Undercover Italians and pocket dictionaries

 " O Romeo, Romeo! wherefore art thou Romeo?

Deny thy father and refuse thy name.

Or if thou wilt not, be but sworn my love

And I'll no longer be a Capulet."

 "O Romeo, Romeo! arte perché tu Romeo?

Nega tuo padre e rifiuta il tuo nome.

Oppure, se vuoi, non essere giurato ma il mio amore

E io non sarò più una Capuleti ".

I went to Verona with AFS in the Christmas holidays. It was one of my top 5 cities so far! I absolutly fell in love with this city! Something about it just caught me. The actual city itself was amazingly beautiful! We had to take the train from Rimini for a few hours to arrive in Verona! My host sister also came along with us which was awesome :) and of course there was Chloe my twin from America!

When we arrived in verona I swear my nose was as red as Rudolph's! It was so cold that if you spat it would have frozen before it reached the ground!!! Ok maybe not that cold but it was still cold for this little kiwi whose body thinks it's should be summer right now!!! We visited a arena that is similar to the coloseum and got attacked by the fake knights out the front wanting money for taking photos with them! Having an Icelandic friend whose blonde with blue eyes didn't help us disguise ourselves as undercover italians with strange accents and pocket dictionaries!

It was amazing inside!!!........for the first half hour then i got tired of examining the ancient rocks. sasso.....sasso.......sasso......oooooh un'altro sasso! finally after taking a million photos with rocks and milling around for a good twenty minutes admiring the rocks we left! A group of us decided to go and get hot chocolates....brilliant idea if i don't say so myself! After we went window shopping and perved on the italian guys ice skating!

Then we all finally went to juliet's balcony!! It wasn't exactly as I imagined it but it was still awesome to be there finally!!! It was very touristy and the walls were covered in gum because people thought it would be a brill idea to stick their saliva covered gum on the wall and scratch their names into it!! I must admit i did have the urge to pick off and try each flavour of gum like Buddy the Elf! 

And of course I wrote mine and my sister's name on Juilet's wall! wouldn't be the perfect tourist if I didn't! :)

To finish the day off we went to a bar and had a cappuccino and one of the best chocolate cakes!

Don't anger the mimes! (non ti arrabbiare i mimi)

MILANO!!

I told you not to anger the mimes :/

My family is absolutly AMAZING! I'm really loving my time with them and can't even begin to imagine leaving them to go back to New Zealand. A few months ago we all went to Milano together! It was actually alot of fun and Milan was Great! We stayed in a hotel for two nights.Silvia, Giacomo and I stayed in one room and my host mum and dad stayed in another. We even had special cards that you swipe to get into the room and a crappy little T.V just like in the movies! The first day we walked around Milan and went to a museum where they were holding an art exhibition. There was picasso and a crazy fish painting that I remember from when I was really little! If i remember right my uncle painted it and it used to hang in my grandads house? Funny how you find a piece of home no matter where you are in the world. The first 50 paintings were nice but after about the 400th painting I decided to wait in the gift shop while my host brother analised each brush stroke of each painting!!!
After we finally left the museum we went to find a restaurant for lunch!! after getting lost and having to refer to our pocket map a few times we finally found a restaurant we liked and had pizza!!!

                                                                                                                      

That night Silvia Giacomo and me decided to put the tiny free mints they give you to use! and had a mint fight! Then we went out for dinner with friends of my host father to a Milinaese resturant. I got a special milano dish that had some beef on top of a type of rice risotto! I was so tired by the end of dinner that when i got back i went straight to sleep and didn't even bother to remove the mints from my bed!

The next day we walked around Milan and visited the cathedral in which is in the centre. But to get to the center of Milan we had to take the train.
Some fun facts about Milan!
Fun Fact 1:There is pretty much the population of New Zealand in that one city :)
So taking the train involves not knowing whose hands are touching you while your squished like a sardine into a carriage that states on a piece of paper it's able to take over 190 people and you clearly know that if there were 190 people in that carriage you would no longer be breathing!!!
 Fun fact number 2 : never look the people who are trying to sell you things in the eye because I'm pretty thats a sign that tells them ooooh pick me I'd love to buy your braclet for 3 euros when I could buy one for 5 cents from the store down the street!
Fun Fact 3: Santa wants money for a photo! what has the world come tooooo!!!!!!
Fun Fact 4: Never anger the mimes they will grimice and they will come after you!!

I even managed to squeeze in a game of step on the crack and almost got taken down by an italian bicycle!! but all in all Milan was AMAZING!

18446.49km away from home

So last weekend I was in Venice.........:D

I still can't get over the fact that I have been to Venice! It was amazing!!!! I went with Xin (China),Camilla (Chile), Julia (Russia), Julias host mum and sister and Xin's host mum. When I first stepped out of the Train Station into Venice I was so amazed that I couldn't speak for the first few hours while we walked around...VENICE! I'm still struggling to comprehend that I am in Italy and I went to Venice. I have random moments wether im in the bus to school, in Venice, in my room or eating pizza where I stop and think to myself Oh my giddy aunt fanny! Im in italy...Im in fricken italy.....Im in fricken italy eating pizza......Oh my god what have I done.....I'm in Italy......18446.49km away from home.....what....have....I...gotten...myself....into....
We walked around Venice for awhile taking pictures and had lunch in the square. I had to fight with the hundreds of pigeons just to get a bite of my sandwhich! pesky pigeons! We then went to Basilica di San Marco. One of the most amazing bulidings I have ever seen. Its a famous church in the Center of Venice I couldnt believe how beautiful it was defiantly one of my top 10 buildings!

I just love this picture. I don't know why I just do!!!

 And of course we had GELATO! we then passed a bar which had money notes from all over the world pinned to the bar! and I found a New Zealand $5 so wicked! I don't know what else to write but pictures say 1000 words.....

My Bright Yellow AFS T-Shirt

I've finally arrived in Italy one year of planning,frustration,stress,fun and a whole lot of craziness and im finally here in RIMINI!!!!

AFS Rimini :D The first time we all met

I arrived in Rome with 5 other New Zealand AFS exchange students; Alyce Taylor, Morgan Gatland, Angela Curtis, Taylor..... and Abbey Mahon! We travelled about 32 hours altogether.

All the girls from New Zealand. From Left (Me,Taylor,Morgan,Abbey,Alyce,Charlotte and Angela)

When we arrived it was so hot my shoes were sticking to the pavement! But it was so amazing to actually be in... ROME! ITALY! We met up with some of the other exchange students from around the world and took a bus to the hotel where we would have our orientation camp. I was so tired by the time I got there that I just wanted to collapse on my bed but we had to go through the prodìcess of getting our name tags etc so we had to wait out in the italian sun and being New Zealand of course we were one of the last groups to go through. i was so glad to finally be in Italy though that it didn't bother me to much. After we all went for lunch and got to know the other students a bit. All we really wanted to do though was sleep so most of the New Zealand students went to our room and talked and then eventually fell asleep. The whole camp pretty much prepared us for meeting our families and gave us a chance to get to know eachother and the students that will be in our region for the year. Thats where i met Chloe Eberly for the first time :D On the finally night in the hotel all the students were taken to a giant marque where the president of AFS Italy spoke to us about our year and new lives in italy. He said that this year would change our lives and that just taking the chance and actually getting to Italy to be here on this night was the biggest step. It was amazing to think that there were 500 students in that Marque that night and each and everyone of them had gone through what I had gone through to get here but in their own way. We had the whole world in one room. He spoke to us about AFS and what it means and got every country to stand up and give a cheer. New Zealand even got a special shout out because we were the students who had travelled the furtherest to be here.Finally he said the next time we all meet we will speak in Italian :D

The next morning everyone left for their new homes and families here in italy it was actually kind of sad because even over that short period all the New Zealand students had grown close, we had travelled halfway around the world together not knowing what to really expect when we got here and finally we had to say goodbye. It was both sad and yet exciting, it seems that every goodbye leads to a new hello on this exchange which is something I will never grow tired of. I travelled by train to Rimini and on the train I got to know Chloe Eberly from America. She is exactly like my twin but from America I swear we could have been seperated at birth, Im not kidding. We have so many things in common that It actually started to freak me out a little bit :D She arrived at her new town before me so i got to see her meet her new family for the first time which made me even more nervous to meet my family!I wondered what they would think of me (oh and just so you know all of us were really sweaty from the train ride because for some meraculous reason the air conditiong on our train died and also i was wearing my bright yellow AFS t-shirt with a nicely matching floral dress :/ It was the only thing i had that was clean!!!!!) so you can imagine why i was a bit nervous to meet them! haha Once I arrived at Rimini I saw my family and the other host families for the first time! for a moment they didnt see us which gave all of us a chance to take a deep breath and get ready to meet the people we had only ever emailed and read about for the first time. It was one of the most scariest but wonderful moments of my life. They had a giant sign with my picture and "Benvenuta Ariana" on the front! everything happened so fast one minute I was leaving New zealand and the next minute i was meeting my host family! Its the most weirdest feeling to meet a family that you have already imagined from pictures and emails in real life.... they are even better than i thought they would be :D and the minute i met them at the train station all my worries of them liking me and me fitting in went away but then another worry came up...i dont understand ANYTHING!!!! :D my family was hugging and talking to me and im sure they were being super nice but i wouldnt have even understood if they were saying i was nice or the weirdest looking thing they had ever seen!

chloe and me on the train in our sexy yellow AFS t-shirts on our way to our host families :D

The first time I met my host family :D

The first few weeks were defiantly interesting......my mouth was constanly open trying to comprehend that i was actually in Italy! I had to pinch my self every morning to make sure I wasnt dreaming! when AFS New Zealand told me I wouldnt be able to understand much i was like oh yeah thats ok im sure ill catch on eventually...but literally you understand NOTHING! im not joking you think youll be able to understand the general gist of whats happeneing but i couldnt even understand if my host mum had just asked me to go to town with her or feed the dog!! and there are many a times when i'll have a conversation and not fully understand but think that i got the general base of what it was about only to later on find out that no i wasnt going to stay home and do homework i was going to go out with my mum! i was defiantly caught off guard a couple of times chilly in my trackies and a hoodie when my host mum comes in and says ok were going now...wait why arent you ready?!?! and im like ahhhhh what? were going somehwhere? I have defiantly learnt to laugh at myself alot. i mean even now i still get things wrong but ive learnt to stop and laugh at myself for a few minutes like a madman when ive realised whats happened then move on to the next thing!
"I havent failed 1000 times. I have sucessfully discovered 1000 ways to not make a light bulb" Thomas Edison

ONE MONTH :D

I can't believe it the time has gone by so fast! I have sooo much to do and not enough time to do it!! One of my best friends Ashley left yesturday at 4.20pm for Brazil for one year. I already miss her
:(  she will have an amazing time though. I have recieved my passport and sent it away to have ny  Visa processed. I have been working super hard with all my art. I have one board done :) only 5 more to go..... I've been on holiday for two weeks and start back at school this monday. I'm going to be swamped with so much to do. I have been organizing our school ball as well. I really enjoy it but it can be stressful at times. It will be next weekend on Saturday :) can't wait.! I have also found out that I will be attending an art school!!!!!! YAY! I looked it up on the web and its PINK :D hahahaha defianlty different from Piopio College. I've been working to get some extra spening money and did a few car dwashes with Hannah. I made about $300 from the car washing which went straight away to pay for my Visa :/. I can't believe how fast the time is going.... It's funny because there a so many emotions and some times i'm super excited and can't wait to leave and start my year in italy...then other times I'm like WHAT THE HELL AM I DOING!! It's a whole year why didn't I choose 6 months. I think its going to be hard without Ashley here to share all this confusion with :( but Hopefully I hear from her soon.

Rebecca

4 Months & 2 Weeks Until I leave :)

Hi Everyone !
Well I am off to Italy in 4 months. I have been given a full scholarship from some very lovely people who are apart of AFS and thanks to them I am going to spend a year in Italy going to school. I have been accepted by Italy AFS and I have a new Italian family waiting for my arrival on September the 8th. They sound wonderful, I have a brother who is the same age as me and a younger sister who is 15. I have a mother and father so it will be different to have my mother and father in the same house again :) but all in all I am on my way! I fly out on September the 8th from Auckland. From Auckland I travel to Singapore then from Singapore I travel to Munich then from Munich i finally arrive in Rome on the 9th of September at 11.05 am.I'm going to use this blog to keep you updated on how I'm going with my preparations before I leave and to also let everyone know how my year in Italy is going once I get there :)