immigrant song. (aaaaaaahhhhh AH!)

Ciao ragazzi!

Coming up to my 5th month marker in Italy (and my English is slowly creeping away from me day by day), I am using this famous Led Zeppelin reference to describe a three day experience I had at the godforsaken immigration office of Catania. It really opened my eyes to how immigrants are treated, because for 3 days in a row I was treated exactly as an immigrant would be treated, if not a little more fair.

Monday, I missed school to go to the immigration office for the first time in my life (because I'm not technically an immigrant but I still kind of count as one). At 11, my mom picked me up from the house to go home. The immigration office is sideways to the police station of Catania, so we entered the police station first and then to the immigration office.

The immigration office was a room about the size of a large living room packed to the brim with immigrants, and 2 windows: one packed with people, one slightly open but yet there was still a line. I luckily was part of the one slightly open with a line. This day really doesn't matter because we were turned away because we didn't have the correct paperwork since I switched families, so, we returned the next day.

Tuesday, we woke up at the same time as my brothers woke up for school to go to the immigration office as soon as it opened at 9ish. Yet again, the office was packed in the same formation as the day before; to the left was a mob, to the right was a line. We had to wait for a little while (which was a terrible thing for the immigration office to make me do) because I observe when I have nothing to do. So, this is what I observed.

Most of the immigrants that I was sharing the living space with were African or Southern Asian, with a few eastern Europeans thrown into the mix. At the window to the left were mostly Africans and on the other side of the window was a single woman handling every one of them.

Heeeere comes Point A.

This lady who was obviously monolingual (in reality it's pretty rational to think that people working at an immigration office would speak more than just Italian which is only spoken in like, 2 countries on the planet) was yelling through a glass window at them, who some understood, some could not. But for the record (just mentally picture me agressively typing this on my living room couch) SCREAMING IN YOUR OWN LANGUAGE WILL NOT HELP PEOPLE UNDERSTAND YOU JIMINY FLIPPING CHRISTMAS. Yes, they are crowding the window. Yes, they don't speak perfect Italian. Yes, they may miss a paper or two, but for the love of all that is holy on this planet at least try to help them for goodness sake. It's like you are trying to be a gigantic coglione. It takes effort to be that rude.

Point B.

Everyone has their own story, and whether you want to know it or be a part of it, you have to respect it. Let this be a reminder that homeless, immigrants, criminals, and everyone in between are actual human beings and not a different species of their own. Also they didn't just pop up one day to quote-on-quote "terrorize" the world as we basically expect them to. They have mouths to feed, they've got ends to meet, they've got people that may be depending on them. I'm guilty of turning my head away from beggars on the street and merchants selling knockoff Nike sneakers or sunglasses but they are human, people. We are literally dehumanizing them by the way we live around them instead of with them. It's the way they live and you know what? It may seem like an act of desperation when they stick out a cup and ask for pocket change but I can guarantee you that if you dropped everything you owned tomorrow and took up the lifestyle of one of them, you wouldn't be able to handle it. They are strong people. They know how to live life in a way that is like another species to us, but to them, it's reality.

I abuse the italics button.

LET'S GET HAPPAY!

On a much lighter note, that same day as I encountered that mess and had that conversation in my head, I walked a lot. One of the reasons being that after the appointment at the office my host mom had to go to work, and she just kind of said "okay see ya byez" and left me to find my way back home. I didn't know where I was, so I just kind of.....walked.

1.5 hours, an outdoor market, and a humongous wrong turn later, I arrived at my home after walking what I know AT LEAST was 5 or 6 kilometers (2.5-3 miles), to change clothes, scarf down some lunch, and walk a little over 3 more kilometers to the train station of Catania to pick up.......NANO! In case we have some new readers (welcome by the way), Nano is my friend from Argentina who lives a town over that I have become besties with, who looks like this:

A nice transformation Thursday for ya.

