the reality check that I have wanted to give all my life, but never have been able to do so until now.

Sup guys.

Notice I didn't do my typical "ciao ragazzi" in Italian, because this post isn't about my new life and all of the things that I usually write about. This post is for all of the people, especially all of the teenagers that I am among, from my hometown of Quarryville, Pennsylvania. All I want you to do is listen for the few minutes it will take you to read what I am telling you here.

Solanco, ah the sarcastic beauty that comes to mind when I think of it. Wait, no. It's not sarcastic. It took me 3 months and 12,000 kilometers to realize that Solanco isn't the hellhole of a district or living social structure we claim it to be, but a way of life that is so simple and so quaint that the reason we don't like it is because they'res no movement. Let's start to paint some metaphorical pictures.

I still am actively on Facebook and Twitter and I see all of the complaints about teachers, people, schoolwork, activities, decisions made, rules, regulations, morals, codes, cultures, social groups, and physical features of Solanco that are fed and posted every day. So here comes this reality check.

I currently am living in a socially, politically, and economically developed country in Southern Europe. It's not like I'm living in a third-world nation in Africa. But you all do not understand how good you guys have it living in the United States. Now I'm not really talking about social structure now, but on the basis of your education.

The Italian school system is currently a disorganized mess for an assortment of reasons. The major of them being that we are in the midst of a variety of protests against the Italian government because they are cutting funds to the schools. Within these protests are "Sciopero"s, when we all just do not go to school, and literal "occupazione" or occupations when the students take over the school for a week or so. They do this because they want a change in the way they are being educated. They are fighting for their education, a right that they damn well have because it is slowly diminishing. So while we are having a little mini revolution here, let's zoom back to see what's going on in the other hemisphere of the world.

Complaining about homework, people, and teachers in a building with air conditioning, lended text books, prepaid extracurricular activities/supplies, an equipped building with a gym, auditorium, field(s), stadium, transport just for school, computers for almost every classroom, uniforms for gym, literally I'm getting sick from writing all these things. The things that we should be thankful for but we take for granted, focusing on the little things that could be slightly better.

Hopefully you've been able to infer that Italian school has none of the things I ranted about in the list above.

School isn't something that should be hellacious, even though I agree with the fact that most of the stuff that goes on we will never use, it's almost as if to teach you the guidelines of life. Maybe it's unfair how you can go from asking to go to the bathroom to making life decisions in just a month, but that is the meaning of a whole new post.

So, to those that are like what I described above, do me and the rest of the world a favor, and please, just......stop.

PS (slightly related but not completely), watch this.

io sono confusa: an autobiography

Ciao carusi! (sicilian this time)

It's the time I really hope you remembered from the last post...the aftermath blog entry from a long time ago because I was even lazier (or busier I will let you figure that out for yourself) than expected. Get ready and hold on to your pants, because y'all gonna get real confused, real fast.

MONDAY (FUNDAY):

Monday was the day when it all started. From the previous week (to be honest I just typed "settimana" but then had to erase it. freakin' bilingual brain right now) I knew something was to be expected of that day. So, when I got to school I asked basically everyone in my class what was going to happen that day. Most of the people said something called autogestione, basically a day where kids lead group conversations about what is going on in the school system and whatnot. But, that awesome kid Damiano that I have mentioned previously told me something else. That day, we were going to occupy the school during the last hour.

OCCUPY THE SCHOOL WHAT YOU SAY??!!?!1?!

The occupation or "l'occupazione" has been rolling its way through Sicily for about a month now. It's when the students take over the school and we don't have lessons, we don't have teachers, we don't study. Some kids choose to sleep at the school, practically live at the school for the span of the occupation. I couldn't, because they were against both the rules of my parents and AFS. So, that day around 12, we had "assemblea", which is when we all go out into the courtyard and normally the school representatives stand at the top of a ramp with a bullhorn and tell us what is going on. But this time, they went up in the forbidden part of the school; the bloody roof. After 20 minutes of a basic pep talk from the representatives, they finally announced that BOGGIO LERA E' OCCUPATO *insert crowd wail here*. And let the 85th day in

a row Kara is confused begin!


TUESDAY: Il primo giorno dell'occupazione.

Tuesday I woke up really excited because I didn't know what to expect AT ALL from this day of occupation. I skipped my merry way down the 30 minute walk I take every day to school and when I got there I met up with all of my friends across the street from the school. The doors, which are normally open at 8, which I'm always on time for. But since the school was occupied, the kids changed it. The doors were being held shut by to kids, so you couldn't enter. There was a crowd of kids around them, waiting to get in. The only way you could get in, though, was if you had your absence sheet your parents signed to justify your absence, which was proof that you were a student of my school. Me, of course, completely unprepared for everything in life, didn't have my absence sheet. But I did have my wallet, which had my international student ID card, and I'm fairly well known in this school so it was pretty easy for me to say "sono americana' in an overexaggerated accent and easily get in.

