The Unironic YOLO

This is my second post containing the word "YOLO" in it's title, and for that, I'm really freaking sorry. But then again, I'm not, because YOLO really isn't a terrible way of living. In fact, I've hit YOLO mode for the past 2 months and I am planning on staying there for the next 8. So, before anyone that I'm friends with in the States says anything smart about me being okay with YOLO, here's what's going through my mind.

I live with a lot of regrets. I'm gonna guess we all do. Some of these regrets just eat me away inside until I have a cringe attack and can't function in reality because I'm too caught up on the past. Why didn't I tell them how I felt? Why didn't I wait? I bet ______ would be better than here. Why did I wear that? I looked like an idiot! Why did I say that...? Did I seriously think that was funny? Oh my god, what the hell is wrong with me. ohgodohgodohgodohgodohgod

That's what the inside of my brain is like, until I told it to shut up about a week ago. After getting home from camp, I started to think about how the next time I would most likely see all of them together would be after I spoke Italian like an Italian. After I could be in school for 6 days a week and not be staring at a wall 75% of the time. After nearly 6 months of being away, I'd see them again. Then, soon enough, I'd return to my quiet and unexciting Pennsylvanian life.

The scary thing is that I have no idea whatsoever what to do with my life after I return. The thing with me being Kara Richards is I always want more, to achieve bigger and better things. Right now, I'm on the top of the world. How am I going to ever accomplish more than this? I was 15 when I left the country for 10 months, and I will return at 16 with no driver's license, 2 more years of high school to finish, and the ability to speak a foreign language that no one in my area can comprehend. Yeah yeah yeah I'm already planning on becoming an AFS volunteer, no doubt about it. AFS is family, AFS is love, AFS made my life what it is today. So it is never not going to be a part of my life. But what am I going to do to achieve more than this?

SO, YOLO. I have come to the decision (more like realization) that I don't know where the hell my life is going after I set foot back on the turf of Honey Boo Boo and Nascar. Here, I'm going to live for every flipping second I have to be independent, and be who I want to be, because people still don't know me yet. I get to create my own image of myself; be born again into this new society of people who think I'm the foreigner when their whole existence is what's foreign to me. And I have only eight more months to take it all in and live in a style I couldn't live anywhere else. I'm kind of already mad at myself for not living in complete YOLO mode for the past 50-ish days. I'm trying to live with no regrets, as I should have done anyway in the States but it's so much more important now. I do like YOLO unironically, because I am living one life and I'm not going to spend it with cringe attacks of my past and being in a box of conservation.

Haha. What is my life.

Ci vediamo.

This one time at AFS camp...

Ciao ragazzi!

Non ho scritto tra undici giorni. Mi dispiace! Sto occupato! Ma, questo e' cosa ho fatto durante quelli undici giorni del silenzio.

I lied. This is all about the freaking AFS camp, because my mind has been wiped of the prior few days before camp.

A week ago on Saturday, I missed school to catch a bus to Palermo, which is in north Sicily. In Palermo that weekend was all of Intercultura-Sicily's post-arrival orientation. 75 kids were going to attend at the one hotel for about 3 days, 3 nights. I was pumped. The Catania chapter (7 of us) arrived the latest (I was the last, thank you very much), and we rode the bus with the four from Siracusa and 3 from Giarre, I believe. There may have been more but I can't remember the names of the chapters.

(left to right, countries) Finland, Belgium, Guatemala, Thailand, Argentina. Love them to death. 

Our chapter! (back: Serbia, USA, Paraguay, Thailand, Hong Kong; front: Greenland, Finland)

The bus ride consisted of a lot of reuniting with our friends from camp (and some from host countries), and basically catching up and getting to know everyone a little more. Fun fact: the Macarena has actual words to it, and I think every Spanish-speaker knows them. EEEEEH MACARENA! AYE!

Before arriving at the hotel, we met up with most of the other Sicilian chapters in the autobus station, where I saw my American hoodrats for the first time in almost two months. There are six Americans in Sicily, including me. It wasn't that exciting at first until we sat down and kept talking and talking and it just got louder and more obnoxious and the American-ness we had kept inside for the past 2 months freaking erupted. 

The camp was located at a hotel/resort outside of Palermo, called Saracen Village. The view of the sea was gorgeous, and it was a good place to house 75 teenagers and 15 adults trying to keep them all from doing stupid things. The first day was basically just going over the rules and the schedules, mixed with a crap load of energizers that we participated pretty happily in. Most of them came from other countries, I remember Germany, Mexico, Turkey, and China. And like all the games we play in AFS, they got physical.