At 2 I picked him up at the station and we started off for the center of the city, eating at McDonalds (the kid loves that place). Through the center of the city, we swung through Villa Bellini, and saw a couple monuments of Catania, which then after we still had a crap ton of time to use. So, little did I know before hand, but he actually loves to go shopping. And I love to pick stuff out for people to wear. He ended up buying something I picked out for him (successssssssss)! 

Little teeny tiny tidbit and a promo for AFS: THIS IS WHY YOU ALL NEED TO HAVE SOMETHING TO DO WITH EXCHANGE. HOST A KID. SEND YOUR KIDS ABROAD. GO ABROAD YOURSELF. BECOME A VOLUNTEER. This is only one of the lifelong friendships I've made in only about 5 months in Sicily. I can't think of a reason to not be an exchange student with all of the reasons I'm giving you. So seriously, don't EVEREVEREVEREVEREVEREVEREVEREVER pass up on the chance if you get it to become involved with AFS, or just take the chance yourself.

Booyah. 

on the third week of christmas (break) AFS gave to me.....

That last entry made my computer bug out, I think out of the longevity, possibly. (It was kind of making me bug out as well). Before it did, I began telling a story of one of the day trips that AFS and my family took over the course of a week. From December 29th to January 7th, here's what went down.

Gita #1: Mineo, Sicily.

On December 29th (amazing how I actually have gotten so behind that I have to use actual dates now. It's only out of business.....maybe.), AFS planned a day trip (almost) to the town of Mineo, an hour and a half's drive southwest of Catania. Being completely lost in life, generally speaking, I woke up 45 minutes too early, so I sat in my room and basically fell back asleep until we were all ready to go. All seven of us, since Hektor was still with us (if you haven't read about that Swiss kid and you honestly want to know who he was, click this thaaaaang).

Before leaving Catania and entering "la campagna" (the countryside), we had to drop my nonna (grandmother) off at her house and meet up with the friends of my brother, because we were following each other in a different car (there were originally 9 of us in one van, it wasn't going to happen). So, we met up and my host parents got a coffee outside of the apartment of my brothers friend, and then separated into our cars, my brother (who was in the other car) gave us the finger as they drove past, and we were off to Mineo for the day!

What made Mineo so special was the Christmas presepe (nativities) set up around the town that we were going to be touring that day. There were two types of these nativities, one being permanently a part of the town and the others being artistic, or only there for one year. To give you an idea of one of these, here is one that took 2 months to construct:

These nativities were set up in little nooks and crannies all over the city. There were arrows with numbers leading our way, but our way was very schizophrenic. At one point, our whole group had to go through this. THIS IS A STREET. A BLOODY STREET. I HAD TO WALK SIDEWAYS TO GET MY BUTT TO FIT THROUGH IT. THIS IS WHY I WALK 4 KILOMETERS A DAY FOR SCHOOL, PEOPLE.

This was really just what our day way, presepe and a beautiful view of Sicily from the town. There's not much else to it. 

Notice Etna in the left side of the picture. She's covered in snow.

Siblings.

The only picture I personally have of me with a family member. This is my brother, Mattia.

It's impossible for Roosa and I to take a picture without looking like we just woke up.

These random people are Gabriele, an AFS volunteer that was Hektor's liaison last year, my host sister Celeste, and Hektor, the Swiss kid, himself.

Gita #2: Taormina, Sicily.

On the fourth of January, the chapters of Catania, Ragusa, Giarre, Siracusa, and Messina all went to the town of Taormina, nearing Calabria (the toe of the boot of the Italian penninsula) but still on Sicily. Taormina is about a 2 1/2 hour bus ride from Catania, and we were literally the only people on the bus. Roosa and I just sat and listened to a collection of our weird/crappy/old music on our phones and talked for most of the bus ride (who knew Finns like Zac Brown Band?) But anyways this was the view from the piazza in Taormina.

Annnnnnd this sums up my friendship with Ari (Danish Faroe Islands) perfectly. 

