Well I've been busy...

Sorry for being too busy to remember to post stuff :P I'm kinda a sucky blogger lol!

Anyways I'll make this one short, I'm going to talk about what I've been up to this past month later.

Today, we drove to Torino (Turin in English) and we're staying her until tomorrow night. There's a food festival in town!!! Its called Slow Food (you should look it up, its cool) and its apparently bringing lots of people to Torino for this week... I guess I'll see tomorrow!

So, I'll try to post more frequently, but anyways... Buona notte! Ciao!

End of week 2 of school!

Sorry for not posting in a while! :P I've been really really busy! So, school here is interesting. We have 5, 1 hour classes every day, all in the same room (with a couple of exceptions) and we have school on Saturday as well, which took some getting used to... But honestly we get out at 1:10, so it's not like we don't have time to do stuff on Saturdays.

Anyways, besides school I've also been doing Italian lessons Monday, Wednesday and Friday, which has been helping a lot! Also I recently signed up to take piano lessons at a local school of music, which made me realize... I should have kept taking piano lessons in NY XD I am so bad at the piano right now... But I'll get better.

My English teacher is still really nice. She uses me as a sort of cultural reference (seeing as I know a lot about the cultures of certain English speaking nations). The other day, she asked someone a question, and he replied with "Yea." but it didn't sound wrong to me because I'm used to people speaking in slang, and the teacher scolded him for saying that :P

Oh there is an International festival in town this weekend, I think I might try the apple pie at Dolci Americani (American desserts) just to see if its authentic! lol!

This morning I made breakfast, similar to what my dad makes sometimes at home: Scrambled eggs (with tomatoes and garlic), Breakfast potatoes, and Bacon :3 Heres some pics!

  (left to right: mamma, papà, Gabriele (mio fratello), Matilda (his girlfriend), e Anna (mia sorella))

                                         (left to right: Gabriele, Matilda, papà, Anna, e Me)


Oh by the way, the accent on papà is very important. papà=dad, la papa= the pope!


Lets see if I have any other photos to share...



Here's some pictures of Ancona that I took two weeks ago before I left there:

Hooray for hangliding...



So heres this place called "Museo di Casa Romei", and we got in on a special night because its usually closed at night, and also the price was reduced to €1, which was nice. I don't remember all the facts, but this place is old. Like, America hadn't been discovered yet when it was built, (in 1442). Some of the newer stuff in the museum are from the early 16th century, but most are from the early or mid 15th century.

 Wanna take a bath? They found an old bath under the floor:

 It was clear that some of the paintings had worn away over time :( Which was sad because there was a lot of beautiful, but incomplete art...

 Oh here's something interesting! I found out I've been secretly taking photo's and video's from inside my pocket while I'm on my bike! lol...

Anyways, thats all for now! I'll try to keep in touch more often! Ciao!

      -Liam

End of First day!!! (of school)

Ok, so today was very interesting!

I biked in to school (con mio fratello, Gabriele [with my brother, Gabriele]) and when we got to the building we looked for an English teacher that is in charge of the foreign exchange students both entering and leaving the school. We didn't find her. So we went to my class. When I got there I met a bunch of people in my class! I forget all their names :'( I have them all on facebook, so I'll use their names when I know them better. My filosofia[philosophy] teacher was really nice, I actually understood a very very little bit of what she was saying. That class lasted from 8:10 (ish) until 10:10, but it passed by quickly.


Next was English class! This class was ridiculously easy xD I do have to say, they were much better at speaking English than our French class was at speaking French >.> The teacher loved having me in the class. I think she wanted to bring me to every single one of her classes just so that she could have a native English speaker in the room! lol! She spoke English pretty fluently. She had a slight northern England accent.


Next was the "Religion" class, which I chose not to take, so I sat with a bunch of other people who were really nice(and also weren't taking Religione)! They told me "You signed up for the Italian cooking class right now, right?" lol! Maybe they'll teach me to cook sometime! :3

Finally, "Storia" or History. (I was really hoping it was storytelling, or something like that!) I understood maybe 2 words out of every sentence he said. It took me a really long time to even figure out that he was talking about France lol... The teacher, he was actually a teacher who knew Gabriele, so when the day was over, Gabriele talked with the teacher and explained everything :) Hopefully now the teacher won't flunk me for not knowing what a question is  asking xD

Later I went to a tutor to do Italian lessons from 5:30 to 7. She was really nice! I was in a group with the other two students in Ferrara. I find it very hard still to understand Italian sadly... Ah well, I will learn. I meet up with the tutor Lunedì, Mercoledì, e Venerdì (Monday, Wednesday, and Friday) from 5:30-7 for a couple months.