The next day, it started with breakfast that I ate with Anthony (a boy from Illinois) and a group of kids from Latin America. They came and went as we were eating, but I remember at one point there were the boy and girl from Mexico, a boy from Argentina, and a boy from Bolivia that we were talking to. This made me realize very quickly I've forgotten practically all of my Spanish. Oh dios mio.

Since the next day was scattered with interviews and a lot of free time, it was spent hanging out with all of the 74 other AFSers trapped in the hotel. Everything kind of blurs together after a while, so the details are probably out of order, but I believe I ate snack with a table of Americans (north and south), listening to the weirdest rap music we all had on our phones, and then we went outside to some gardens above the beach to hang out. 

Shoutout to Maeve for taking all of the pictures I stole above. 

A little later, a slew of us all went to the beach as shown above. More like sprinted to the beach, stripping off our clothing as we ran, but we made it there, and hung out there for about a half hour until we had to go eat dinner. Because I'm Kara and I'm an idiot, I have accidentally deleted the photo album I took of pictures there on my phone, but I have stolen one from Facebook (live every other picture in this blog post).

This picture is a palindrome.USA-Guatemala-Argentina-Guatemala-USA. 

 It was glorious.

After dinner, we were grouped together (I think they put us in 2 big groups) to play a game. We were blindfolded and put in a CONGA LINE OF DEATH. Well, not really but it's what it seemed like. We couldn't speak, and we were lead around outside in the dark with obstacles. I'm not quite sure where we went, but I know I had to go under a lot of weird things, I had water thrown on me, I think I may have cried into the shoulder of the girl from New Zealand that was in front of me, and my shoe came untied. SKILL. And that exercise was to teach us trust. So kids, trust no one.

The next day, we started out with presentations of our home countries, and we had to put post-it notes on each other's countries and what we thought of them when we saw them. America's were very typical, New York City, Obama, cowboys, Hollywood, etc. It was really interesting to hear what all the cultures had to say, and what they thought of the things that we knew to be weird but they considered normal. Really, everyone should have been there to hear it.

The day was filled with more interviews, and even more free time for me, so it was spent yet again, with the Americans. I played Candy Crush for the first time and taught some people the Cup Song (and got some very frustrated videos of it). So exciting, I know, but even the smallest things in life are the things you remember forever. 

That night, after dinner, we had the "talent show". My expectations for this were pretty low, I'm gonna admit, because no one really wanted to do it and we had no freaking clue as to what to do. In reality, it was basically an inappropriate dance party with all of the coolest people on the planet. In case you're wondering what I did, I teamed up with Anthony. He played "the cup" and I sang "What Dreams Are Made Of" from the Lizzie McGuire Movie. 

Other acts included 3 girls from Brazil doing the Samba, a Thai ritual dance, a Latin American dance that was so amazing that I secretly wanted to become Latin American after watching it, an Australian girl singing a song about kangaroos while wearing a kangaroo mask, Ozlem from Turkey turning on "Shots" by LMFAO and us just dancing, Japanese character painting, and Chinese singing. 

Annnnd this is the only picture I have on my computer from the show. My camera cord? Who the hell knows its location. 

Afterwards, I waited in the hallway for my roommate from Thailand to come upstairs, and the other 7 girls from Thailand to change in my room. We took pictures with a polaroid camera, and one of them really likes my fat stomach, she kept on touching it. 'Twas quite adorable. My roommates and I stayed up until about 3 in the morning, exchanging currency and writing in our own languages, talking about our Intercultural experiences. How many people can say this is how they spent their weekend? Only exchange students.

The final day was the day we had to leave, really bittersweet. The most bittersweet thing I think that has ever happened to me. I said goodbye to people I knew that there was a 99% chance I was never going to see again, and said goodbye to some of my best friends and favorite people on the planet that I wouldn't see until June. That's the only thing I hate about camp. It brings you all together just to tear you all apart. In reality, it's just like life. 

I'm not joking when I say this, but these are my best friends in the whole entire world. 

