my belated, turkey-less, thanksgiving post

Happy it's-now-acceptable-to-talk-about-Christmas Day!  A.K.A. the day after the day after Thanksgiving. Another part of being an exchange student is that you're wonked up for months after even though you're used to the time zones, languages, family, etc. To me, I feel like I've been stuck in September for 3 months when in reality I should have been excited for Christmas and switching all of my music on my phone to Bing Crosby and Straight No Chaser 2 weeks ago. DOESN'T MEAN I AIN'T LISTENING TO IT NOW THO. (I had a little dradel, I made it out of clay! and when it's dry and ready, the dradel I shall play! DRA-)

But since yesterday was Thanksgiving and I need a token American status telling about all of the things that I'm thankful for.

1. My support group in the States. I don't really know what returning will be like. I really hope you haven't totally forgotten me which is actually pretty scary for me, but for those of you that have bothered to stay in contact with me, thank you. I miss American humor the most out of all the things, besides my capital foods that I have been going through withdraw of (I DON'T KNOW IF I CAN DO THIS WITHOUT TURKEY HILL THING MUCH LONGER)
2. My AFS friends. Roosa, Anthony, Jude, Lauren, Thorunn, Ari, Luis, Mook, Mariano, Lucy, Hiroshi, Andrea, Marie, Linde, Michelle, Leticia, Isabela, Iris, Veronique, Moeko, Ko, Carlos, I will always love you all to the ends of the earth and back. I will forever skype you, send you post cards, hug you unconditionally, and be awkward with you. I love you all more than life itself.
3. AFS Intercultural: This organization changed my life from a very, very mediocre Disney story of a small town girl with big dreams to an actual classic Disney movie, which is what dreams are made of (has that joke been overused yet or what? hardy hur hur hur). In the words of a girl from my town in the States who's currently studying with AFS in Germany, thank you for giving me the opportunity to "make my dreams my bitch" here. 
4. Jenny and Mike Messner:  the couple that so generously gave me the scholarship for my rear end to sail (fly over) the seven seas (the atlantic ocean), and made really everything on this list a reality. I will never be able to thank them enough for this experience, and I honestly will never, ever, trade this experience for the world. I've gained so much here (but not weight lolz) and I know I will use it for the rest of my life. You've changed me, you've changed my view of life, you've changed my education, you've changed my experiences, you've changed my life. Grazie mille, gracias, merci, danke, thank you.
5. My whole student body at school. Special thanks to:
• Gaia: my previous host sister. She really got me introduced into the "real" Italian teenager lifestyle that in all honesty I don't know if or when I would have discovered without her. I also got out of my "just classmates" bubble of friends and now am pretty well known over the school.
• Trinacria Studentesca: one of the major political groups that allowed me to sit in a ton of their meetings and just listen to them yell at each other.
• Marco, Claudia, Mateo, Simone, Federica, Alessandro, Elenora, and all you guys: Thank you for being my lifelines, my English speakers, my acceptance when there was no one else, and my friends. I know I'm really dependent on you guys but I really would be no where without you all. You're my favorite people on this planet. 
6. My classmates, who I haven't really said much about in detail yet. 
• Chiara: Chiara or "Pugli" as some of us call her was my first friend in my Italian classroom. In order to switch families the first time here, I used her phone to contact my liaison the third day of school after almost having an emotional breakdown in math class. To this day, she is still translating physical education for me because the teacher thinks I still speak absolutely no Italian, and just being the awesome person she is.
• Damiano: Ugh this kid is so awesome it's disgusting. He's class representative and one of those hipsters that isn't really a hipster, but really, he definitely is. He has the best English out of everyone in the class but of course he doesn't think that, and he's helped me out ever since day one. Now, with everything crazy that is going on in the Italian school system (that will be an upcoming blog post within the next week or later if I'm super lazy) he has been the most explainatory and has helped me maneuver around all of the crap that has been flying around my school. 
  
• Lucia, Cristina, Sonia, and Marta: The four most unique girls in my class that I have had the honor of being taken under their wing(s). Lucia and I are already close enough that we will play hang man and iSpy during class and almost beat each other up when the other wins. Cristina, Sonia, and Marta all normally sit relatively close to each other so they can whisper condescending things. Last Saturday I went out with Sonia and Cristina and had a ton of fun, when we spoke 95% in Italian and loitered around the Italian version of Barnes and Nobles for an hour and a half. We enjoy coffee runs in the middle of class, sneaking potato chips while the teacher isn't looking, fangirling really hard over the Hunger Games, and sopraccigli. Inside joke. None of them wanted to get their picture taken, and the ones I took of them without them looking were immediately confiscated upon finding.
• Hilary, Laura, Irene, and Giulia: spontaneously sassy and adorable. These girls are of the highest fashion and are always willing to give me hugs and make me feel really dang good about myself. I feel like their child because they're always telling me how cute I am when I make mistakes while speaking Italian. CHE CARINA!
• Naomi and Paola: Naomi and Paola are the two sweetest, tiniest girls you will ever meet in my school. Both are die-hard One Direction fans, and will make conversation with about anything. Naomi taught me most of my animals and objects during French classes when I was a distraction. Paola and I speak in English, because her English isn't as great as she'd like it to be (or as my English teacher would want it). 

Naomi and I! Apologies for the fact it's sideways and off centered.

Stay tuned for this upcoming week. I'm pretty sure it will be....interesting. No spoilers yet, though. Just wish me luck! (;

Ci vediamo!

truth is...

Before coming to Italy, everyone I ever knew told me "what I should expect" in Italy. In all honesty, I ignored all of you. Unless you've actually been to Italy, then I listened. I heard things, but not limited to:
:

• what if your host family is part of the Mob/Mafia?
• you better like wearing high heels!
• oh the coffee over there is so strong!
• did you know (insert part of Italy) and (insert other part of Italy) hate each other?
• the pasta over there is fantastic!!1!11!
• oh everyone there is beautiful, especially the boys. You're so lucky!

I'm not a believer, nor have I ever been a believer in stereotypes and generalizations of populations or countries. Only are they okay when next to nothing or in fact nothing is known about a population (in my opinion). I face a lot of generalizations/stereotypes every day that I live here that people have on Americans; that we're fat, we're contradicting, we're conceited, we're hillbillies/cowboys/celebrities, we go out every weekend, we throw parties, cheerleaders are mean, jocks are stupid, drama club is like Glee... Really. I've been on the receiving end of all of this crap. Nothing is really to blame here, as most of what the kids are watching here are American shows that are badly dubbed over in Italian, and they really do think of high school in the States as High School Musical or our night life as Jersey Shore. So this is me trying to help everyone get a better understanding of Italian generalizations/stereotypes that I know exist.

• Pasta. Let me clear something up here. There is a difference between American "Italian" food and Italian food. Go to your nearest Olive Garden and the first things on your menu are spaghetti and meatballs, fettuccine alfredo, ravioli, lasagne, and chicken parmesean. Some of these don't even exist here. I haven't had alfredo or even seen the dang word here. Spaghetti and meatballs is just about as American as macaroni and cheese; Italians would laugh until they cried if they saw it. Or maybe just cry. Chicken/eggplant parmesean is not a pasta, it is a dish almost like lasagna without pasta. Plus they only do the eggplant here.

          Going off on this carbohydrate-loaded rant, the Italian you know is about as much Italian as Cheese Wiz is cheese. Let's go with the stereotypical chain restaurant in the States. You know that wonderful, life-changing moment when the waiter at the restaurant brings you out a hunk of bread sliced into 10 pieces, pours olive oil on a plate and cracks some pepper onto it? OH, HOW ITALIAN. We do different variations of that here, but never would you ever see someone pour so much oil on a plate then sprinkle a little mediocre pixie dust on it. What we do is called "fare la scarpetta" or "do the little shoe". It doesn't make any sense, but this is the initiation of being Italian. To do the little shoe, after you finish your dinner, you use the hunk of bread (which is always sitting beside your plate, ALWAYS) and tear it into pieces to mop up whatever is left. You don't add squat. On very rare occasions, they will add a very small amount of oil if they want to eat a lot of bread, but never a plateful. 

