And it drives me wild

Hey Guys! Or Ciao a Tutti :)

A little disclaimer, this post is still about Italy, but more so about my life since I've been back. It kind of shows how my life has changed since I guess I changed?

So now that it's been almost two years since I left for Italy, and I have had a lot of time to think about the "what-ifs" and the "I shoulda, coulda, woulda's" and quite frankly those are overrated. I finally stopped regretting all the little mistakes I made, and started to realize they actually made me grow. 

Some days I wish it were the end of December 2013, not December 2015. A lot has happened in two short years. Without a doubt going to Italy is what I consider the turning point of my adolescent years, because since then so much has changed. I gained a sense of independence and responsibility that had I stayed in America my junior year I would have never learned. Picture this, a typical teen with no sense of money is suddenly given a large amount of spending cash and told "hey here is this money, and it's all you're getting for the next 6 months, spend it wisely." Suddenly I found myself turning down activities to afford things later on down the road. I started questioning whether I truly needed those shoes or if I would rather use that money to go out to dinner with friends later on in the week. This mindset greatly prepared me for what college would be like. Livin' la dolce (broke) vita. Sure I splurged then and I sure as hell still splurge now, but had I not gone to Italy, I would have gone off to college still sheltered and not have had the slightest sense of the value of money.

It's honestly crazy to think that I left nearly two years ago. In a way, it all still feels like a dream to me. I'll find myself going through random pictures I took overseas and think "what I give to spend just one more day in Italy". Sad, but being true to myself, that is hands down the coolest feat I have to my teen years and I know the nostalgia won't stop until I do something as equally great or even bigger.

Since I've gotten back from Italy, I never really had time to assimilate myself back into my "old" life. The morning after I got back to the States I started summer school to make up for having missed 11th grade english. Not even a full 24 hours after being home I was already sitting in a classroom practically speaking and writing in a language that felt slightly foreign to me at this point. I found it hard getting back into my old routine, sure I hung out with friends a ton, I even got a summer job. But it just didn't feel right. This summer class was only about 5 weeks long, it was five days a week from 8 to 2 of basically just English 11. At the end of the course, I re-registerd back into my old high school, and I finally started feeling normal-ish again. I started talking to the friends I made overseas less, and practically cut-off all of the wonderful Italians that took me under their wings. And having lost my connection with everyone and just talking to the people in my life "pre-Italy" made it feel as if I hadn't actually gone, and that the six months I spent overseas was really just an extremely vivid dream. Quite frankly, I was ok with Italy feeling like a dream, because I finally felt normal again.

Senior year was not the easiest I can assure you. I was doing almost two years of high school mashed into one; and I had Holli Wolter as my english teacher (I look at this more of a blessing than a curse as some people would lol). Having Wolter as an english teacher made me work harder than ever, I pulled countless all-nighters working on essays and never once did I get above an 85 on a paper, which sounds bad, but a B in her class was literally an A in pretty much any other English teachers standards. Moving on, having Wolter senior year made me work harder than I had any other year which actually helped bring my up GPA, since I never actually dealt with "senioritis". Not that I could afford not doing my work, I only had two and a half years worth of high school for colleges to look at.

When March finally rolled around, I had heard back from two of the thee schools I applied to and was almost certain I knew where I was going, and what I'd be doing. Not actually, but at the moment I did. Towards the end of March, I stayed home because I hadn't been feeling well (I never really missed much school in High School, and if I did I was always really sick), which just happened to be the day that George Washington was releasing their regular decisions. It wasn't long after I got my acceptance letter that I put my down payment down? I don't really remember what it's called but all I know is that it was 800 dollars and that it meant I committed. Any way, knowing where I was officially going to school was probably the highlight of all senior year, as it should because all your hard-ish work finally paid off and now we are one step closer to adulthood yay!!! Not actually because becoming an adult sounds terrifying to me. Backtracking a little, I wondered for days, and weeks how I managed to get into a pretty up there school seeing as I had a decent but not a great looking GPA and not a lot of extracurriculars. Then it hit me. Italy. The only reason why I had a perfect streak of college acceptance letters, was because of Italy. The fact that I managed to somehow snag an acceptance letter to my reach school is mind boggling, but it was because of Italy.

The summer after graduation, Jess and Jamie came to Virginia and we spent a couple of days wondering around DC doing whatever came to mind, and at night we would talk about how weird life has been since getting back from Italy and it felt nice having people that went through the same thing that I did, and for once I didn't feel like Italy was a dream because it was very real in that week they spent with me. After they left, I went on a short vacation to Qatar to see some family, and realized that traveling alone isn't so bad. It's actually more fun than traveling in a group.

