies! I don't really like eating just cookies for breakfast, I feel like it's too early in the morning to eat sweet stuff so that's why I eat cereal instead! Sometimes I try to be Italian and eat cookies and coffee though but normally just cereal and orange juice!

7:45 am - I finish breakfast and go downstairs to the garage and go to school with my host cousin Alberto. I think I mentioned him before but he's 15 and in the grade below me at the same school. Every day it changes how we get to school, either my host aunt Elena (Alberto's mom), my host mom or Alberto's friends parents drive us. We always pick up 2 of Alberto's friends on the way to school as well.

8:00 am - The time we arrive at school depends on how much traffic there is but normally we get there at around 8. I walk into school and go to my classroom 3F on the first floor of the building.

8:15 am - The first class starts. We have 5 hours of school with 5 different classes that change everyday! But I'm not going to go into too much detail about school right now because after this post I'm going to do another post just about school!

1:10 pm - School finishes! Whooo! What I do after school changes depending on the day of the week:

Monday is usually a lazy day because I'm always exhausted from a busy weekend with probably no sleep. After school my host mom picks me up then I go home and eat lunch with my host sister and mom. Normally we eat at around 2 pm and have a pasta dish first, then some type of meat and vegetable! It's always delicious, I'm going to do another blog post about Italian food soon too. After lunch with them I take a nap for about an hour then go running, take a shower and after my shower I do my homework, Skype my parents and write my blog.

Tuesday I have an Italian lesson in Torino. After school I meet up with Sanni, my exchange student friend from Finland. We walk to Rivoli from our schools which is about a 15 minute walk. Then we take the bus from Rivoli to the subway which is a little over a half an hour. Then we take the subway to Torino which is about 20 minutes. We normally get to Torino at about 2:30 pm and go get pizza for lunch. There's a bunch of little pizza cafe's everywhere. The lesson starts at 3:30 and lately the lessons are becoming more difficult but I'm happy because I think I'm learning a lot more! Oh and the lesson finishes at 5.

Wednesday's are always different, some days I go to a friends house after school and hang out, some days I just go home and sleep, some days I go running. It really depends! Normally I go out for lunch with a friend though.

Thursday I have another Italian lesson, this lesson doesn't start until 4:30 though. So normally Sanni and I go to Torino after school eat lunch and walk around for a while shopping and just hanging out until the lesson starts. Then the lesson finishes at 6.

Fridays I have an Italian lesson at 3:30 but I'm always in a rush to get to the lesson on time because school finishes at 2:15 on Friday's. After the lesson finishes at 5 I normally hang out in Torino for a while with my friends and eat dinner with them. Sometimes I come home and hang out with my host sisters instead, it's always different!

Saturdays and Sunday's are never the same! (:

Okay now I'm going to tell you about what happened this week! I'm only going to talk about the exciting days though because you already pretty much know everything that happens during the week.

Monday 12th: This was an interesting school day.. (; So I went to school just like any other normal day but when I got there, Romero, the school next to mine, was holding another strike. It was super crowded outside the entrance of my school with people yelling and whatever. I found my classmates and we stayed outside for a while. They were all arguing about if we should go to school today or skip because of the protest. In the end everyone decided to not go to school (: YAY! Instead we all walked to a bar in Rivoli and got cioccolata calda con pana (hot chocolate with cream). It was delicious! Definitely a thousand times better than going to school.. ! After the bar we walked to the library because we were planning on being good students and try to study. But it turned out that the library was closed so we just sat at a table in the sun in a park and talked. It was a really good day (:






whooo no school!