• Coffee. Okay, coffee doesn't exist here like it does in the States. Every morning, we use a little tiny metal pot thing on the stove that looks something like this:

This is where the magic happens. You stick this sucker on the stove with water in the skirt-ish looking thing at the very bottom and espresso in the waist-ish part of the thing (if you compare the device to a woman). After about 5 minutes, you got espresso. Not EXpresso. Espresso. 

Whatever you do with this after is up to you. My family mixes it with milk in a very magical machine that makes it very foamy and delicious, then we drink it with biscotti for breakfast. 

Side note: if you seriously want your "venti" cup of mocha frappucino pumpkin spice eggnog carmel-uccino, you're immediately notified as a foreigner and will kindly exit to the left. But really, it's here, but you don't order it.

• feuds between areas of Italy Okay, they exist but it's over freaking soccer. 
• attractiveness This one made me LOL forever when I first got here. Italians are known internationally for their amazing looks and sense of fashion. My expectations, I admit, were high. When I got here and took a look at the people of my school....basically, guys aren't all supermodels. There are some strange haircuts here that you American girls would vomit when you saw it. There are some attractive guys but our version of attractive is completely different from their version of attractive. Girls are very beautiful, but there is a lot of time spent and money spent to look the way they do. Clothing is a priority here, I'm pretty sure it ranks over food for some of them. It's more of an annoyance to me because I'm not spending 50 Euro on a shirt that's ugly and I wouldn't want to wear anyways, and that's why I've only bought 1 article of clothing here in over 2 months. That's right. 
• Mafia/Mob This one is still partially unknown to me. It depends on who you ask about it. If you ask any adult, they will say it's a thing of the past. If you ask a teenager, chances are they will go into an hour-long spiel of how the Mafia runs everything in Sicily and has higher rankings than the police. I don't want to say anything I'm not certain about, so I will just say this: I have not seen, been a part of, met, encountered, or heard of anything related to the Mafia since I've been here. The Godfather and Scarface are nonexistent. 

A LESSON ON SICILIAN HAND GESTURES

Hands are a total language of their own. Sometimes, it is difficult to differentiate between sign language and just being Sicilian. 

-if you see someone with the "pinch" hands, the typical Italian gesture we all know: they are explaining you something.

-if someone has their hands together flat in a full out prayer position, shaking them back and forth (possibly accompanied by "mamma mia"): they are not happy with you, and they're not really afraid of it.

- using two fingers and swirling them in a circle in the same way that you would turn the handle of a jack-in-the-box: they want to do something after.

-sliding the backside of their hand underneath their chin towards the person they are speaking to: they don't care. (this is not rude, just like an "it doesn't matter to me" type thing.)

-both hands at waist level, palms up, sliding them back and forth: they are into the conversation and want you to know their side of it. 

Side note: I do all of these.

STUFF YOU DON'T KNOW ABOUT ITALY

1. No one wears shorts here. It was a good 90 degrees for a while in October and still, everyone wore jeans. I only wear shorts when I'm not going to school, and doing something that could be considered touristy so I have more of a justification.
2. Music here has a very heavy Spanish influence. 
3. Never, ever, EVER let a knife touch/cut your pasta. You will start a revolt.
4.  Continued, don't eat fruit with skin or without slicing it.
5. About 1-4 o'clock every day, a lot of the shops close down. This is because lunch is the biggest meal of the day, taking a while to eat, and some sleep for an hour or two in a recovery coma. (This is more of a Sicilian thing).
6. Most shows on television are just dubbed over English shows, not Italian. Take Disney Channel for example, though. I know there's a show from Mexico that all of the girls love called "Violetta". I'm pretty sure there's one from a middle eastern country as well, and one from Korea. 
7. Seatbelts are more of a thing that you only use when you're yelled at to put it on... there have been more times than I can count that I tried to buckle and the buckle didn't exist. 
8. Pedestrians do not have the right of way when it comes to traveling. The food chain goes about scooters-bicycles-cars-stray dogs-pedestrians. It's ridiculous and it makes me so frustrated but it's just how it is. Scooters drive on the sidewalk and do not give a crap if you are there as well, you'll just have to move. 
9. Poverty is a real thing here, so often you will see the poor selling things like lighters, tissue packs, umbrellas, sunglasses, or hats on the street. In some cases (in the city especially), there will be 2 or 3 men with Coke bottles filled with soap and water with a big long squeegie waiting at stop lights, and they will start cleaning your windshield when you are at a red light. 
10. Public bathrooms do not provide toilet paper. (unless you get lucky, normally in places like airports and some restaurants have it. But in my school, toilet paper, even hand towels are not to be found). So ladies, if you're coming to Italy, stock up on the tissue packs.
11. Dogs are allowed inside of stores. Also, owners do not "pick up" after their dogs while walking them, leaving a really disgusting sidewalk. 
12. Sodas in the US that you think would exist here, such as Mountain Dew, root beer, or Dr. Pepper, do not. This is because in Europe, artificial coloring to food products is banned. Coca Cola, Pepsi, and Fanta are here, but instead of Fanta being neon orange like in the States, it's more of a dim yellowish color. It still tastes the same, it's just...better for you. My mom, brother and I were talking about this today at lunch.

It's hard to come up with these things because they are all normal for me now. I had to force myself into thinking into a previous mindset to come up with them. 

annnnnnd that's a wrap for this meaningless blog entry! Ci vediamo, ragazzi!

Una Gita a Siracusa

Holy lame title, Batman!

Ieri, noi siamo andati alla Siracusa, una citta nel Sicilia con Intercultura. Ho svegliato alle sette, ho fatto una doccia, e alle nove, ero alle stazione dell'autobus a prendere l'autobus con l'altri ragazzi di Catania e Giarre. Siracusa ha le grotte, una isola, e molti cosi bellissimi. Noi abbiamo fatto un giro tra le grotte e dopo, noi siamo andati all'isola. L'isola di Siracusa (non ricordo il nome, mi dispiace) e due chilometri nella grandezza, ed e bellissima. Ieri, il cielo era molto blu e non era troppo caldo. Ero molto felice con i miei amici di Intercultura. Sono la piu felice quando io sono con loro.

^^^I wrote that a while ago. Since, I've procrastinated writing this stupid thing for about a week. Here's the translation.

Yesterday, we went to Siracusa, a city of Sicily with Intercultura (AFS). I woke up at 7, took a shower, and at nine, I was at the bus station to take the bus with the other guys from Catania and Giarre. Siracusa has caves, an island, and many beautiful things. We took a tour of the caves and after, we went to the island. The island of Siracusa (I don't remember the name, I'm sorry) is two kilometers in size and is beautiful. Yesterday, the sky was very blue and it wasn't very cold. I was very happy with my friends from AFS. I am the most happy when I am with them.

It's now the end of the week. This "gita", italian for small vacation/trip, was on Sunday. Sorry for the delay of my professional procrastination.

Anyways, we went to Siracusa which is about an hour and a half away by bus. I always get psyched for these trips with the other kids from other chapters, because I have a lot of other friends not in Catania that I don't get to see very often. So at 9, I bought the wrong ticket and we went on our way (I bought a one way instead of two way, because I'm Kara freaking Richards). On the bus, I sat with my Scandinavian babe Roosa (from Finland). I can't remember much of what happened on the bus, except AFS always takes up the entire back of the bus (we believe we should just have it reserved for the loud exchange students that hold singalongs and scream at eachother in their native tongues) and it was hot as hell.

