Overseas Adventures: 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: