Monday, January 31, 2011

Postius I'm Not Deadius

Right so starting where we left off; Monday I spent most of the morning pottering around the house, de-puzzleing things from my bag and blogging. Giulia got home at 1.30ish and we had pasta for lunch (apparently the fact I said I liked pasta means it's the only thing that I want to eat and thus I have it generally twice a day... oh well its tasty so I’m sure I'll survive) and then crashed with the TeeVu until the end of siesta at which point we rugged up to head outside =S. After showing me the way to walk to school we met up with one of Giulia's friends and headed to the city centre via the metro.

We traipsed around for a bit before heading into a coffee shop for some coffee. By this time the sun had set and it was really quite chilly... did I mention that it was like 7ish? So yes the coffee shop; before we went in Giulia and her friend Erminia were pimping their hair in the glass door because apparently there was a hot boy working there that day. Giulia and Erminia decided that I just HAD to try this type of coffee which it turns out has Nutella (said nuu as is 'oh nu bru') spread over half of the glass and was very tasty. When we left the shop Giulia and Ermi thought the shop we were heading to was in opposite directions, we eventually went Giulia's way here we walked around for 20 mins before ending up outside the coffee shop again and then going Ermi;s way =D

While we were walking around we were 'come sei diciing things; 'come si dici what is in the sky but not stars or the moon' (clouds), 'come si dici *motions overtaking someone*', 'come si dici we don't know where we are' (lost). It was amusing and very time they tried to teach me a new word I gave them a little notebook to write it down in...

Tuesday was my first day at school and I was quite nervous about going; all I knew was that I wasn't in Giulia's class so I guess I was stressing about not knowing anyone and not being able to speak to anyone. Giulia's mum drove us in so she could organise stuff with admin and I got assigned to class 3G (which you say terzo gi so technically 3rdG but anyway). We were apparently running late for class as this point so Giulia took me to my classroom said something along the lines of 'this is Breanna, she's from Australia and in your class' to the first group of people she saw and then had to run of to her class. I was ushered into class where everyone proceeded to introduce themselves to me in about 3 mins, which when you consier there is about 20 people in my class gives everyone just under 10 seconds =S. if I wasn’t already nervous by then that would definitely have done it! One of the guys appeared back a few mins later with a table hoisted over his head and I was set up next to a lovely girl (who's name I only discovered a few days ago) before the teacher had even arrived! (in Italy the students stay in the same room while teachers move around).

Greta (the girl who's name I only just discovered) explained to all the teachers who I was and helps me with the translations of words that I don’t know. I had Italian as my first subject and the teacher said she would find me an Italian workbook and see if there were any lessons out side of school available for me to take. She was quite nice but it was apparent that the students didn’t really like her because they mostly ignored everything she said (and even started playing a card game at one point!). I also has Spanish and Design and yeah, I didn’t understand a thing that was going on except in Spanish when they said 'quando' (thanks to Deborah Milton and the Ritters for teaching me that!).

After class finished at 1 (yes you heard me correctly 1) I had to wait around at the cafe because Giulia had an extra class that finished at 2 and I wasn’t confident that I wouldn’t get lost on the walk home. I was quite content to sit in a chair near the heater by myself for the hour but some people from my class spotted me so I went and sat with them. They were having lunch before a 2 hour English class and were trying to finish the last of their homework. All I really understood of what was happening was they didn’t know the answers to some of the questions but didn’t want to ask me, despite the fact everyone was telling them too. In the end a couple did and over all it was more fun than sitting by the heater would have been.

The rest of the week at school was rather straight forward and I got into the swing of things pretty quickly... I think the little hang-out lunch sess helped in the fact that I got to know some of the people in my class and knew that they were going to look out for me. I've got I really nice set of teacher (most of which don’t speak English) and they don’t seem to mind that I completely ignore them to work on my grammar book and then suddenly start paying attention to them when I understand something. Italian teacher I've already written about, Spanish I really didn’t pay any attention to because I was having enough trouble with Italian, Design the lady is rather strict and gets annoyed when people talk but she is apparently very boring so they just quietly ignore her. My Physics teacher is TINY and is her head up about halfway up my chest but she seems quite nice, my science teacher seems to be putting up with me intently following her teaching at one moment and then completely ignoring her the wrest so that's good, my Maths teacher is quite funny in class we were learning 'zeri di una funzione' and he kept checking that I new what we were doing and trying to translate the headings for me... I can sort of follow the content in maths, well enough to wish that I'd done specialist maths (if anyone would like to tell me the what ƔЄ mean that would be most appreciated!). I havent managed to meat my History teacher yet because i've missed both Monday's so far and that seems to be the only day we have History. My English teacher is very nice and gave me my time table and everything, they've changed my classes around so that I have extra Italian so I can learn better (personally I think that extra of the sciences would be more helpful but anyway). We also have and English teaching assistant who's from Ireland... she's very nice and has the most amusing accent.

