Postius I am completing this Missionius

NOW a post about what I did on my first weekend with my new fam. All the interesting things (well really it is a thing) happened on the Sunday so I shall ATTEMPT to write briefly about the Saturday because really it is rather boring.

On Saturday morning when I got up and headed down stairs Sara's mum Nonna Erma was visiting. After I’d eaten breakfast Selene and I headed out with her to the local markets that are all of about 150m away. We bought some veggies and fresh pasta and spent a reasonable amount of time stopping to Nonna Erma could say hello to people she knew. We then went to one of the local maccellerias on the way back to her apartment. Nonna Erma is very nice, but she doesn’t speak any English at all, this is no longer a problem for me as I have learnt how to get on with people with out being able to hold a proper conversation with them. Nonna Erma informed Sara that she must give me a hug every day, because my family is so far away and isn't able to give me hugs. She also says ciao to me every time she is talking to Sara or Selene on the phone, it's very cute.

Selene it appears doesn’t have school on Saturdays and it seems that only a few of her friends do as well. So we went into the centre to go shopping. When I went into the centre with Giu we would head in, spend a max of 2ish hours and then come back. This is apparently not the case with Selene. We were in there for 6 ½ horus. Well, no, that's how long it was from when we left the house to when we arrived back again, it's still a long time! We did a lot of walking, picked up and deposited a bunch of people on the way. I don’t know whether there was really a point to going shopping or if we were just blowing a few hours or what. It was rather amusing, I met a bunch of people who's names I don’t remember and spoke very little.

On the bus on the way home Sele managed to provide me with a land mark for pressing the button to get of the bus. Really I don’t see why she couldn’t remember to tell me to get of at the stop after the giant pink building. It's giant and pink and rather hard to miss. Oh well I know now when to press the button. By the time we were on the bus on the way home it was like 8pm. Sele was on the phone to some one because there was apparently some drama where by we hung out with I think Alice's boyfriend with out her being there or something. Anyway Sara was apparently trying to call to see why we weren’t home and in the end called me so I could pass my phone to Sele. This has happened a couple of times and I find it rather amusing.

At some point on Saturday Sara told me about this thing that her, Tancredi and some friends were doing on Sunday morning. A walk that happens every year and is at the start of spring so you can walk through all the little blossoms. Selene apparently wasn't interested in walking and didn’t want to get up early to go, I however decided that even if I was going to be tired and get hayfever I was going to go because it would be awesome. The place we were going was a little way out of Nichelino/Torino so we all pilled into one car (there were 7 of us in the end) and headed out. It turned out being 2 ½ ish our walk. Which we started at 10am... along the way there were marquees where they gave out water/coffee/hot chocolate, giant mini toast with nutella/marmalata (not not marmalade, jam) or mini sandwiches and things of that sort. This however does not make up for that fact that we were walking for several of the hottest hours of the day. And practically NO ONE wore sunscreen. In fact I’m relatively certain I was one of the few that was, most people were there in singlet. And no one wore hats! I didn't have one and spent the whole time feeling horribly unsunsmart but everyone else seemed content to just get urber burnt =S

Sara's friend Carman came along with her partner and son who's names if temporarily forgotten. I spent quite a lot of the walk going along next to her which was rather amusing. She's got less English that I do Italian but we still managed to have several rather decent conversations, we even managed to have one about whether Australia was suffering with a dogey ecconomy like the US. We really didn’t get to in-depth with that one but after talking about what I was going to study at Uni we got onto if there was a job market in Australia.

After we finished the walk we headed to another friend (who's name I remember but can't spell)'s house for a few hours where I snoozed in a chair and bonded with Tancredi and his friend (Carman's son) by teaching them how to use a magnifying glass to make leaves smoke. Now before you start raiving about how this makes me a bad role model; they already had the magnifying glass and the leaves, they were just doing it wrong. All I did was tell them they needed to use brown leave and taught them about focusing the light on the leaves. I managed to do this in Italian using 'solo marrone' whilst holding leaves and 'poco poco poco' while pointing at the focal point of light. We never managed to get them to light on fire but we did get an impressive amount of smoke off them.

