Introductionius to 3°G-ius (+PicSpam)

I want to preface this post with an instruction; as you read this (or in fact any following post that mentions my class at school) your head has to say 'terzaggi' which you pronounce more like 'tertzagi' with the gi from gist. This is because I’m technically in '3^rd G' as opposed to 'Tre G' which would be how you'd assume you'd say 3G but 'Three G' just sounds like the inferior cousin of a G6 or an Australian phone company. I can assure you that 3°G is neither inferior nor a phone company.

3°G is an amazing class and I am really luck to be spending my time with them. Having said that they are also a little insane, which is possibly why I get along with them so well! I’ve already written about how I was introduced to the entirety of my class in around 3 mins flat and how some boys appeared with a table and chair hoisted above their heads for me (I still cannot recall who it was that did this but I’m thinking one of them was probably Ricchi). What I have not told you is that, for whatever reason (I’m sure there is one I’m just not aware of it), there is a theme for dressing up on Mondays.

Right so explaining things about my class is going to be rather difficult for you to follow if you've got no idea who I’m talking about. So I’ve got you a photo. This is from Wednesday (it was a very busy day with the photo, my adventure at the piscina and Notte Tricoloure) and has everyone but me and another boy in it. I’m not in it because I was in 2C for Italian so I arrived after this (but I am still in the one for l'annuario/yearbook), Alessando (the boy who is also missing) isn't in it because he is off at a maths competition because he's our resident maths god (it's actually because he placed in a national competition and is off at a European on). As you can see to combat his absence there are printed pictures of him and posters declaring him the maths god that he is (the sign says 'Mastro' as this is the start of his last name, I’m not entirely sure of the full thing but we call him Mastro). Right so now for the photo:

and we'll list people from left to right, back to front, pretending the there is only one standing row zigzagging from the boy on the right of the short row the to girl in front of him. I’m going to give you full names because we apparently call people by their last name quite often and I’ll put in brackets what it appears we call them. Oh and I’m getting names from facebook so have please keep in mind they could be incorrect.

Boris Agramonte (I believe we call him 'Boris'), Mattia Comoglio (this is the first of two Mattias, if we call him anything other than 'Mattia' I’m not aware of it), Davide Messina (we call him 'Messi'), Daniele Padovano (as I said when writing about Chiara's party we call him 'Pado'). Next is Riccardo Roba ('Ricchi' still said with a ck not a ch because the English pronunciation is the opposite of Italian, it appears that it is also written 'Riki')

Now we zigzag down to the girl in front of Ricchi, Silvia de Michieli ('Silvi'), then Ilaria Meirone ('Ila' although I think I’ve hear 'Ili' too), we then come to the second Mattia (I’m also not aware of us calling him anything different so; 'Mattia'). Next up is the first of FOUR Giulia's, yes you hear correctly four, this one is Giulia Carino (as far as I’m aware you just shout 'Giu' and then proceed to 'Giulia' and then on to a last name if you don’t get an answer or get an answer from the wrong Giu, assume this for all the others too). Then there's Daniele Russo (yes we've got two Daniele's as well I believe we call him 'Daniele', maybe even 'Russo' or some variation there of and you say it 'roos' sort of like book), Susanna Mestriner ('Susi'), Giulia Moschella, Valeria Piampiano (I’m sure I’ve heard 'Val' used at some point), Maria Fejr (I think I’ve heard 'Maria' and 'Mari' used), and then to finish off the back row is Fabio Lorenzini (for some strange reason we call him 'Febio' as in we say and write it with an 'e' however I’m sure it's actually spelt with an 'a').

Now, the front row; Giulia Rosso, Elena Bertoldo (I’m not aware of anything different to 'Elena'), Claudia Galioto (often called 'Clod' and spelt that way too), Giulia Felician, Marta Parena (I’m only aware of 'Marta' but I’m thinking people might use a derivative of her last name as well), Greta Rista (often 'Gre', this is who I sit next to), Nibras Dannawi ('Nib') and on the end Chiara Piccinelli (who it we often call 'Picci').