When we got to Siracusa, we met up with the Siracusa chapter, most of which was on this "gita". Siracusa has so many awesome kids that if I wasn't in Catania, I'd want to be there. Leticia from Brazil who is a fellow fangirl, Michelle (singer of that kangaroo song) from Australia, Ari the whale slaughtering football player from the Danish Faroe Islands, Luis from the Dominican Republic who I became besties with, and one of my literal best friends from Guatemala, Lucy. She's probably under 5 feet tall but she's the most energetic little monkey I've ever met.

lil crap Lucy.

So off we went to these cave things. I know I'm using all of the correct scientifical terms to these rock things with the trees and such, so here's some pictures to show you my edumacational skillz.

we were literally forced by our tour guide to do this pose. I am hiding in the background.

#modelstatus

Inside the cave, it was dark and damp and we all didn't know what the heck we were doing. Our tour guide, a 50-something woman who spoke awkward broken english started to sing to prove that the cave had an "echo". My video? On my camera.

Outside of the cave, we were lead to a Greek ampitheatre. A little knowledge about ampitheatres that everyone in Italy knows but I didn't know until I came here:

When the Greeks were building their ampitheatres, they built them into a mountain, so there was no wall. Only seats etched into a mountain. The seats in Siracusa are made of limestone, while the seats in the one in Taormina are made out of lavastone (it just depends on where they are located). Both of these ampitheatres are located in front of water, because the water helps the sound spread from the stage/orchestra up the side of the mountain, because Julius Caesar didn't use no microphones.

check out dat storm doe.

Luckily, it didn't start raining. Our tour guide gave us 10 minutes to "take pictures" (screw around) on the top of the theater. My select hoodrats for the day, Roosa, Lucy, Nano (Argentina), and Hiroshi (from Japan) all went together and explored. Someone (I'm pretty sure Nano) has a video where we remade the famous scene from Titanic on the opposing side of the ampitheatre, as shown in the picture above. I'm flying, Hiroshi! I'm flying!

After our tour ceased, we took a long freaking walk (it was a giant haul) to the island of Siracusa. This island was basically the epitome of stereotypical Italy. Narrow streets, clothes hanging from balconies, loads of old vespas, plazas full of catholic church, Gothic style everything, it was probably the prettiest thing I've seen here. 

 The hoodratz: front (row) and center!

 I win at life for this picture. Successful "High School Musical" shot with Ari (Danish Faroe Islands), a girl from Germany (can't spell her name), Lucy and I.

My new favorite picture. 

One thing I love about my Scandinavian babe is she is probably the best photographer/editor I know. She did stuff like this:

this

this

and this thing

it's disgusting how awesome she is.

She also has a Finnish blog, but google translate doesn't do it justice. So if you wanna read some jibberish/Finnish/badly translated English, go to Roosa's blog here.

But anyways, she did this thing.

Freakin' Roosa, man.

We ate lunch where you see the umbrellas beside me above, at a "buffet" (more like a bar of lukewarm hors d'oeuvres). Roosa, Nano, Lucy and I all sat at the same table of course. Nano experienced the horrific world that is iced tea and after did a two handed cup song (don't even begin to ask me how), and Roosa and I started a war of ugly pictures we could take of each other. We got scarily good at it. Note to self: don't ask Spaniards if Dora the Explorer exists in their country. It does, and you're an idiot.

We had extra time before we left, so we were allowed to roam freely in Siracusa for 30 minutes. This is where bubbles came into play, and we also talked about buying a large house right on the pier just for AFSers, then realized how terrible that idea was and how we'd easily burn the freaking thing down within 3 hours of owning it. When we were walking back, we also stopped on the pier where we took a lot of pictures and played the "lets pretend to push everyone in but grab them last minute" only 754257895 times. We're all honestly terrible people.

So we got on the bus returning home, I fell asleep with Lucy in the very back of the bus, next to Hiroshi. Lucy had to take a different bus from the Catania airport, so we said goodbye to each other before she even got off of the bus. It was the epitome of sadness, because I honestly don't know if I will see her again, but yet again, you never know.

And just like every other time, this is why I love being an exchange student.