Really eventful month part 2

Hello again

This would bring me to my trip to italy. Well sicily. What a wonderful life i'm living right now, let me tell you. If you ever get the chance to visit sicily, PLEASE do becasue it is wonderful. I had a somewhat intense experiance seeing as i was with an exchange program and i lived with yet another unkown family. Again, i suffered quite the sleep deprivation, but who needs sleep? i guess i don't anymore. Anyway, i was with the same girl i was with before (adriana). She is an only child, lives with her mom, normal (not really) hippy teenager. Stays out late, doesn't brush her hair (it would be impossible), wears kinda weird alternative clothes, listens to screamo and rock heavy metal type music, smokes, has skateboarding stickers in her room, doesn't care what people think etc. etc. Her mom is quite the opposite, dresses nicely, has everything organized, nice, heldback, a police officer, blonde, well groomed, very heathy, has pictures of god in her room etc. etc. You would think that maybe these two individuals would not get along so well, but GUESS WHAT, they're like best friends. They get ready together in the morning and like... joke around in the bathroom and share clothes (sometimes... they dont really have the same style) and talk about personal things. It was quite impressive. Anyway, i lived in this little town on a mountain called Scordia where everyone knows everyone so OF COURSE i got looked at funny considering i was the only tall blonde white girl around (no surprises there). I dont even know where to start honestly. The first day i understood absolutely nothing of italian, not even when they said 'welcome' (at which i had to turn to adriana to translate..... lamest moment of the trip) but by the end of the trip i sorta got the hang of it. sorta. The language didnt seem to be such a barrier for me since i like to think my personality just SHINES through, but i honestly think people just knew me as the weird tall white girl, so a lot of kids came to me just to joke around (which im fine with). After a while the italians warmed up to me and we all ended up making friends. My italian host sister and i actually got along famously. We were always like the two weird ones, considering she doesnt really fit in with the regular teenage crowd, and i just kinda followed her around. We'd always come up to everyone singing a song, and weirdly enough we always managed to dress distinctly compared to everyone else in the crowd (she does it on purpose.... i do it because i have a hard time following fashion trends) I dont know what exactly happened, but there was a real great friendship developing there. Stupid time limit had to go on and ruin it all. Anyway, heres the run down.

First of all we were living in small town EXTREME edition, so everyone knew everyone. This does not help the starring factor at all, and i ended up getting looked at a lot (not just me,but all the spanish), not saying it isnt anything i wasnt expecting, just something that bugs me a little. Anyway, the fist 8 days or so went perfectly as planned. We did touristy things, went shopping, went out to eat, had pizza, took a nap, went to a dance party, jane got sick, went to hang out, etc etc. i was welcomed with an entire pizza just for myself. it was fantastic. To be more specific, we went to Etna- the tallest and yet still active volcano in europe- which was actually pretty fun. i had no idea was a volcano was actually like. turns out it's a lot different than the idea we have in minnesota. At least to what i understood, it has a bunch of places of explosion (no idea what they're called) , and even though it has an active status, it is not continuously exploding all the time, everyday. There is snow on the top, but its interesting to know that its not cold. The rocks are actually warmish and let off a steamy wonder. When i sat down on the top, its actually warm on the skin, and you can see the heat waves coming off of the surface. i stole a piece of etna just to remember. Driving up there i saw a few houses buried under the rock. That is also noteworthy. I'd never seen that before.

One other noteworthy comment would be that of the immense amount of 18th birthday parties we went to. Let me tell you right now that these 18th birthday parties are nothing normal. I dont know if the people just have a lot of money or if they save it up especially for this occasion, but they really go all out. If you've ever seen my super sweet 16 on MTV, it's like that but slightly toned down, usually without a car, free of drama and everything's in italian. The first one i went to really blew my mind. The birthday girl had a nice prom type dress, high heels, a waiter, a birthday cake, presents, wine, and a whole lot of group photos at the end. It was like a wedding reception.... Her family even made a speech. One thing that blew my mind was they way they dance. they do this line dance type thing to EVERY SINGLE SONG, and each song has a specific dance. i learned a few, but to be completely honest it just ended up getting a little annoying and repetitive.

Everything was going fine UNTIL THE SECOND TO LAST DAY. We arrive to school completely normal only to find everyone is crying. All the spanish kids were confused until our correspondences let us in on what had happened, WHICH WAS that a classmate of theirs had died the night before in a motorcycle accident. We didn't know exactly how to react to such news, but when they brought the spanish kids down to explain what had happened, most of us sorta just broke down. I don't know how it actually happened, but everyone sorta just opened up to everyone, telling stories of they're own lives or if something similar had happened to them. I'm not going to give any sort of details, but just seeing how many people that something like this can affect kind of blew my mind. And on top of it all, having seen my classmates open up about their own stories, it never really goes away completely either.

The last 2 days were actually kind of disastrous to be honest. There was a lot of crying and hugging and stuff like that, and honestly, the worst of it was not at the airport. It was the day before when everyone was writing little memories for everyone else when i personally got sad. all the italians wrote little notes for me saying that i was the goofy one or the one who they could always laugh with or just the american (seeing as i was the only one) but also one of my classmates, mariajose, wrote me a little letter herself saying that we had gotten to be really good friends in those 10 days and that i bring out the best in her and all these really nice things that just broke me down. Those types of things really make me thing that i did the right thing in coming here. I guess i always knew it was a good thing, but just to have those little reminders like that does the trick.

At the airport....i dont know why, but i wasn't all that sad. Maybe i was already drained of emotion, or maybe it was the fact that the teacher supervisors were being really stupid. We were all saying goodbye outside the baggage check line, giving hugs and saying our last words. Everyone was crying and obviously you know.... in the moment when the teachers start literally pulling people off of whomever they were hugging. We had like... an hour and a half before boarding more than enough time and yet they would lets us share a nice moment. That wasn't fair. Everyone was mad. And that ends my italian exchange.

Now on to easter break.

Jane