And now for some beautiful pictures of the walk we took:

This would be me, Sara and Tancredi

Postius I have a Missionius

I have a mission for today, just one, well no not actually just one but one main one and other smaller side missions to help the completion of the main one. My mission: to write blog posts, yes postS plural. Side missions include; not getting sucked into the land of Nerdfighteria or the land of the Vlogbrothers, not spending stupid amounts of time lost in the interwebs, not spending copious amounts of time watching recorded, streamed or live tv. So it's four verses one and I’m hoping that the one will win out, and I’m sure you are too.

So things that I want to tell you about over the course of my blog friendly day: Introduction to my new family, adventures of our first weekend, adventures of our second weekend and adventures over Easter. Most of these have several pretty pictures to accompany them which is good because it gives me something to write specifically about as well as giving you something interesting to look at rather than just a bunch of black and white pixels.

So I’ve just spent the majority of the day attempting to write a post introducing you to my new family. It hasn't gone very well... despite my attempts not to get distracted I found myself battleing with the internet to load pages while I though of what I wanted to write next. So I’ve decided to give up on that post and jump straight into what we did the first weekend I was here.

Ok so it turns out that in the mornings it takes about an hour 10 to and hour 15 to get to school via bus/metro. Despite the fact that I’d already determined it took approximately this long Selene was sure that I would be at school on time if we left when she normally does. I don’t know how she determined this as she gets off the metro at the 5^th stop and I need to get off at the 4^th last and yet she arrives at school only like 10mins before class starts. Anyway I had Sara fill in a justification for being late for school and we just didn’t write a time so I could fill that in when I got to class. It turns out that I was about 15 mins late, to which Selene's reply was 'oh ok, we'll get on the bus that leaves 6 mins earlier' if anyone sees how that math works let me know.

To get home form school I had a set of instructions that said something along the line of “take the metro to Lingotto, then get on bus 35, get off at *insert stop name here* which is approx. the 11^th stop”. Very descriptive. Also it would have made me slightly more content if Selene had pointed out in the morning where I had to get on the bus. It turns out that there is only one bus stop but it still would have been nice to know that was where I was meant to get it from. When I was on the bus Sara called me to see if I had gotten lost because it was 2 and she somehow thought I would have magically gotten home by then. It turns out that as I was on the phone to her I missed the stop I had to get off at and thus I had to get off at the next one and walk back to the actual stop and then back a little more to take the road that eventually gets me back to the house. Did I mention this was one of those kinda warmish days? So I managed to get home all by my self, despite the fact Sara said she would come and pick me up if I got lost on the walk.

After lunch I talked to Tibs on Skype for a bit and had my first real encounter with the SHOCKING internet we have. We just had a voice call and it dropped me off 8ish times over I think around 40 minutes. Grrr. We weren't even having a video chat, I was the only person on the internet and I wasn’t trying to do anything else at the same time. I have yet to determine how people actually live with crappy internet. Surely having to get up every 15 mins to reset your wireless router gets kinda annoying after, I dunno, the second time you do it, let alone having to disconnect and reconnect your computer every time you want the internet to actually function. Surely you just call some dude who sits in an office doing nothing and ask why it's so shit. I have determined that part of the problem is the bandwidth. One person can be using the internet and it can be working completely fine but as soon as someone else tries to use it as well it makes me wish we had dialup. At least then if you waited long enough things would actually load.

Anyway I’ve written more than a page and haven’t even got to the weekend yet, this may end up being a long post. But hey, I’ve written more of this one in an hour than I did of my abandoned post over the rest of the day. Friday night Selene was going to a birthday party so I went along aswell. When Selene came home from school she brought a couple of friends with her. This was fine, I was on Skype to I waved at them through the door then they disappeared down stairs and I assumed they'd gone home. They hadn't actually gone home, it turns out. When I was downstairs a little later Sele ushered me into a room where I proceeded to spend the next 20mins leaning awkwardly against the wall while they all exfoliated/plucked/epilated/hair-straightened themselves. Not really something I enjoyed that much. Neither was sitting on the door step breathing second hand smoke and watching them wax. I eventually found a legitimate reason to leave and retreated to a safe place.

