Sono ancora viva!

My brain is so fried from this week.

While my class was being hosted in Germany I stayed in good ole' Treviso going to my school's main building; answering the same repetitive questions in English for Italian students. Oh yeah!

It may sound easy, but after a while it gets old. Then there's the 120 students I can now add to my list of acquaintances that randomnly say hi to me on the streets. Seriously I think I know about half the city's students now.

Not a bad thing. I would love to hang out with them. If they weren't all studying haha! Italian teenagers work so unbelievably hard...

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Last week there was a four day weekend and my family decided to spend it in the mountains. At first I wasn't too happy about this decision since I'm not a very big fan of swerving mountain roads but it wasn't that bad this time.

We went to the region of South Tyrol I believe, an area of Italy that is bilingual; the inhabitants of this area spoke both German and Italian.

You can imagine how useful my three years of forgotten German and poor Italian were to me.

It was a relaxing adventure. There was a nice sauna and indoor heated pool at the hotel we stayed in so I was good to go.

And since my parents are very healthy and think children should be outside more than playing games indoors, we took a nice 4 hour walk around the mountains. I was actually really tired but I got some nice pictures!

After that I wanted to go to sleep but my parents made me study for a Physics oral test I had coming up. (By the way, I failed the exam horrificly. D:)

The town we stayed in was some sort of witchcraft like place where a lot of people believed in weird monsters, witches, and other odd things...

For instance, along the trail I would find distorted wooden benches like these:

people claimed to have been made by witches. They were kind of creepy...

Later on the last night of our trip, there was a festival of monsters! Apparently every year, the teenagers of the region dress up in hiddeous costumes, make cars to ride in, or weird objects and parade around a designated trail through the small town scaring everyone.

Now this wasn't your ordinary scare fest. The monsters at the theme parks in my city of Cincinnati don't grab you. They just scare you and get in your face some. No,  these monsters actually kidnap you into their parade and take you half way through the trail before releasing you somewhere in an unwanted destination.

Luckily I didn't get captured but some monsters tried to get me. I had to stay clear because some of them had fire and dangerous smoking weapons. A lot of the monsters wore gigantic cowbells around their waists so you could hear them and get out of the way before they caught you. But all the university students were so drunk on German beer I guess it didn't even matter.

I couldn't get any good pictures since the people dressed in the outfits moved around too much.

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There was a huge high school of musical students in the town. Students would come and play Christmas tunes in the middle of the Piazza.

My mom is teaching me how to cook! <3

I learned how to make coffee with this weird contraption. It's unbelievably easy and fast! I plan on taking one back in the United States for my family!

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My parents went shopping in the town's market center. I also took some photos of this.

Nutella is everywhere!

There's a lot of cheese in the super markets! :O

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-sigh-

I think Italian traffic needs it's own special section everytime I make a new post.

I'm pretty much angry with Italian transportation and traffic at the moment. With their random strikes, crazy drivers, and no common sense crossing the street. (Goodness, since I've finally adopted the way Italians cross the street, I've forgotten how I would even do it back home in Cincinnati...)

Italy needs to get it priorities straight with these buses.

1. Because when there is a strike with the buses, there will be less of them, and they will be much more crowded than usual, or people won't have a ride home at all. Some students had to walk over an hour and half home two days ago when the last strike happened. Lucky for me, I rode my bike in 30 minutes. And it was raining. =|

AND

2. I am annoyed with terrible drivers! Seriously! My bus got into an accident yesterday morning because a lady pulled out in front of us and the bus driver, using his already wonderful NASCAR skills, had to suddenly brake. No if it weren't for good handrails I could've been seriously injured and not have walked the rest of the way to school. But I'm fine. Now as for some of the other people on the bus with me that's a bit different. Since many of the people that catch the bus are old and don't have a strong grip, they went flying to the front of the bus in a huge dog pile. It was terrible. Ambulances and firetrucks were called to the scene because I think some old ladies dislocated their hips, but other than that I believe everyone walked away fine.

Damn Italian traffic.

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AFS Christmas Party tonight, woo!

I'm actually really interested to celebrate Christmas in a different family this year. I'm curious how this is going to work.

Along with my mom and siblings we put up the Christmas tree at the beginning of the week! It's so cute!

I made my presents for my friends at home and mailed off the package! (It was hard to do so because the postage women didn't really want to help me out much when they found out I didn't speak very good Italian :O But in the end I managed with the help of good citizens.)

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Eeeh! I'm feel like I'm growing up a little bit too much. Having a little brother and sister has brought out and even more responsible side of me. Even though I'm still a bit lazy, I've stopped procrastinating more because I realized how important time is. And I'm taking care of other people on a daily basis than myself for once. I was never used to that...

It's a weird feeling but I'm sure during my AFS experience I will continue to grow and build even more character as the months go by.