When I walked into the school, I had to sign my name and my class (they had to keep track of everyone in the building I guess), and that was why it was taking so long for them to allow people in. Up the stairs (and more stairs) was where everyone was. My school is an ex-monastery, so it has about 5 different wings around one big courtyard. One wing was where the kids who slept at the school slept, I'm guessing, because we weren't allowed into it. Another section we weren't allowed into was the main hall where the headmaster and all the teachers were, which were barricaded by vending machines and desks. I really have to give props to my classmates on this one, it was more organized than regular school.

During this occupation, you could do various things: we had "study groups" which could either be legitimate study groups where you would discuss/do/study school work, or you had the ones that I was a part of that was more of a joke. I joined some of my friends in a "music forum", where they had 3 guitars, a bongo, a keyboard that could make all sorts of awesome noises, and a bullhorn.

Damiano and the Dubstep Keyboard: coming soon to occupied schools near you

The room shown above was actually packed to the brim, and one of the leaders of the occupation got annoyed with us and actually moved us to the gym. So we got even bigger. In the gym, I know we went through a few Green Day songs and Guns n' Roses songs (very, very popular here), and also a Sicilian spoof of "What Makes You Beautiful" called "u paninu co wurstel" (It: "un panino con wurstel" Eng: "a sandwich with hot dog"). My Sicilian is still pretty limited mbare, so I am unable to tell you what they were saying. 

And alas, we finished the day watching a movie "The Kids Are All Right" but in Italian, and had a small assemblea. Assembleas this whole week were just organized so the two groups of politics in the school could yell at each other. This assembly was to decide whether we wanted to do something called co-gestione, when we would occupy with the teachers. And that, is the end to day 1 of the occupation.

WEDNESDAY: Il secondo giorno dell'occupazione.

Wednesday when I got into school, I couldn't find any of my friends, except Federica and Damiano. Federica talked me into leading an English study group, and after a long search for chalk, it was a thing. But in this group, only 5 people showed up for the actual English group, so we formed a little circle and for an hour we spoke in English, for an hour and a half we spoke in Italian because my Italian is still pretty terrible and if I speak it for long periods of time I find it gets easier and better. After that, we went back to the main outdoor part and had, yet again, another assemblea. Assembleas that week were every day, getting angrier and angrier. I'm pretty sure that Wednesday was the day when a girl sounded so angry I thought she was going to break her esophagus screaming. Lovely. Wednesday, everyone left even more confused and a little angrier than before. And that, was the end of the second and what would be the last day of l'occupazione.

THURSDAY: co-gestione.

After a long wait and a very long period of arguing, we were finally going to do the co-gestione. Co-gestione is like the occupation but with teachers involved, just leading the study groups. The first day, my friends could not make up their minds of where they wanted to go, so I got slightly annoyed and basically entered the closest room to me, which was about....feminism. I am female but I really do not like the concept of feminism, so I just sat there and kind of zoned for 2 hours. After I escaped to Cristina, Sonia, and Marta in another group that ended up talking about how terrible Facebook is for our generation, which was led by 4 guys and was highly entertaining when they brought in the concept of selfies. At the end of the day was (you guessed it) ASSEMBLEA! This assemblea lasted for 30 minutes past normal school time, and would have been longer if one of the guys didn't try to end it 5 different times. I was completely taken aback by how angry people were getting over something that was so....stupid, I guess for lack of better terms. 

FRIDAY AND SATURDAY: the aftermath.

To put a nice, sweet close to this long blog post, the last two days were just of more co-gestione in study groups with the professors. I was asked to talk about volunteering in Italian in one of them, and how volunteering is in the States (I work voluntarily at a thrift shop thank goodness, I had material to work with there). But at the end of the week, school resumed as normal. And that is the end of the week of l'occupazione.

CATCH UP ON KARA'S LIFE.

Since I'm a lazy and otherwise busy blogger, a lot has gone on again. Like:

1. The biggest event being that I got another brother. My second host brother arrived back home from a trimester program in Belgium on the 5th of December. We already get along really well, and I'm so happy to have another exchange student to hang out with, literally every day! 
2. La Festa della Luce has started, which is a Christmas festival my school has every year. Every class decorates a room for a 4 night event that has no artificial light, only illuminated by candles. I actually get to participate in 2, because the Intercultura chapter of Catania is also doing a room!
3.  I finished the Italian lessons I had to do for Intercultura. 
4. We finally put up a Christmas tree!!1!!1!11!

Well, that's all for now. Sorry for the lateness but this took a long time to write. Ci vediamo, ragazzi!

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.

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.