The bus ride home, most fell asleep and I tried to, but I always think too much on long trips by car (or in this case, bus). Exchange life is the coolest thing to ever happen to me. I had my friend from Paraguay asleep on my right shoulder, a girl from Belgium on my left asleep on the girl next to her. I had my friend from Argentina with his seat back right in front of me asleep, and we were driving through hills and valleys of desert and vineyards, small towns, old ruins, and olive trees. and then there was myself, awake. Life comes to me at unexpected moments, and reality is still pretty hard to get over most of the time. I tell myself that I made it every day I wake up, and I couldn't be more thankful for the life I am living. So...YOLO, because you really only do live once.

Teenagers with Bullhorns: the next Les Miserables

Ciao ragazzi!

So it's been five days and I left you all on a cliff hanger with the manifestation and all that jazz. Sorry. I started writing an entry the day after but then my computer got weird and restarted and I lost all my progress. This is what's up yo.

So on October 11th, my school took part in a manifestation. It started at 8:30 when I met up with friends and we started walking in a gigantic parade-style march. On the steps of a university, we stopped to take out our banners and disperse them within our group, and make sure we had everyone caught up. Then, we started the actual "march".

Catania has a public garden/park called Villa Bellini, and we marched through a lot of that to get to our destination, where the other schools were. During our walk through Villa Bellini, I actually witnessed a car clip the back of a motorcycle and the two riding it go flying, but they were both okay and pedestrians helped them. My friends were more worried about me it seemed, because I kinda freaked out. I'm not good with that stuff. Thank you, Damiano! (;

My sister had told me prior that there would be a good 3 or 4 thousand people there, and I didn't believe it until we met up with other schools. For about a half hour, we stood in a shoulder-to-shoulder sweat fiesta until we started the full-out march that would take place the rest of the day. The march was led by a flatbed truck with a few speakers that were pumping music out of them (ironically, Pink Floyd's Another Brick in the Wall pt. 2)

Chants included but were not limited to:

BOGGIO LERA SEMPRE PRESENTE (Boggio Lera, my school, always here)

HEY, TU, ALLA FINESTRA, SCENDI TU E MANIFESTA (hey, you, in the window, come down and protest!)

It was five days ago, I forget them, okay? But we had bullhorns and stuff.

The rest of the walk lasted for about 3 hours, and it was very stop-and-go. Plus it was hot, everyone smelled...southern European, and I didn't have water. By the end I was just drenched and thirsty. It didn't take any of the fun out of it, however. The highlight of my day was making eye contact with one of my sisters friends who I knew but he doesn't speak English while doing a chant. The look on his face was "HOLY CRAP SHE SPEAKS ITALIAN LOOK AT OUR LITTLE AMERICAN ALL GROWN UP AND AWESOME LIKE US".

I love my friends.

Bringing me to today.

Today, I gave a powerpoint presentation on "American Life" and it was super fun just going on about my life, and into detail about normal things to me that were completely foreign to them. At one point, I got a little emotional and I told my class how much I'm grateful to have them here and I wouldn't trade this experience for the world. Words can't express how much I love my life right now.

Yet again, I love my friends.

I love my life.

I love everything.

Ugh it's gross I know I need to stop this.

Ciao ragazzi, ci vendiamo!

Viva la Revolution!

This is the story of how I completed a revolution around the sun, while the Italian school system is creating a teenage revolution in itself.

October 9th, 2013:

Auguri a mi, auguri a mi, auguri a Kara, auguri a mi! It was my birthday yesterday, and not only any birthday but the first that really actually matters in life. I'm now sixteen!

I celebrated my sixteenth revolution around the sun with no party, but what I am going to go ahead and say was my best birthday yet. I woke up with my hair in my eyes and as tired as every other day, got out of bed and did my morning routine. I went downstairs and nothing special happened (as in no one jumped out at me or shoved me down the stairs or something), but I didn't mind. I wouldn't expect them to know it was my birthday after only living with them for a little over 2 weeks. So my host sister Gaia and I walk to school, and I walk into my classroom and they scream "AUGURI" at me, which is basically the "happy birthday" slogan of Italian. That made me really, really happy.

The rest of the day, I had my first French class with first years (since I don't speak a word of French and I would like to learn it). So I repeated the "I'm from America please don't touch me" routine with the 13 year olds in my class, then went back to my third year class. When I walked in, they not only sang, but screamed the happy birthday song at me, in English and Italian. My love for my Italian class is like how they serve gelato here; it runneth over.

After school, I normally walk out the doors and wait on the steps of the church connected to my school (since it's an ex-convant we have that), but instead of going home, my sister walked by me, told me to wait, and came back and got me. So she made me follow her up the street to where all of our friends sometimes congregate after school. And they sang again.

