For those of you who are not aware I haven’t actually travelled a third of the way around the world for exchange by myself. While I am exchanging by myself in Italy I have two fellow exchanging comrades very near by; best friends Grace and Jessica are in Spain and France for 6 and 10 months respectively. I’m not sure if one of us really decided first, if one of us followed another or we just all thought it was a good idea but anyway we're all here muddling our way through school in another language and experiencing the things life in another country throws at you.
I was the first of us to leave heading off on Jan 23 with Jessica following on Jan 27 and Grace scheduled to depart on Feb 5. I say scheduled because this was when she was meant to leave. Comunque (however) she had an encounter with the Spanish Mañana, Mañana attitude and didn’t get her visa untill the 15th and thus left on the 17th. My last week in Australia was very busy with last minute catchups, frenzied packing and quality family (and second family) time. The Ritters (Grace's family and my second one) where away for three weeks after Christmas, arriving home just 5 days before left. Mum had printed me a calendar of January so I could plan my time and these 5 days were allocated as G-time (Grace-time). As it turns out I begrudgingly had to do other things with my time as well but any way. G-time still included walking the mad dog Torres (we will hear more of him later) and hanging with (terrorising) my Ritter siblings. One day was also allocated to last minute shopping (for the three of us but mainly me) to be followed by a Tri-Family-BBQ.
I don’t remember what made me think of it but I some how decided that it would be a good idea for the three of us to joint buy each other a teddy bears. If we are ever homesick or sad we can use Skype to talk to each other or our families but nothing is quite as comforting as a hug, which we can now receive from our lovely (matching) teddies. On our journey around the City looking for teddy bears we learnt a few things; 1) they are now considered only as 'baby items' and are very rare, 2) the staff in the baby section of Myer are really nice and 3) three 17 year old girls walking around the city with teddies tucked proudly under their arms must be part of a 'teddy bear club'.
At one point while we were sitting down and drinking frozen raspberry fanta taking a break from our mad shopping we decided that we were going to name our teddies a mashing together of the other two's names. Jess was the first to decide on a name and chose Bruce.. as you may have noticed Bruce is not directly derived from 'Breanna' and 'Grace'. She was going to have 'Brace' but then decided that Bruce was better. Strange we know but anyway.
I introduce you to Bruce in his natural French habitat:
I’m not entirely sure if it was Grace or I that chose next but I think it was Grace. We had some trouble coming up with a name out of 'Breanna' and 'Jess' but I’m not really sure why because I can think of a bunch now... but the options we thought of at the time included (i think) Bess. I decided to try and think of names using 'Jessica' instead of 'Jess' and we finally ended up with Annica.
And so, I introduce you to Annica in her natural Spanish habitat:
Now that just leaves the naming of my bear... I remember that we had some trouble thinking of a name for it but I cant remember any names that we rejected so perhaps we just couldn't get a name out of 'Grace' and 'Jess' as opposed to coming up with a bunch of stupid ones. We decided on Jace, I like Jace, it's a cool name; not very common and sort of punky.
Thus, I introduce to you Jace in her natural Italian habitat:
After Grace and I ended up with girls we decided that Bruce was a bit of a pimp and tried to change his name so he was a girl. Jess however had grown quite attached to Bruce and refused to change it, even when we offered 'Brucetta' which we then changed to 'Brucescetta' and rolled around laughing about for a while.
The Tri-Family-BBQ was to be held at the Milton/Ritter abode so after finishing in the City we headed over there. They had done a wonderful job with decorations; there were safe travel signs in each of our three languages, flags and mini plastic aeroplanes, it was very cute. It was a very nice evening and of course we did our share of stupid things, generally while playing the amazing game Catchphrase.
No comments:
Post a Comment