Taormina is a very touristic city that is beautiful, yet pretty tacky. Being in the way that the whole set up of the city and the streets is so iconic Italy-esque, but those buildings are filled with tourist shops and expensive crap that you could get so much cheaper and in better quality in any other town. The way it is set up is all of the city is in the north (the city is on a hill), and in the south is where an island is, called La Isola Bella (the beautiful island). We were only in the north this day. So as usual, I ganged up with Roosa, Nano, Hiroshi, and as a step-in for Lucy who had to return to Guatemala in the beginning of December (she was here for the same time frame that Mattia was in Belgium), was Veera, another girl from Finland. We were given freetime to roam, as usual. Which didn't result in much, just pictures and nothing else. We met back in the piazza to go to the Greek/Roman theater that afternoon.

I had already been to this theater with my first host family, so I knew what to expect (slightly). To go into detail, the theater was made my both Greeks and Romans (the Romans came into the picture slightly later). This can be told by the types of stones that are seen in use. The Greeks didn't use square or rectangular bricks in building. They used more crude stones, so they weren't perfectly angled. The difference in the seats also changes, as well as the fact that the columns at the front of the theater were added by the Romans. 

The typical Kara and Gabriele picture.

The typical Kara and Nano picture.

After the theater we had the option to either go to the Villa (city park) or roam around some more. I really just wanted to have something organized for me to do so I chose to go to the Villa. Maeve, also from America, went to the Villa as well. We walked together and basically had all of those deep, philosopher thoughts come out in rivers as we don't talk much in English anymore so they were bottled up. We also sat on the bus together going home where even more of these thoughts were released. It felt good to have someone just understand me completely. 

Gita #3: Villa Romana del Casale

On the 6th, it was my host mom's birthday and Befana (kind of like a version of Santa, only with stockings and it's really an old woman with a broom and black cape and glowing red eyes who is not a witch). But anyways, after waking up to my host dad's sock hanging on my door handle filled with candy, my family set off for Villa Romana del Casale, about a mile outside of a town called Piazza Armerina, in the middle of Sicily. What made this our destination was that Villa Romana del Casale was a gigantic Roman Villa, with the floors completely done in all in hand-laid mosaics. 

Remember in the 6th grade, when you learned about Pompeii or the Roman empire, when there were the public bath houses and toilets and saunas all in one building? This was what one of them was. Because my computer/blogger hates me (plus pictures were forbidden there anyways so I shouldn't be showing them to you), it will take too frustratingly long to upload pictures now. But from google, this is what it looks like. 

 

This was a bath. The door on the left was used for common people, the door on the right was used for the higher class and the family that owned the Villa.

This was the dining room. It was so big because the Romans laid down as they ate. The picture depicted in the mosaic is the triumphs of Hercules and the fall of the mythical creatures he defeated (I remember the very top is red giants). 

And this is the most spectacular mosaic of them all. It is called "Great Hunt", and depicts the capturing and shipping of animals in Egypt and shipment to Europe, which happened through Sicily. Elephants, buffalos, ostriches, lions, are all shown being pulled by men onto the boat, while others are being hunted. It's truly a miraculous mosaic. All done by hand. All of them. And each piece is about the size of your pinky nail. Let that sink in.

I'm sorry for the lateness of this post that I said was going to be so soon after my last one. But hey, I uploaded a ton of pictures even though blogger was being mean! Hope you enjoyed this last one. I don't know of anything else exciting coming up that you should look forward to, so.....

ci vediamo!

minchia mbare, sei la merda.

Madonna, it's been way too long!

I mean really. Now I have to remember what has actually gone on for the past 2 weeks and put them in a cutesy little story for all of you. I don't know if you realize how much of a struggle this is for a lazy 16 year old girl whose only two statuses are bored out of her mind or so busy she can't stop to breathe. Since I remember exactly what happened the night I posted the last entry, let us start from there, and go on with all of the things my brain permits me to remember.