God I love my life.

But the reason my sister made me wait on the steps was because she was buying me some cake things, one chocolate cream, one strawberry. We ate them, then went home to eat the best pasta to come from Sicily: pasta al forno (pasta of the oven), that my host dad made while we were at school. So I ate until my already full stomach was up to "basta on the pasta" on the scale and then we changed and went downstairs to have what we know as "reunion".

"Reunion" is where I start to bring in the teenage revolution in. My host sister, Gaia, is part of the school political realm. There are two parties (just like the Republicans and Democrats), Trinacria and Liberamente. Gaia is part of Trinacria, and I'd like to consider myself as part of it too, yet I am more like an english-speaking minion. I attend most of the meetings (even though the only reasons I attend is because Gaia is there and it's hilarious to watch/listen to the kids scream in Sicilian at each other) and know what's going on most of the time. This reunion was about an assembly that would happen the next day, which I'll get to later.

For dinner, Gaia and I went to her best friend's house and made pasta and meat things that are hard to explain. Kind of like pork wrapped around cheese. Then we ate nutella. It was a good night.

October 10th, 2013.

Today, school was boring. Until our break time, when I was working with Trinacria, and then we had an assembly, which is really just a group of kids with a bullhorn. So Trinacria stood on the top of a ramp in front of what was probably most of the school, and talked about the protests that would happen the following day.

The Italian government is cutting funds from the schools, and in response, we are going on strike. Tomorrow, in one of the plazas, what we are guessing will be 3 or 4 thousand kids will be on strike against the Italian government. And I'm part of it.

This afternoon after my AFS Italian lessons, my sister picked me up and we went to a park to spraypaint banners for tomorrow. I love her group of friends so much, english speakers or not at all.

So now, we are sitting around, waiting until tomorrow when we go all out Les Miserables. We are the barricade in this situation. UGH LIFE WHY ARE YOU SUDDENLY SO AWESOME

Why Italian teenagers are pretty friggin' awesome.

I've told Gaia this about 235693237849653 times, but where in America would you see like, 50+ kids meeting almost every day to figure out a way to save their education and get hundreds of kids involved without any adult revision at all? You try to start a music group in America with 5 people and it goes down the crapper within 1 day. My group of friends in Italy is proof that in order to change something, you gotta do it yourself. Nothing is just going to come to you the way you want it. Even though some of these kids have morals about what they do that I don't agree with, they are more active and determined than even I am. They want change, and they're striving and struggling to get it. So, do you hear the people singing the songs of angry men? Or angry teenagers with bullhorns and a few liters of Coca Cola, but really. This is amazing.

holy crap i'm italian: my not-so-touristic travels.

When you're lost and alone, or you're sinking like a stone,

carry on.

May your past be the sound, of your feet upon the ground,

carry on.

Exchange students need a song to hang on to sometimes, and that's probably my song.

Just something I thought of in school, and it does apply so well to exchange. Anyways....

CIAO RAGAZZI.

I really haven't been able to do a full out blog post here, because it's been a bit overwhelming with all the crazy switching of host families and adjustments and trying to understand what the actual heck is going on around with me. But I actually have my life together for a few moments and it's that time. I force myself into talking about my life for your enjoyment! 

I don't even know where to start or what to begin with because my life is so chaotic but let's do something simple. Daily schedule? Yup.

Okay. So let's pretend it's Monday. This is my life.

7:00; 7 AM WAKIN' UP IN THE MORNING GOTTA BE FRESH GOTTA GO DOWNSTAIRS. That has never applied more to my life until I lived in Italy. I do wake up at 7 every day, get dressed, do all of my bathroom routine, and then go downstairs.

7:30; I eat breakfast with my host sister, which is normally biscuits (my favorite Italian breakfast food) and milk, sometimes if we have enough time we will make coffee. On occasion, there are breads with apricot jam. 

7:50; My host sister and I walk down eight flights of stairs and five blocks to our school. 

8:00; I walk up 6 flights of stairs, through a courtyard, more stairs, and then to my classroom. Normally I sit on my desk and wait until something exciting happens but sometimes I will go to the courtyard and buy something to eat or drink for the day. FOOD IS SO CHEAP HERE. 

8:15; My first class starts for the day. The teachers move instead of the students, in case you didn't know that already, and when they enter the room, all of us stand up until they sit down or tell us we can sit. Every day, our classes also switch. I still haven't gotten mine memorized, because another thing they do a lot here is change everyone's freaking schedules. It doesn't really matter to us as much as it does the teachers, because it means they have to FIND us. 

11:05; Break time. Here is when we all go outside and wrestle our way to the vending machines, take so many pictures of each other it's ridiculous, or copy each other's homework. You can go anywhere, really. Yesterday, it was a girls birthday in my class so she brought in 3 cakes and 3 bottles of soda and we threw a party and took a good 20 minutes out of the following period to eat cake. It's always sketchy to know when class starts again, because it depends on when the teacher can motivate themselves to come teach us. There's always a kid outside looking for the oncoming teacher to tell us to run and sit down. It's hilarious because we literally do run.

There's also a local pasticceria that makes sweet and savory pastries and sells them for a euro every day. They're delicious. Like, better than USA cafeteria food. Take that, Michelle Obama. 

13:05; school is over, and we are released out into the streets. My school is on one of the busiest streets and we will stand in the middle of it, COMPLETELY backing up traffic. Then, we start playing Frogger with humans as we dodge rogue vespas, cars, buses, and bicyclists. 

13:15; My host sister walk back up 8 flights of stairs, complaining about how hungry we are. Get upstairs, and throw something for lunch together. It can vary from warming up something we bought from a restaurant (eggplant parm, lasagna), to eating balls of mozzerella di bufala (better than regular mozzerella) and salami.

the rest of the afternoon: In Sicily, sometimes we take naps, which I am a strong believer in. But if we don't want to sleep, we study (those who actually have school work), we go sit on the steps of a 600 year old church and hang out with friends, or we read/use the computer/write. I do all 4 of these things on different days. 

20:00-22:00; We have dinner. Dinners are smaller than in America, mostly vegetables, soups, small things like that. At least in my current host families. In past families we ate more. But really, in typical Italian families, dinner is smaller than lunch. 

as soon as I finish dinner: I go to bed. 

Now that school is finally starting to be comprehendable and I can understand about half or more of what people say, I feel like I'm not an American living in Italy but a socially/language retarded Italian teenager. LEVEL UP! 

Ci vendiamo!

Teenage Wasteland by 4's

Ciao ragazzi!

In 3 days, I will be away for a month...1/10 of it already come and gone and it feels like I was sitting in pointless Philadelphia traffic this morning...

Let's kick this intro into the second month off with a list of pointless things about America I miss:

1. TURKEY HILL ICED TEA. (what did I tell you, it always is number one in my heart)
2. Showers every day/air conditioning. 
3. my school. I really enjoy Italian school but really, I do miss my Solanco.
4. a working cell phone

Is it good that only 4 things come to mind that I miss? I think so. MOOOOOVING ON.

Italian school summed up into 4 words: cigarettes, screaming, doppelgangers, and bad haircuts. 

Many, many, many Italian kids smoke. I'm talking about 80% of my school. After turning down the dozens of cigarettes offered to me in the past month, I've had the reasoning behind it explained to me.

You know back in the third or fourth grade when you had a specialist come into your classroom and hammering those pictures of tar-coated lungs from smokers down your throat and telling you that smoking is never cool? The kids in Italy obviously never had that lecture. It is legitimately considered a "cool thing" here in Italy. There are 13 and 14 year old kids lighting up cancer sticks for the sake of being cool.  I die every day walking outside on break and seeing people everywhere smoking, rolling their own cigarettes, trying to find a lighter, slowly killing themselves at such a young age. Can't we just all drink espresso and eat personal pizzas without setting something on fire?

The Italians do not have conversations. They have limb flailing, synchronized screaming festivals. My host sister, Gaia, is part of her school's representative branch, and they normally have meetings in our house. Today, we had one and I sat in because I like a lot of the people there even if they don't speak English. They are supposed to be talking about issues in the school but in reality it's 6 people screaming over each other and tossing their hands around like they're conducting an orchestra. It's one of the funniest/most terrifying things you can witness firsthand.

DOPPELGANGERS. Basically I've come to the conclusion that everyone has an identical twin and they can be found in southern Europe. So far, 4 of my classmates look like people from my American school, there's a first or second year that has Harry Styles' face, and a fifth year that looks like my world cultures teacher from last year. I will some day impose selfies with all of them.

Bad haircuts....too many of them. 

It's 8:15 here and we are about to eat dinner. 

Keep talking with your hands and I'll see you next time!