Right so somewhere in the last week was Australia day, and I’m sure you all had a lovely time watching fireworks and getting wrapped up in flag mania. Well guess what I did? I ate a Vegemite sandwich while listened to Men at Work. It was quite nice but Tibs tells me a missed some new fireworks this year, oh well I guess that just means more new ones next year!

Right so that covers most of the week and all the boring schooly stuff. Sorry I didn’t get this up earlier (despite the houndings I was getting). There will be another update soon(ish) with what I did over the weekend (and how my party was). I’m planning to try and update every week(or so) at least for the moment but I’m sure the frequency will change somewhat!

Monday, January 24, 2011

Pic Spam!

La cucina:

Soggiorno:

Cleo:

Da Pranzo:

estastare:

Giulia e Gabriella:

Postius I've Arrivedius


As Mikele and I arrived at Torino Porta Nuovo we were discussing how we were going to find our host families. As we reached the end of the platform I was just about to say 'I think that's my family over there' when they rushed up to ask if we were Breanna and Mikele. I’m not sure whether our families we already friends or if they had just meet at the station but they we waiting together and seemed quite friendly. Mikele's host mum is an English teacher so maybe she teaches at Giulia (my host sister)'s school? I’m not really sure.


There was another lady there who spoke good English who at the time I thought they said was Giulia's aunt but I’m not too sure now. She went over basics; was I hungry, was I tired, how long had I been travelling for (on hearing it was over 29 hours Gabriella (my host mum) was quite shocked).

Giulia's English is quite good so on the way home we discussed the route we flew, where Perth was and where I came to inItaly last time. We got home at 3.30 which completed my 30 hours of travelling. Within an hour and a half of being home I had showered, been fed a ludicrous amount of pasta and tiramisu, walked Cleo the dog and been sent to bed to sleep until dinner time. When we went out side to walk Cleo it was really cold. I had on jeans, a knit top, a micro fleece jumper, my coat, scarf, gloves and beanie and was just warm enough! I also got in trouble for having wet hair and wasn't allowed out side until I had blow dried it. I can't say that my hair appreciated it very much; it went quite frizzy and mad!

Dinner was nice and I met Gabriella's sister who joined us. Her father (who had been there since I arrived) spent the whole time trying to teach me bits of Italian by pointing at the object and saying its name. I got questioned about whether I could ski (on snow) and surf and how similar they were. I attempted to answer in Italian and when I got stuck Giulia translated for me. Apparently I was too tired to help clear up (I tried to stack plates) and was sent back to bed after more tiramisu. One interesting thing that we had at dinner was fennel bulb/aniseed there was a bowl of it on the table and you shook some salt onto it and then ate it. Personally I think it was better without the salt but anyway.

I had a good sleep and woke up just as Giulia and Gabriella were leaving. I was quite content lying in bed under a big down dooner until Cleo decided to come in and steal one of my socks. It was then a battle of the wits as to me trying to get it back because I obviously didn’t know how to tell her to drop it. In the end I won because she kept dropping it and then picking it up again just as I was about to, all I had to do was be quicker than her and I won!

Guilia has school from 8 to 1 (I've been given the day off to sleep but I’m remarkably well adjusted so I think I will unpack) and then this afternoon we are going into the centre of Torino to go shopping (apparently there are lots of sales on at the moment). Giulia is going to a (I think) birthday party on Saturday that I’m also invited to so I may be needing to find a pair of tights to wear for then.

Sunday, January 23, 2011

and so the Adventures Begin!

I've set up this blog with the intention to update it (semi)regularly so that people who are interested in what I’m doing on exchange can get updates from here instead of me a) having to remember to email everyone who is interested and b) clogging people inboxes with updatiuses.


Right so a bit of back story:
After receiving an ATAR (new name for TER) of 92.2 I've differed from my first uni preference of Forensic Biology and Toxicology at Murdoch. I'm also sitting on a placement in the Forensic Science course at Bond Uni in Queensland for 2012 so sometime this year I’m going to have to decide which uni I want to go to...

I’m on the last leg of my journey to Italy at the moment, I’ve been travelling for the past 28 hours and I’ll arrive at Malpensa airport (in Milan) in an hour and a half. This is however not the end of my massive half world trip. I then have a train ride of an unknown length until I reach Turin where my host family is located. I have a host mum, Laura, a host sister, Giulia, and a host dog, Cleopatra (a chocolate Labrador).