Anyway, point of this blog post was kind of lost somewhere along the lines of I can't remember what I actually meant to write and just wrote. Let's be real, regardless of how patchy this post is, I know the only reason why I'm only writing this post because I am extremely jealous of my 16-year-old self. And that's a little pathetic lol... So,

Italy, you're driving me wild, wild, wild.


And on that note, goodbye Italy blog! You were fun, buuuuut its time to say bye!

UN ANNO FA SONO PARTITA PER ITALIA

CIAO A TUTTI!!!!

I am really really sorry that not a thing has been posted since my halfway mark, but it's justifiable, I was living life. It wasn't always the best, but it was life. I have tried countless times since then to sit down and write whatever was going on, and not a single one of them got posted. I had amazing stories to share, like how I attended an Italian wedding, I got to go to the beach with all the exchange students living in Puglia and Basilicata (two regions in southern Italy), and I made it till the very end. The biggest goal I achieved was actually making it back to Rome and boarding a flight back to JFK on July 6th, and not a second earlier.

LETS GET DOWN TO BUSINESS (to defeat the huuuuns)

Alright, so since I have last posted, I made a major move to the south, in total, it was a nine hour commute and once it was over the only sentence I could form was much like my first day in Italy "Io sono stanca" (I'm tired). I caught a flight from Genova to Rome and spent a few hours at a cafe with a wonderful volunteer who actually spoke english, and caught a four hour bus ride to where I would be getting picked up. On that bus, the first thing that happened was some kid took my seat and caught an attitude with me, for those of you who do not know me, I am quite the sassy person, and since I was tired, I decided to let him keep MY seat. His mother was sitting right across from me and decided to practice her english on me, even though I kept saying "Io sono qui per imparare la lingua" (I'm here to learn the language) but that didn't work. And in that moment I realized I had made a mistake and that I should have stayed in Genova. I much preferred living in a big town where people did not care who you were or whether you spoke english or not. Not once did some stranger out in the open try to practice their English on me. In Genova, it would only occur in school or when I was out with my friends. I was living like an Italian in Genova, it dawned on me that my exchange would make a complete 180 and nothing would be the same in the south.

Enough of the soppiness, I'm going to rush through the next two months. My new school was one level, from the front entrance of the school, you could see right out the back. That was hard to get used to since West Springfield is just a little (I mean a lot) bit bigger. But hey, welcome to Italy! There was a circus in the parking lot of the school.... A CIRCUS! I obviously took a selfie with the giraffe they brought. I went to my first 18th birthday party, but I had a curfew so that sucked having to be home at an early, but whatever. End of stay camp happened and my god I miss everyone so much. Then came that dreaded day where I'd been looking forward to, but hoping it wouldn't actually happen... the US and Germany game. Lol, no, even though that game was intense and I had to watch the game via Skype, but the day I had to go to Rome. Come to think of it, the day before Rome was the last day I spoke only Italian, once I got to Rome we basically all transitioned back to English. After no sleep and tears streaking down our depressed faces, at 4 in the morning, the kids from the US and Costa Rica said our final goodbyes and left for the airport. Now we dealt with overweight bags and final checks to make sure everyone was ready. I managed to get through airport security with a pint size bottle of piercing disinfectant... I guess the Italians really didn't care.

We got on our plane to Switzerland and from there we had a layover and I discovered I managed to live in Italy without my resident permit... oops? We met up with the french semester kids and boarded our next flight. Shoutout to Swiss Airways for good food. If anyone every flies to Switzerland, or anywhere near there, FLY SWISS! The plane ride was long enough for me to start watching the Wolf of Wall Street and fall asleep, wake up and re-watch the movie. It's a three hour film. 'Nuff said. After we landed and settled everything in customs we all went our separate ways. I didn't actually cry until I had to say bye to Makena and Ali, not that the other goodbyes didn't mean anything, but they were the last two people and it hit hard that Italy was actually over. I was back with my mom. I was actually with my mom. I wasn't in Italy anymore.

It's almost time for the semester kids to leave, and I wish them nothing but the best, it's a hard time, but it was an amazing experience. Remember, YOLO!

Peace, love, and I miss Italy,
Shushu!

Halfway there!

Ciao a tutti!