So looking at the picture you may have noticed that almost everyone is in plaid/checkered shirts, while I’d love to say we all telepathically managed to match this was not the case; there was a very elaborate spread sheet where by we could choose our favourite few themes for the picture. However on hearing that the picture was much sooner than antricipated and not having decided on a theme everyone was happy with Ricchi proposed we wear 'camicie a quadri' and thus you have it. Also somewhere along the way hats were added but not every one had them but that's cool.

Right so the first Monday I had at school was actually my third in country, my first having been my sleep/blog/unpack day and the second I spent filling in paper work. By this point I’d been added to 3°Gs facebook group and with the extensive use of google translate I had determined that it was 'Nerd Day' however I had absolutely NO idea what this meant and nothing very nerdy to wear so I turned up at school completely expecting to be the odd one out. Turns out that only two people out of the 25 in my class had dressed up but it was still pretty amusing. At school there are breaks at 10 and 12 for I’m not really sure how long, on Mondays these breaks are used for photo shoots of people who dressed up in the theme and on other days they are used for stealing each others snack, mock fighting, stealing and/or hiding each others possessions and really just being rather insane. Oh and on the days where there is a written verification or an interrogation these times are used for last minute cramming, hassling Mastro for maths help and sharing woe over one's impending doom.

On 'Nerd Day' it was Marta and Ricchi that dressed up, and this is what occurs when you give someone a camera during 'intervalo' on a Monday. (also featuring Susi)

The second Monday I was at school was San Valentino and our instruction was to wear red. I was really excited because in my limited supply of cloths I actually have a red top which meant I could join in. When you turn up at school rugged up in a coat its quite difficult to see what someone is wearing underneath, so when I unwrapped my self and undid my leavers jacket I got a mini cheer (from I think Marta) for wearing red. Surprisingly some people in the class didn’t have any red cloths but they overcame this problem by wearing red socks, shoes or a hoody with red print on it. And of course our obligatory intervalo photo shoot... there was actually a couple of other people in red that didn’t make it into the photo.

once again; left to right, back to front: Nib, Clod, Mattia, Febio, Ricchi, Pado, Silvi, Chiara, Giu, with me, Marta and Mastro in the front.

Next up we had 'Gangster Day'. I once again didn't have anything gangster so I didn’t dress up. I attempted to make a paper Fedora but it was an Epic Fail and has been resigned to life in my file of 'awesome things from exchange' despite the fact its not all that awesome.

This one goes: Ricchi, Mattia, Febio, Messi with Nib, Marta and Silvi in front.

I forgot to mention that we have a class mascot. Her name is Carmen Terzaggi and she lives on the coat rack at the back of the class. And what would what would 'Gansgter Day' Monday be with out the class mascot dressing up?

After gangster came 'Hippie' and once again I was determined to dress up. I went with green and purple striped thermal pants and denim skirt and with a floaty floral top over a long sleeved one. Ooh and I made a peace sign, out of a cereal box, that I tied to a stupidly coloured shoelace. It is apparently genius that I though of making something out of cardboard as I had a bunch of people exclaim over it...

In the first image you've go Maria, Silvi and me and the second is Clod.

Next up was 'Sailor Day', this one came with the instructions of 'blu, bianco, righe'. I have cloths with blue and white stripes but they were going in the wrong direction to be sailorish. In the end (with extensive help from friends and fam back in Aus) I decided to make from paper a sailor hat and the typical square backed collar thing and just wear them with normal cloths. I don’t have any pictures of me wearing them because I put them on Clod for the photo shoot intervalo. Once again there weren't many people dressed up at this one, but there were a few people who where wearing white and blue.

In the first there's Clod (on a chair) and Ricchi. and the second is Maria and Clod with Messi in the for the epic photo bomb 

We didn’t dress up on Monday the week just past but that's ok because we had Plaid/checkered on Wednesday to make up for it.

Here it's Ricchi, Febio, Daniele, Pado and Messi

Photos are taken from facebook so they have not been taken by me, even the ones from my camera were not taken by me. It seems if you bring a camera to class it will be rather quickly appropriated for use by everyone. It's really rather cool, I was surprised that the first thing a couple of people did upon picking it up was to ask where the switch for manual focus was, most people cant even work out how to turn a reflex on.

Introductionius to Jaceius(, Annicaius and Bruceius)

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.