Anyways, I'll talk more later! I might not have anything else to say over the next couple of days. I'll just be going to school and stuff. If I do anything interesting I'll post it I guess :)

p.s. I do know more Italian words than I have been using, I just sprinkle in a couple of basic words just to remind people that I'm learning Italian :D


Ciao!
~Liam

End of the Summer!

Tonight is my last night of the summer before school starts :/ Tomorrow is the first day of school for me at Liceo Ariosto, and here's my schedule!

At the top of the schedule is the day (Monday-Lunedi, Tuesday-Martedi, etc.) And yes, School on Saturday. My day "starts" at 8:10, then I have 5 one hour classes. School ends at 1:10. Oh, btw, below the day is the room the classes are in. (Monday I'm in room Dosso 4, Tuesday, room Savonuzzi, Wed-Sat in room Aula 3)

In Italy, you don't move from class to class, the teachers come to your class. That means that all the people I see tomorrow will be in the same class as me for 5 hours a day, 6 days a week. I think that'll be a great way to get to know new people :3 In the schedule, it doesn't list what classes you are taking, but what teacher. On the side you can see what class that teacher teaches. I'll be taking Italian, Latin, History, Philosophy, English, Math, Physics, Natural Science (Bio/Chem/Earth Science mix), Art, Gym (Sc. Mororie), and I think I opted out of the "Religion" class (There was an option to do that in the schools paperwork) So that'll be like a free period tomorrow. Maybe. Who knows. I don't! XD Although I found out it wasn't so much of a "Religion" class, as more like a group discussion class about like, happiness, faith, peace, etc. Maybe I'm wrong about that... Idk. I guess I'll find out tomorrow!

I think its going to be very interesting... I've been told that Italian school is boring, but Italian students are not boring. Maybe I'll meet new people and we'll go somewhere after school or something. Who knows!

More later!!! Buona Notte!

       ~Liam

Ancona

Right now I'm in Ancona Italy! Its nice, its like 2-3 hours south of Ferrara. Ancona is very mountainous and there is a major port with ferry's going to Greece and Croatia! Today it was very rainy, so I didn't get any good pictures of the landscape. I got a picture of an odd fountain that had a sign next to it and seemed to be old. I couldn't post it from my phone though... I'll post pics later. Hopefully it'll be clear tomorrow. I'm staying in the house with my Nonna, who is an amazing chef, and my aunt and uncle and their children. One of their children is a foreign student too! I saw him at the orientation. That makes him my host family's cousin's host brother? HOSTCEPTION.

I'll just stick with cousin XD I'm meeting so many new people, its hard to keep track of everyone's name... Its not that big of a deal here, it seems. Anyways I'll write more later!

Ciao!
  •Liam

I visited a castle!

Ciao tutti!!


So like the title says, I SAW A CASTLE! Yesterday. I was tired last night, I didn't have time to post this. I guess I'll wait to post this until everyone is awake... I'm writing this at 9.30, so thats 3:30 AM there. Ok so, I saw a castle, and its in the middle of the city I live in :3 and I got tons of pictures!!! So I'm going to post some here:

 This is a cannon that was sitting in the courtyard of the castle. Note the bicycles in the background, Ferrara is a major major Bicycling city. I'm going to be going to school "in bicci" (By bike) every day so that'll be fun! :D

 Heres an entrance to the castle. I didn't get the picture from the right angle.

 Here's another entrance to the castle. Yes, this castle does have a moat! Its one of the few that still does in the world :3

 Here's the view from the inside in the courtyard.

 This is what the castle looked like when it was first built!

 Here's the kitchen!