LA FESTA DELLA LUCE
December 18th-22nd, my school was holding a festival for Christmas. This festival was called La Festa Della Luce (The Festival of Light). This is an annual event in Catania where every year, a man chooses a school to hold the festival. This year, my school Boggio Lera was selected and we had the 4 day festival of light. The reason it is in December and more importantly just before Christmas actually has no relation to Christmas itself. It's focus is on the winter solstice, when the dark becomes light. The first two days of FDL were the dark days, in the midst was the solstice, and the last two days were light.

In the school, there was no artificial light (even though this festival only took place from 6:30 to 10 after it was already dark). Everything was illuminated by candles. The decorations, all made by people from the school or who had the invitation by the FDL people, were all white, clear, reflectant, you get the picture. For Intercultura, we had a room which I was volunteered to work in for 2 nights along with two other kids. The first night was with Vincent, the boy from Hong Kong in my chapter, and the second night was with Marie from Greenland. In our room, we decorated it with our international languages and the word "light" written in each of them. From the ceiling we suspended a few hundred slips of paper with our languages (okay there were more than 7 because some of the kids in our chapter are bilingual/trilingual so there were: Chinese (the word was written the same in Mandarin and Cantonese), Thai, Serbian, Greenlandic, Danish, Swedish, Finnish, Spanish, Guaraní (an indigenous language from Paraguay), Italian, and English. Through the night(s) in our room, we read poetry in these languages and some of us even sang. I crossed something off my bucketlist and sang "Oh Holy Night" (thankfully not the Mariah Carey version) both nights. Probably, I sang that same song at least 40 to 50 times in the course of those two nights. 

I'm sorry I don't have a video or photos of me (when do I ever in all honesty.... you all are used to my disorganized blog already!), but I know there are A LOT floating around this city somewhere. I saw you all and I would kind of really like to see them. 

CHRISTMAS
The end of this festival brings me eagerly to the beginning of one of the biggest (if not the biggest) event of the year: CHRISTMAS. 

Coming up to Christmas this year, I wasn't in the normal ugly-sweaters-while-listening-to-carols-non-stop mood. Because my body still thinks it's September due to the weather and it's so weird being away from home for Christmas. I didn't have my favorite artificial Christmas tree with the colored lights, I didn't have my comfort food, I didn't have my youth group ugly sweater contest (which I am a two-time award winner of), I didn't have my school countdown until we were unleashed, I didn't have that Christmas feel. So that "omg it's Christmas" feeling didn't kick me in the butt until December 24th. 

The morning of Christmas Eve, it was only us kids at home. So we all slept ungodly late and woke up to sit in our pajamas and watch television. My host dad came home around 11 or 12, and basically said "we gotta get crap done!" So we immediately changed and started organizing the house. Mattia started making a playlist of Christmas music, Gianluca (I'm pretty sure) took the dog out and did grocery store runs, and I was put on the hunt of chairs, because we were having 14 people at our house for Christmas dinner. 

For lunch, my mom, aunt, and grandpa came and we just threw together some sandwiches because we were going to cook so much later. After my mom and aunt returned to shopping, my grandfather left, and then it was back to business. Cooking, setting the table in a nice manner, etc. 

At about 7 was when it became game time for real. Everyone gradually changed into their nicer clothing, my aunt and great grandmother (she's almost 94 but will always ask you how old she looks because she doesn't want to be as old as she really is. She will also corner you if you're under the age of 30 because she feels younger when she talks to young people. I am always cornered, and I can only understand about 30% of what the woman says, so it's always nice) showed up early because my aunt had to finish constructing a massive dish of tiramisu, Celeste (my 8 year old sister) and I started constructing little things that I guess ended up being like, appetizers (but we ate a lot more than we should have), and my aunt also brought her desserts to finish constructing. 

At about 9, we started what I was the most excited for. DINNER. We started off with a lot of toasts with champagne and then sat down to eat. Dinner was tortellini for la prima, then onto meat and sausage with something delectable called "green sauce" which had a load of garlic in it (amen). On our white table cloth, we only spilled wine and Coca Cola 3 times. My grandma definitely got the award for biggest spill. When alcohol spills, an Italian tradition is to dip your hand in it and put it behind the ear of the people around you. Once we cleared off dinner (it took longer than you are getting from this entry), we had dessert. Tiramisu, cookies, pudding, the whole nine yards. That night, I actually caught myself thinking in Italian. ACHIEVEMENT UNLOCKED. But, it was slowly murdered away because I skyped with my American family at 11. It really wasn't successful for the first 10 minutes because my family also wanted to skype from our loud dining room so I heard nothing, and I also was translating so I would speak the wrong language to the wrong side of the world. I ended up in my room to finish the skype call, but then was summoned by my brother to open gifts 10 minutes before midnight. Yep. Midnight. 

For Christmas, I honestly wasn't expecting anything. I was thankful enough that they let me stay with them and treat me like a daughter/sister and that was enough of a gift for me. But since these are the sweetest, kindest people on the planet that I live with, Mattia got me a keychain from a Sicilian store called Siculamente, which says "Futtitinni", meaning "I don't give a crap" in Sicilian. It's actually really awesome. My aunts got me a makeup bag (which was needed because up until then I was using a Ziploc gallon bag for my toiletries I got the morning I left my house in America) and a really nice hand lotion, and my family got me a beautiful floral shirt from a store called Mango. I also gave my family their presents. Mattia and my dad put their shirts I got for them right away, plus my mom was intrigued by the book I got her of Amish recipes (which I'm going to steal for a day and make some comfort food in the near future). And at 1:30, everyone finally left and we could all go to bed. I'm still pretty sure this was one of the best Christmases ever. 

Our tree, pre-unwrapping madness. 

Me, my Aunt Roberta (sister of my mother), and my sister, Celeste.

Since we are the best older siblings ever, we put Celeste on a leash and attached her to the door in the kitchen.

Christmas day, we woke up and I attended my very first Catholic Mass! This was actually very exciting for me. I am not Catholic, so I have never been to a mass in America, let alone in Italy, the literal birthplace of the Catholic religion. My mom, sister, and I all walked down to the plaza a few blocks from our house to a small cathedral/church that was a couple centuries old. We sat at the very back because it was packed to the brim, but gradually worked our way up to the fourth row if we dispersed amongst the pew. I understood the sermon but I can't remember what it was about. It was confusing for me, being not fluent in Italian and not Catholic, because there was a lot of stand-up/sit-down action and reciting phrases that I had no clue what they were. So I just kind of stood there trying not to make eye contact with anyone as I didn't say these things. At the end was communion, when the priest took out a goblet of wine and little wafer-like pieces of bread, dipped the bread into the wine, and ate it. A line formed in front of the alter while we sang some Christmas hymn that I knew in English but it was in Italian/Latin, "Come All Ye Faithful". We had to leave slightly early because we were going to lunch at my grandmother's, so we walked to our car where my dad and Mattia was. On the way to the car, I explained that we don't actually use wine for our communion but more of a juice that looks like wine, and we take a hunk of bread and take little pinches off of it. They thought the fact that we don't use wine was hilarious, and I'm still hearing them tell people about it to this day.

Lunch at my nonna's house consisted of all the people under the age of 30 being outsourced to a smaller table, along with my Aunt Roberta (who is amazing). We basically got the seconds of all the food, which didn't take away from it's quality at all. We spent the rest of the night doing random tasks, I watched my brothers play soccer for a while (I couldn't participate because I chose to wear a stupid dress that day), sat with my grandmother for a while and talked, and we all ended up watching some National Geographic show about anteaters and their evolution (I don't know either).