With learning a new language comes with started to forget your other languages, for me my grammer (what little of it I had) has gone out the window. Che palle per voi. Mi dispiace (non proprio)
also, im typing this on italian keyboard (yes there is a differance) I cant spell nor can I find the apostrophe key.

I can proudly say I made it halfway through my experience! Comunque, it was not easy. So I guess now that it is all behind me I should go a little in depth on whats been going on.

Since I have gotten to italy, I have changed families.... twice... but I can explain! The first family was not exactly ready to host someone in my opinion, somethings were said, and that lead me to having to change families. I wont repeat what they said because it happend almost a month and a half ago (literally a few days before I went to  Carnevale) allora, when I got back from Carnevale, I was told that they had found a new family for me and that I would be staying in Genova! I though all was amazing until I saw that I was moving to a tiny city an hour outside of Genova called "Chiavari". not bad, I mean I would still be in the same chapter and I would still be with the other exchange students that I had gotten to know very well. Now, here comes the tricky part. Before I changed families, I was living near the center of Genova, so by default I would be going to school near the city center right? Well, when I changed families all they changed was the family, I would still be going to school in the city of Genova, I would still attend my Italian lessons in the city of Genova. Mind you, I now lived an hour by train outside of Genova. When they placed me in Chiavari, the head volunteer said "dont worry about anything, carry on with what you have been doing" to this day, I still dont understand how they thought that arrangement would have worked. When the time came to move into the new house, I was excited, but a little reserved since I had just moved out of a different house, it makes right? well apparently it wasnt. There were just so many problems in that house, like I was an only child to two people in their 50s. We never actually spent time together since either a) I was in Genova for school or with my friends, b) I was super tired and would fall asleep before either one of them got home c) they were either at work or carrying on with their lives. I learned that Italian trains / public transportation is not exactly reliable. Multiple times I got to school a bit late because of my train getting to Bringole late, there was a strike on trains one day, so there were limited trains working that day, sometimes trains dont even show up. All in all, in that month, I spent more time at a train station then I did with my host family. Also, when I was with them, I would have to eat both breakfast and lunch outside of the house since I would leave early and  would get back home until about 3.30 each day. So much more was happening in the house, but again it would exactly be nice to write about what was all going on.

Allora, questo Giovedì è la mia 17 compleanno!!! And by then I should be in my new host families house! this change, I will be changing everything.... IM MOVING TO THE SOUTH OF ITALY!!!!!!!!!!! I am so excited! I love Genova and all, but lets be real, it hasnt been the best. But, I am going to put it all behind me and focus on the fact I am moving to the very southern part of Italy! The city I will be living in is right outside of Potenza! Im super super excited, I get to see more or Italy in the process.

So far since Ive been in Italy,

• I have eaten three times my weight in bread
• gained 9 pounds
• got covered in oranges
• met a ton of amazing people
• tried some weird food
• took a basic tourist picture in front of La Torre di Pisa
• ho mangiato buonissimo cibo

I spent a majority of my time in Chiavari on these rocks

came across this church while exploring centro storico with Roberto

overlooking Genova

We are Shushu and Caroline, and when one of us is having a bad day we eat our feelings (usually its Mcdonalds)

PISAAAAAA

Camogli with a Canadian

We only had two classes that day, and neither of the professors showed up...

Sestri Levante! (Baia del Silenzio)

Reunited with J ratchet and the rest of the Ivrea chapter

The lovely family that let me stay in their house while I was in between families <3

Halfway there!

Ci sentiamo a dopo, vi voglio tanto bene,
Shushu!

Say Something I'm Giving Up on You

Sorry for all the neglect, but I've been super busy lately!

(A little disclaimer, I just got acrylic nails and typing is super difficult on a phone)

At this point I am almost two months into the exchange and I have done and seen so much already! One of the main reasons why I haven't been blogging much is because I have been trying to keep this blog happy and I don't want to ruin it with my negative thoughts. Moving on, I will however talk about my amazing experience at Carnevale!!! I'm not exactly sure what the purpose of the festival was, but I'm still so happy I got to experience it!

So for this carnival, it was in a town called Ivrea which is about an hour outside of Turin. My chapter (Genoa) and the kids in Verona got lucky and were able to go and Stay in Ivrea for about 5 days.