Thursday 22nd: My package from my mom finally came from Ohio!! I was sooo happy (: It took so long for the package to get here because the first time it was sent back because my mom put my name on it instead of my host parents names. It was filled with random things that I forgot to pack like my Uggs, heels, a few pairs of jeans a hoodie and a bunch of halloween candy for my host sisters and I. Also my mom made me a scrapbook of the trip we went on last February to New York City! I explained nearly every single picture to my host mom even though I think she could care less about when I went to New York City... hahahha the package made my day so nice but also made me miss home a little bit ):




Saturday 24th: After school my friend Michela and I went out for lunch in Rivoli at my favorite restauraunt, Opificio! yayayyy! (: It was a really nice time, I haven't known her that long but Michela is already such a wonderful friend! We gossiped and just talked about everything, it was really fun and reminded me of hanging out with my friends back home! After we got some gelato then I took the bus home. As soon as I got home I rushed to take a shower and then my entire host family and I left for Torino. It gets dark sooo early here now at like 5:30 so it was really nice walking around Torino with all the Christmas lights. After about an hour I left my host family and met up with my friend Victoria in Piazza Castello. We then went to our friend Olivia's apartment and met up with a bunch of other exchange students. Then we walked around Torino, got some pizza for dinner and then went to a bar for some drinks. It was a really fun night (: My host sister Federica and her boyfriend Andrea picked me up at around 10:30 then we went to another bar and with all of my host sisters friends. It was such a great night! 



Everyone! <3 
Olivia's house 

Paula & Olivia love getting their pictures taken..

Sunday 23rd: I was supposed to wake up at 10 and go to an AFS meeting thingy but I kinda ended up sleeping until 12:30... hey it's my only day to sleep in all week!! haha but anyway after I woke up we ate lunch then my host mom and I went to this AFS meeting. It was a meeting for all the Italian kids who want to go somewhere next year with AFS. I was surprised just in the Rivoli chapter there was probably like 30 kids! I was kind of nervous cause I didn't think I would know anyone but I showed up and saw plenty of friendly faces (: All the local volunteers were there and Giulia, the girls whose house I went to for dinner a few weeks ago, saw me as soon as I got there and ran up to me and introduced me to all the other kids! Also Irene, my tutor's sister was there and Giulia an Italian girl who went to New York last year with AFS. I had a lot of fun (: I love Italians they're seriously so friendly and nice, when I got there pretty much all the kids gathered around me and asked me a million questions about life in the United States. It made me happy because there was a lot of kids who were interested in going to the U.S next year! They all asked if parties were just like Project X and American Pie. hahahaha (: Then we all sat in a circle and introduced ourselves and said our favorite t.v show, book and stuff like that. By the way all of this was in italian (; Then we played a trivia game where I got to ask the kids questions about the United States, I was surprised when I asked what the capital of Ohio was everyone said Cleveland, which is still wrong, the answer is Columbus but I couldn't believe everyone's heard of Cleveland! haha Then Giulia and another girl who went to Thailand last year talked about their experience and answered questions. It was a nice day! A bunch of the kids got my name and added me on facebook too so yay new friends! haha (: After the meeting my host mom and I went home and I studied for my math test the next day \m/ I'm so happy I can finally understand math in school!

Monday 24th: Okay since I have enough time I'm just going to tell you about my day today as well (: I took my math test and it was actually really easy! Of course, my test was easier than everyone else's because the teacher is super nice and doesn't want to freak me out but still I'm proud of myself for finally being able to participate in math class! After school today I met up with 2 girls from my Chemistry class and we went to my friend Alessandra's house to study for our Chemistry test on Wednesday. Alessandra and Michela are SO nice and so helpful! I can't emphasize it enough how friendly Italian people are. Alessandra and Michela would probably rather have studied on their own but instead they took their time to basically re-teach me everything that we've learned in class because I didn't understand anything. They're the best teachers! I now understand everything so much better! After studying Chemistry for maybe an hour and a half, we had some toast with nutella then hung out for a while (: I'm so happy everything's finally falling in place, I speak in almost only Italian and can understand almost everything, I'm finally understanding what's going on in school and making lots of friends and going out a lot because my host parents trust me now (: Okay well ciao tutti! (:

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