Eventually we headed off to Alice (said Al-lich-e) and Irene (Ir-en-ne not eye-rean)'s house (I believe they are sisters) for more getting ready before Alice's boyfriend pick us minus Irene up. We were apparently running late (I’m sure that if everyone runs late as often as the host sister I get then no one should worry about being late because everyone would always be late) so I was only rapidly introduced. Driving with Mattia (Alice's boyfriend) was rather amusing. He has an oldish FIAT Panda Young which is almost not quite bunky but has had a decent sound system installed to make up for it. When we finally arrived at our destination after some debate on where it was we were going and then on where we should park I was introduced properly. This introduction was another amusing one to add to the list, it was something along the lines of 'she's not mute, Breanna's just from Australia and can't speak Italian.'

The party was rather average for someone who couldn’t really talk to anyone but it turns out that Mattia can speak a reasonable amount of English so I chatted to him for a while. I also got to meet Selene's boyfriend for all of about 10 mins. What was amusing however was the way this girl's birthday present had been wrapped. They placed a large box on the table for her to open, large as in A3 by 70cm or so. When she opened it, it was full of little foamy packing peanuts or whatever they are called. After digging around in the packing things several small presents were produced. Most of them were silly things like a toilet shaped container of goo and a toothpaste box filled with hole-punched type paper pieces and one eye-liner pencil. Yeah it was amusing, and then at the end she picked up the box and tipped the remaining packing things onto I think it was her sister.

And now that I’ve finished almost two paged of non weekend related stuff I shall upload it before the internet goes completely to poo and then start on a weekend related post. However I’m not sure the weekend one will go up today, it will evolve photos and slow internet+photos =/= functioning blogger

Postius about the weather

So apparently my last post was really sad, it wasn't meant to be but I guess reading it back I can see how it was. Tibs put out a pitiful plea for me to write a new blog post so that when she opens up my blog she doesn’t see the sad one any more. I actually started writing this last Friday with the plan of finishing it on Saturday or Sunday. But on Saturday we headed of to Museo Nazionale dell'Austomobile where we spent a whopping 4 hours and then when I thought I’d have Sunday to curl up, write and then sleep we headed off to a thermal spa hotel a few hours drive away to visit Nonna Erma, where we spent the whole day. While I’m sure you're looking for a post about my new family I wont be writing about them now. They are very nice and I’m happy here, but I do miss Gabri and Giu alittle. As far as I can tell tomorrow is my last day of school before Pasqua vacanze (Easter vacation) which lasts until I think the second of May. For some of this time we are going to Liguria, the province bellow Piemonte where Torino is located, to the family's beach house. I’ve got a couple of other blog posts that I’m planning so I’m hoping to get a few up over the rest of the week, however my ability to write them depends on the amount of surprise activities we partake in. For now however; a long awaited post about the weather.

When I first arrived it was rather cold. The max temp we got up to was around 10/11 maybe 12/13 if you were lucky. Mornings were very cold, only a few degrees, and it was still only 6/7/8ish when school finished at 1. The day's were very short, with sunrise around 7.30 and we only reached the max temp maybe an hour or so before the sun set at 6. To combat the cold I wore lots of warm clothes. This generally consisted of jeans, warm socks, boots (not my hiking ones, stiff leather ones), a singlet, a long sleeved top, and my leavers jacket. Then when I went out side I would wear my coat (nice and toasty warm that mum made before we went to America for Christmas a few years ago), a scarf and gloves. Still despite all this walking to school was sometimes a little chilly, there were in fact a few occasions where I wanted to break out my orange beanie and brave having to explain it to Giu and everyone in my class just so I could have warm ears walking to school. 

After I’d been here for a few weeks it started to warm up a bit, and by that I mean the max rose to 15 and the min crept up to 9/10/11. Then at the start of March we had some cold weather again where it snowed! If you remember on my first weekend here there was a little sprinkle that I got to walk through on the way to the car after Giu (other Giu)'s party. There were a few days at the very end of Feb where there was some more sprinkling on the walk to school and one day even a little bit after school. To which Giu stated it was very unusual for snow at the end of Feb, even the little that we were having. And so while all you Aussies were suffering unwavering and unusual heat, we had unusual cold, where by it snowed, rather a lot, in March. I came down stairs on Friday March 4, sat down to have breakfast, looked out the window next to the kitchen table and noticed that the oranges (Gabri's dad sent a box of oranges from Sicily) sitting on the table out side were wearing interesting little white hats. Interesting little white hats that nicely showed how much snow had fallen over night. Interesting little white hats that look something like this:

What little snow we'd had before had always melted upon contact with the ground so this was the first time I’d seen it cling to anything other than thin pieces of metal. When I walked out side with Cleo that morning it was with a bright yellow umbrello and a HUGE grin on my face because not only was there snow on the ground there were flakes lazily drifting down still and not just little flakes, big flakes 5 and 10 cent coin sized flakes. It was fun up until I realised that snow was slippery when you walk on it, however I was fortunate enough to weigh more than Cleo and thus when it was a battle for traction I won as I had a greater gravitational force acting on me. Where I walk Cleo there is one section that is grassy/muddy and then another bit that paved with these weird shaped things that leave a small hexagon for grass to grow though, I don’t have a picture but I should get one because its way hard to explain. Anyway the snow had melted in the holes and banked up on the paved bits and it left this cool bumpy pattern. I didn't take my camera with me when I went to walk Cleo because I didn't know how awesome it would be and when I went back after it had been walked though so I didn’t get one of that. However knowing that I would get in trouble if I just told you about the amazing snow, I went out again while Giu was still getting ready to take some photos.　

A few weeks after our lovely little bit of snow the weather was forecast at 17/18 on Saturday and Gabri was threatening to lock me out of the house when I next walked Cleo if I didn't make a plan to go to the centre. There were a couple of people from 3G that wanted to come in shopping with me but they had to study to I headed in by myself for a bit of an adventure. Now the reason that it was an adventure was because at this point I was still at the stage where all of the centre looked the same, I am still sort of at this stage but I have now managed to work out where some places are. The best way I have to explain my knowledge of the centre is like a map on Age of Empires (its a computer game Tibs used to play), as your ships or people travel over more land the land that they've travelled on appears on your map along with a small area surrounding where they have travelled. At that point I had the walk from two different metro stops to a strip of shops that was near by it and that was it. I now have three strips of shops from two metro stops and they join up with a Piazza. That was the first day I had been outside for an extened period with out my big coat (I think a couple of times I had walked Cleo in just a jumper but that was only for a few mins and was rather chilly) I went out in my Doctor Jacket (its brown jacket with white pin stripes like on of The Tenth Doctor's suits that I inherited from a friend) it's light, mid length and of suit jacket thickness. I was a little warm with it over long sleeves but I would have been to cold with out it.

A few weekends ago I fobbed off talking on Skype to go for a walk around and take pictures of things. This is because of a few reasons; mum was complaining about a lack of photos and also because we were having some really nice warm weather and I didn't feel like sitting inside on my butt all day. It had suddenly with in the space of about 2 days gone from 18 degree days to 22+ ones and Gabri always laughed at me because after I came home form school I spent all afternoon and night in jeans and a singlet. During these weeks I decided that Spring was my favourite season, I believe however last year I decided that it was Autumn.

Anyway Spring WAS my favorite season up until last week at which all the flowers stopped being beautiful and started dropping pollen, now it just gives me hayfever. This however will no longer be a problem once Mum sends me more Rihnocort, I stupidly managed to bring my bottle over virtually empty.

The flowers here are really nice; there is about a week where most of the trees stop looking dead and sprout tiny little blossoms and then just as the first of the blossoms start to fall leaves appear, it's really beautiful. One day I walked out of school and it was snowing, not snow but blossoms that were being blown in the wind. So anyway; here are some pictures of pretty Spring things so that I can go to bed before it gets too stupidly late with out feeling guilty that I haven't blogged in more than a week:

 I can now say I've seen actual grass that actually grows in tufts, it looks like this:

all of these images were taken between Gabri and Giu's and the school. Of which I don't seem to have any pictures so I'll get you some after Pasqua

post sulla mia famiglia

I’m sure that I mentioned this before but looking back I cant seem to find it anywhere but anyway: Gabri and Giu are only a 'welcome family' for me. When I got my initial information about them I was told that I would only be staying with them for two months before I would change to another family near by that was interested in having me. I’ve been in Italy 10 and a half weeks now and so I am sitting on the couch after school, watching l'Isola dei famousi with Giu and writing the last blog post I will upload from here, my new host family is coming to pick me up at 6.30.

I’m really sad to be moving families, Gabri and Giu are amazing and I really like it here. Giu is in her second last year of school so she must study and I believe that Gabri and Giu are both (separately) going away over the summer. And so, no matter how much I wish I were staying, tonight I move. Gabri it appears is also quite sad that I am going and has thus given me several pep talks. Pep talks from Gabri are one of the sweetest things ever, possibly this is because I do speak Italian and she does not speak English but I think it's just because she's really sweet. So far we have established that after the summer, before I go back to Australia, I should come back and stay with them again (we have in fact established this several times); that I should still come over for dinner and to say 'ciao'; that if I am unhappy with the new family I should call; that I am taking Giu back to Australia with me (every time she does something stupid Gabri always points at her and says 'Australia con tu'; that instead of taking Giu with me to Australia I am taking Gabri (this is when both Giu and Simo, Gabri's sister, are being stupid) and that Gabri doesn't know what she's going to do when I leave.

The first time that Gabri said I could come back after the summer if I wanted made me so happy I almost burst, no joke. Grace can attest to this, I was excitedly Skyping/facebooking her for quite a while about it. Coming back here in it's self would be awesome but I reckon there's something special about finishing exchange where you started, and to think by then I might actually be able to speak enough Italian to properly thank Gabri for welcoming me into her home. It's not set in stone that I will come back but I really hope that I do.

Over the past day there's been a few sad moments for me. Like when at dinner Giu turned to me and said 'oh no, Bree, it's your last dinner here' that was very sad. Other random moments that I’ve been sad include walking home from school, that I think is quite silly, it's a walk along a path, most of which I will still have to do to get to the metro, and saying goodbye to Giu's friends where we deposit them on the way home, again this is quite pointless, most of them are in Giu's class which is practically across the hall from mine so I will still see them most days.

I didn't go to extra Italian yesterday because I’d decided that I needed that time to pack. In the end I probably spent the same amount of time procrastinating that I would have spent there but that's just how I pack; potter around and do some bits then go off and reorganise something you've already done, go back and do something new. I still cannot fathom how on earth I (and by that I mean Mum) managed to get everything packed to come over here! The entiritly of my life currently consists of; my pack (full of cloths), a small wheely bag (full of cloths), my school bag (full of school things), my camera bag (containing my camera), my handbag, a large paper shopping bag (full of shoes), a medium size paper shopping bag (containing electronics, cloths for hanging, things I don’t want squished and Vegemite) a small paper shopping bag (full of paper/books/files/photo albums), a box Mum posted (containing my climbing stuff and presents for my family) and Jace. And here is a picture of it all:

I’d like to write more about Gabri and Giu but I really don’t know what to say; they've been amazing and I will miss them very much. But now let's move one to my new family; I have a mum (Sara), a sister (Selene),17, a brother (Tancredi),10, two chickens and a roster. A roster that had better be mute, or really like sleeping in on weekends, because they don't actually live in Torino but a suburb near by, Nichelino. This means that to get to school for 8 I must leave at 6.54 for 40mins on the bus, 15 on the metro and 10 walking. In actual fact where I am staying is only 10km from school but they are two places that you are destined not to be able to get to using public transport and so I must travel two sides of a triangle as opposed to the hypotenuse. Fun.

And before I finish up this post and upload it some amusing stories about my immanent departure. Gabri really like the Sheppard's Pie that I made and said that I must make it again, however we ran out of dinners so we didn't get a chance. However I worked this out at the start of the week and so in my 2 hours on Tuesday I went to the shop, bought ingredients and did vegie prep. Then while Gabri was still out and Giu was at dance I made the pie, let it cool wrapped it and put it in the freezer, attached is a note saying 'sorpresa!' and containing cooking instructions. The other one is more amusing; today the cleaning lady came. When I went up stairs to my room there were new sheets on the bed as there has been every week, so I stripped the bed and put the new ones on all ready for Giu tonight. The next time I went up stairs was about 20mins ago and while I was up there Gabri came in with the sheets that I’d put on the bed before. It seems that Laura didn't know I’d changed then so changed them again, we had a good laugh over it while folding them up again.

So its 8 to 6 and I’m off up stairs to post this and then hand with Gabri and Giu before Sara, Selene and Tancredi arrive. No wait, I’ll be social and go fetch my camera for the picture and then post from down heres