The trip has been mostly fine with the only difficulties so far being a disagreement at Perth airport with a Qantas lady about the British Airways oversize baggage rules. The Qantas lady eventually won and we paid $260 for my extra 4 kg of luggage (how ridiculous is $25/kg of overweight luggage?). Lessons learned; Qantas is a bum and when travelling overseas for 10 months bring less cloths than the minimum you can possibly survive with.

After final photos with the Fam and some watery eyed hugs I entered the through the gate of no return with my travel buddy Natasha Casey, another student heading to Italy for exchange. The Perth-Singapore leg of our flight was uneventful which was good considering we were flying Qantas. Our stopover at Changi was for 6ish hours and neither Tash or I had been to terminal 1 before (our arrival and departure terminal) so we Skytrained to T2 and then T3 to burn some time. Either T3 has had a recent renovation or I've just never explored it very well because there is actually a little cinema and a sunflower garden and they've just added X-boxes to their internet cafe. So yeah we watched the end of a movie in the cinema and then headed of the find some food, we'd been given lunch and dinner on the flight but it was 7pm Perth time so we were hungry again and decided to start the swap to the Italian time zone and named our meal 'lunch'. We had very extremly hot Lusaka. It was quite amusing because Tash ordered while I was with our bags a little way away from the shop and when our stuff was ready the lady waved to me instead of just calling out the order... we were the only round eyes around so she obviously worked out we were travelling together.

We blew another hour and a half on the internet and playing a Harry Potter game on X-box before heading back to our terminal to watch a bit of American Idol before bording our plane to London. The flight to London was pretty good, we got fed, watched movies and then slept. The Hosties we had on the flight were really awesome; for dinner the options were pasts or chicken and asian noodles... when Tash and I chose the chicken the Hostie tried to convince us that the pasta was really good, upon us saying that we were going to exchange in Italy for the next 10 months he then concluded that the chicken was in fact a better choice. I believe it was also the same guy that suggested that before we take of I move my bag to under the foot rest infront of me (we were the last row and thus 2 seats while the rest where 3) otherwise my bag might end up against the back wall when we take off.

Tash and I managed the terminal change at Heathrow without any problems, although it was a little chilly on the transfer bus. We actually managed to arrive at the correct terminal before they had published the gate that we were departing from so I proceeded to spend the next 45 mins obsessively checking the departure board and stressing that when it was updated we would be pushed for time trying to get to the gate (there were signs that said it could take up to 25mins to get to 'C' gates =S). when the time was published it turned out to only take us 5 mins to get to the gate so we were quite early and some of the only people there. We met up with the other Exchange people there and swapped origins, destinations, family compositions and lack of language skills until we had to bored. There were three people from NZ one from Sydney and one from Melbourne (I think). The flight to Milan was quite short, only 1hour 40, so it was over in a flash and we spent the majority of it being very excited!

Our landing was very smooth and consisted of Tash chanting 'OMG we're in Italy, I can see it, OMG' or something to that extent. We had lovely Hosties again who came up to us just before sitting down to land to tell us that the weather forecast was 4 to -4 ... personally I think he just thought we were being silly tourists and were going to freeze, oh well it was nice anyway.

The airport WAS rather cold but not in a 'omg I’m going to freeze' way more in a 'this is a nice crisp cold' way. We had a little wait for some of our bags but sent out the girls who had their bags to meet our welcome lady Manwella. After we'd collected a guitar form the bulky baggage claim we had to wait while Manwella took a girl to catch another flight to Naples. Two other got picked up from the airport by their families so there were just four of us left to get to Milano Centrale. I’m relatively sure that Manwella has never tried to catch a train from the airport because she couldn’t get her head around the fact that some of the lifts didn't go to floor -1. In the end I had to point out which ones did and she nearly walked right past them again. Once we finally reached the train station she didnt know which platform we were meant to be on, so she took one of the two options thinking there would be signs there. As mum and I discovered when we did the same there are not signs so she headed off to find someone to ask. Turns out she chose the wrong platform and because of that and the lift fiasco we had missed the train we needed to get on in order to make it to Centrale in time for Tash to catch the last train to her host placement. After reluctant grumbling and wrong lifting again from Manwella we managed to get on a bus to Centrale. We missed the train for one of the girls (who could get a later one) but made it in time for Tash's, I think. Manwella made me an Mikele rush to get on a train to Torino which we are sure is NOT the one that our tickets lists but one 30mins earlier =S. as it turns out she also put our tickets in the machine wrong so it stamped in the wrong place, fortunately the conductor could speak English and said that it wasn’t a problem (I got to use my first bit of Italian saying 'parle Inglese' when he asked if we spoke Italian).

As this is posting I’m on the train to Torino! I's so exciting XD