 More kitchen :3

 This is taken from one of the three dungeons that I saw in the castle, this one is very large and famous because someone was held in there for 53 years. This was on the wall in there and it says something in the black checkers, and something else in the white checkers. I couldn't read the black spaces, but in the white ones it starts out with "Io sono sfortunato" which is: I am unlucky. In another one of the dungeons we were told that two people got beheaded: a son and the wife of a king, because the son was having relations with his stepmother (The wife of the king) and so they were both beheaded. 

 This is a rooftop terrace, its quite pretty. All the tree's I looked at were lemon trees, but there may have also been orange trees, There was a plaque that mentioned "arance" or oranges.

 This is the walls around the rooftop terrace, they are about 6-7 feet tall, they are obviously built to give the people on the roof privacy from the outside world, while also allowing them to look out at the people below.

 Oh now is probably a good time to mention this: There was an earthquake 2 years ago, and so some of the castle is still undergoing restoration. like the top of this clocktower. And all the photo's of the ceiling paintings have what appears to be tissue paper on them. Well it's not tissue paper, its something that preserves the paintings so that they can be restored. I don't actually know what it is...

This is the inside of a mini chapel that was built inside the fortress. OH I'll get pictures of the main Church up later, its pretty amazing.

 Here's a bunch of paintings that are on the ceiling!!! They're really pretty, I hope they finish the restorations while I'm here :) P.S. Some places they had a mirror to let you see the paintings without looking up. I got tired of looking up so I started taking pictures of the reflections of the paintings xD

 So, here you can see me, Max from Hong Kong is taking a picture on the right (your right, my left in the pic.) and Anibal from Bolivia is on the left in the red hoodie! We are all the students currently in Ferrara :)

 Here's a clay model of what Ferrara looked like in olden times! The even had a Star Fort (Upper left hand corner) The star fort is gone, but many of the walls still remain.

 This is the castle :3

 Here's a map of Ferrara from the same time as the clay model!

Here's some more ceiling paintings:

 These plaques commemorate visits to the castle by Giuseppe Garibaldi, and a Prince or King or something named Vittorio Emanvele III

Buona mattina!

So, I know its like 2 am there, but I haven't posted in a while, and I might not get the chance later today. I'm going to go to the "Police Station" and apply for a permit of stay (Permisso di sioggiorno. ...That is spelled really badly...) which basically I need to be able to live here! Later today there is going to be some kind of meeting or party or get together with a bunch of AFS people. I'll probably meet my liaison there, who is apparently a really funny guy! The liaison is the person I go to if I have a problem that can't be solved by talking with my host family. Liaison's can be any age (well... not younger than 19 usually, and probably no one older than 100.)  My liaison is pretty young (I think he's in his early 20's) he recently did an exchange program with AFS to the US. I forget where though... well, thats what I'm doing today.


Yesterday I didn't do much, I slept in late, woke up, had bread breakfast(colazione). Then I relaxed, and practiced piano. I had lunch(pranzo) with Anna, Gabriele, e their cousin, (Anna is my sister and Gabriele is my brother) I forget the cousin's name, he had only just met Gabriele and Anna on Sunday. My host family has been very nice to me so far, since they all speak English, for now they have been talking to me in English and Italian. Gabriele threw me a question in Italian, which I knew the answer to. The question was: "Hai dormito bene?" (Did you sleep well?) To which I knew the correct response was Sì or Sì, bene, or Io ho dormito bene. Of course that's not what I said XD I said "Mi piace il letto" (I like the bed!) lol!!!

Yesterday I also went to get a phone number. The plans are interesting here! You have to buy your phone, but then the plans are really really cheap! The plan I got was 10€ per month. I get 200 minutes, and 100 texts, and 1Gb of data. Also, if I need more data, I think its 3€ for an extra Gb, and 5€ for two extra Gb, so if I need more we can increase the price. I probably won't need more though, I have WiFi in the house and at school. Also apparently everyone uses WhatsApp. So I probably won't ever go over my limits on usage. Data I don't think I'll go over, but it depends on the phone. My dad shipped a simple cheap phone over here, but we set up an old phone just so that I'd have a phone for the first days of school. The expected delivery date was September 19-30th, and of course then it shipped yesterday and is expected to arrive today now lol! I'm not going to bother putting my cell phone number, you can't call it, and I don't want to get calls from random strangers.

       Ciao!!!
           ~Liam