Day one, we (Caroline, Roberto, Camilla, and I) caught a train at about 1 o'clock from Genova Bringole to Torino. The train ride was about two hours, but I honestly didn't mind because the scenery was beyond amazing. Once we got to Torino we had to wait about an hour for our train to Ivrea, when we finally got to Ivrea we met the families that would be hosting us while we were in Ivrea. That night we got to stay in and just get to know our host families. My family consisted of Lina, Enrico, and their 3 cats. That night we went to a pizzeria and I got to meet Enrico's dad.

Four cheese pizza from heaven.

Day two (Saturday): we had the full day with our host families, Lina took me and two of her friend on a walk around Torino because we had nothing else to do. 

I absolutely love Torino!

Anyways, that day at about 5, I met at the center with a few other people and we decided to go on a little walk around the city before the parade started. I met another American who is from the far upstate New York, and this guy from Germany.

At about 7 ish, we went back to the center to regroup and to do some last minute preparations for the parade. We were a part of Giallo e Blu (yellow and blue) in that time I finally was reunited with Jessica, who I haven't seen in a full month, and I met people who I had only really heard stories about.

And we were off! We walked for almost 5 hours, we witnessed a lot of drunk people, and we "yolo'd" in one way or another. At about midnight, we finally reached out 'headquarter' and we waited for our families to come and get us.

Day three, the first day of the battles! The Battle of the Oranges was fun, but also extremely painful. There was no way you could not avoid getting covered in Oranges. I managed to some how get pegged in the head twice, multiple times in leg, once in the stomach, and once in the boob. People on my team got super into the who ordeal and started throwing people into the gigantic pit of orange mush.

After that mess, me Jess and Caroline left early because we were covered from head to toe in orange. So we made the 10 ish minute walk back to my temp host family's house and tried to figure out the smartest way to leave the smallest mess. (Not very successful). That night, we planned to go to a Discoteca with the other exchange students, but it never ended up happening.

Day four. Mother Nature was not on our side that day, it was at least 10°F colder than the day before, and it was also raining. It was just miserable on my part. The second I couldn't feel my toes or fingers was when I truley got into the event. That day I didn't go home covered in oranges like I had the day before. Since it was all the Genoa and Verona exchange students last night in Ivrea, we planned to go out to a bar that night all together (a bar here is like a caffe). Last minute plans led us to a Discoteca... Basically we walked for like twenty minutes in the rain to a Disco that was full of older people (people in their thirties and such). I didn't mind so much because I had my favorite Drake quoting New Zealander Dali with me. We spent the walk singing Beyoncé and Odd Future songs obnoxiously loud.

Our faces once we realized the disco was booked for older people....

The final day. I didn't think that leaving Ivrea would be so hard. At about 7:50 ish, my host mom in Ivrea, Lina, came into my room to say goodbye since she had to leave for work. I spent the rest of the morning packing up my duffle bag. Had breakfast with the host dad, and made my way to the station. Said bye to the rest of the families and were on our way back to Genova. I'm not going to lie, I majorly contemplated not getting on the train. But I had to. 

I want to say thank you to AFS and Lina and Enrico for letting me have to best four days of my life!

Peace, love, and bruises from oranges,

Shushu ;)

First week jitters!

Ciao a tutti!!

A little warning in advance, I'm sorry for any grammatical errors, I'm typing this whole post on my phone.

IM FINNALY IN ITALY!!! It's still can't believe that just two weeks ago I was still sitting in a classroom back in the states and now I'm living half way across the world with a family I just met! I'm living in freaking ITALY!

It's been quite the hectic week, starting off with my flight to my gateway orientation getting cancelled. Funny how the weather on the east coast was all pretty and the one day that I hoped it would be normal, it decided to snow five inches! God bless JetBlue for rebooking my flight. Too bad the plane broke down on the runway the next day and we ended up sitting on the runway for two hours. All that aside, when I got the my gateway orientation, they drilled us all on the rules and expectations of going abroad. Basically, don't get pregnant, stay in school, follow all the laws, and don't get overly drunk.

The following day, we all began to board our flights. The people going to Russia left first, then Austria. Italy and France were leaving last, basically we sat in the hotel and just talked for about 3 before we left for the airport. At this point there was a clear division between the people going to France and the people going to Italy. I believe that the people going to Italy were more easy-going compared to the people going to France.

Finally we got to JFK, we went to get out boarding passes and deal with our gigantic bags of luggage. 

My attempt at taking a selfie with the guy who was cutting out tickets. 

Next we had to go through security, having such a big group, we went through pre-check, or something like that. We went to our gate and got food. They started to call the seat rows and on our way to the gate, me and a few other people I met, ran down the tunnel looking thing yelling VA A ROMA!! 

