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!