To top off our Christmas Day, we went over to my great grandmother's for about an hour and a half to have tea, ran home to change, then went to the movies in the city center. We saw an American movie called "The Secret Dreams of Walter Mitty", but it was all in Italian, so I technically saw "I Sogni Segretti di Walter Mitty". It was a particularly beautiful film with Ben Stiller, and the best part is I actually understood 95% of it!

The next day (getting sick of this yet?) we celebrated Christmas at my uncle's house with my 3 cousins. More food of course was provided. We played Sicilian Cards and Tombola, the Italian version of bingo that's actually easier to win yet more frustrating to play! And of course, Fifa was played. Fifa is my religion. Or maybe Juventus (the strongest and #1 soccer team in Italy from Turin) is my religion. One of those two. I also made the first huge sexual innuendo while trying to speak Italian while asking how to say "goalie".

"What's the man with the big, long, white thing called?"

MINCHIAMINCHIAMINCHIAMINCHIAMINCHIAMINCHIAMINCHIAMINCHIAMINCHIAMINCHIAMINCHIA.

I fell into the couch and laughed profusely after that one. *sings* OHHHHH THE PERKS OF BEING AN EXCHANGE STUDENT....

The night was filled with me at home with only Gianluca and his friend, so I kindly quarantined myself in my room and Skyped with some friends. 

THAT SWISS KID

Okay. If you are Italian and took offense or now think I am a foulmouthed, uncultured coglione because of the title of this post, it's not actually my fault. It's a quote from the Swiss boy my host family hosted last year named Hektor. It's one of the best exchange student quotes of all time. I'm not explaining it though. 

Anyways, he actually came back to visit for almost a week. He arrived early on the 27th and of course I slept in too late to meet him as soon as he arrived, so I caught him during the small party that was thrown by his friends in the morning at 10ish. Also the time when a third package from America arrived, filled with 2 pounds of peanut butter, 2 pounds of Hershey's chocolate (to share with friends), a bag of Goldfish, and cards from my cousins and church friends. It made me so happy. (Note: the two pound jar of Jif is still unpenetrated. I'm waiting for the proper moment to break out the bad boy because I don't know if I will be able to stop after I start).

The day was spent with too much GTA5, watching 6 boys play soccer in the parking lot under our apartment because I was too afraid of dying to play (if you think American soccer is intense you haven't seen squat), a walk around the city center with my brothers, Hektor, and our friend Fabrizio, and at the end of the day, Mattia, Hektor and I went over to our neighbors house to play cards. I learned very quickly a basic rundown of poker, but I couldn't play without continuously showing my cards to the others....whaaaat do I doooo?

The next day, Hektor's volunteer from last year, Gabriele came to our house and picked Mattia, Hektor and I up to take a little 2 hour trip to Acicastello, a small town about 15 minutes north of Catania. Acicastello is on the sea side with a little marina and a whole bunch of rock formations in the water. From a sign on the side of the wall, it says that the rocks were formed by underwater volcanoes, which is easily visible if you look at the walk. We climbed them, which was only a little bit life-risking, and then went home. At home was already my cousins (the same ones from the day of the sexual innuendo), my aunts, and my nonno and my nonna. There were again 14 people at our table, just like Christmas. We had 2 different types of pasta, 2 different types of meat, and so much dessert that I don't even know how many types. Somehow, I ended up hauling my laptop out of my room because my aunt was really intrigued in what my house looked like and what my town looked like, so did the magic google earth routine again. I love it when people are so fascinated by a couple of townhouses and a few fields. Everything is special to someone else. Like I said in a previous entry, it only sucks because you make it that way yourself.

Since this entry is ungodly long and there's still MORE to go, plus blogger is being a lil crap and isn't loading any of my pictures, I will have to just combine the rest into a different entry. Sorry but that's the truth. Maybe it's blogger screaming "THIS ENTRY IS ALREADY TOO LONG KARA PEOPLE DON'T WANT TO MAKE THEIR EYES BLEED". So, until I can get the time and motivation to make another equally long entry of my life. 

Ci vediamo a presto!