The flight path!

Ali! She's spending her semester in Sicily!

When we finally landed in Zurich things got a little bit more complicated. On our boarding passes just said A/B so we followed the signs to gates A and B. We came across theses booths that said "passports" or something like that. We all had to take our passports out and get them stamped, the stamps meant that we entered Europe with a valid reason. I think. Anyways, once we passed that we had to figure out what gate number out flight to Rome was leaving from.  This sign said something about it shows the gates an hour before departure, so we numbered our selves and said that we'd meet up again in twenty minutes so we could head over to the gate as a group. Later we'd find out that the number system would help us out A LOT. We all went off to freshen up and get food. Fast forward a bit to when we board the plane. The pilot made some announcement in German, then in English, it was honestly the weirdest thing ever. He said "one of the crew members on the last flight dropped a spoon in the cockpit, it is a rule that if a spoon is dropped, we must find the spoon before we can take off. We already called maintenance and it is expected to take 40-45 minutes." Um what? There are 13 unattended America teens on a plane together with no volunteer in a foreign country. 40 minutes go by and the pilot come back over and says "no luck with the spoon, we are going to give it another 20 minutes, if it isn't found, we will have to move you all to a different plane." In that time there was a cute flight attendant passing out coloring books to the little kids on the plane, me being me, I asked him for one. Once he finished giving the little kids the books, he passed out some to the other Americans and gave me a puzzle.

The spoon was never found, the last thing we heard about the plane was that it was going to be taken apart so they could find the spoon.

They told us to get off of the plane and wait at the gate until further notice. Some Americans left to get something to drink, while they were away, we called the AFS emergency hotline to tell them that we are practically stranded in Italy with only one phone that has international calling. One of the ladies at the desk announced that there was a plane ready for us, but it was at a different gate, on the other side of the airport. Just our luck. We were still missing about four people and we had all of there bags with us. We almost resorted in taking all of there bags with us to the next gate and letting them find out the gate that we were moved to. The lady who told us that the plane was moved to a different gate failed to mention that the plane wouldn't start the boarding process for about another half an hour. We thought that since she said you all need to hurry, we had about 10 minutes to get to the other side of the airport. I bet it must've been a site to see 13 teens making a mad dash across an airport with about two full bags of carry on per person.

When we finally made it to Rome, we thought that we'd had to go through customs, but we followed the "uscita" signs and came face-to-face with some volunteers. We all began to tell them that a "cucchiaio" fell in the cockpit of the plane and that's why we landed almost three hours late. They laughed so hard at the fact that something that peculiar was the reason why we were late. We gathered on a bus and headed over to a hotel about an hour outside of Rome. I swore the bus driver thought he was driving a two-door sports car, not a bus with about 20 passengers.

Once we got to the hotel, we got to meet the other exchange kids in Italy for the semester. It was super cool that there were kids there from all over the world. Before dinner, we had sometime to get to know the other kids that we'd be spending the next 48 hours with. At first, all the countries stayed together, then after a bit, we all started to mix. Like twenty minutes before dinner, I found myself in a deep conversation with a boy from Argentina!

After dinner we were sent to the room so they could welcome us to Italy, by now I was extremely tired. They kept the greeting short and simple. The moment they told us we could go to our rooms to go to sleep was probably my favorite part of the day.

The next morning we had another set of orientations and got told practically the same things from New York again. After that, they gave us lunch and loaded all 86 of us on to two buses heading to Rome! Besides the fact that is was extremely cold, it was a day that I will remember for the rest of my life!

On the bus!

It's pretty obvious what this is.

We felt the need to take a selfie.

(From left to right) Glenn, me, Ali, and Hadley!

Oh Zali!

The Trevi fountain <3

Almost all the Americans!

The hotel that we were staying at was a covenant, I kid you not. Besides the fact that there was a church on the premises, it was still molto bello during the days! 

The next morning, we set off to see our host families. I was in group A which had to leave the hotel at 8 a.m. sharp. You could all probably imagine how happy I was hearing that I'd have to be awake and ready by 7:30 in the morning. Mind you, it hadn't had a full nights sleep in almost four days at this point. I'd been averaging about 3 to 4 hours of sleep each night. So, when the morning arrives, we get up, get our stuff together and get ready, say goodbye to all the people that were leaving at later times, and picked up our big suitcases. Me and two other Americans leaving at eight ended up being a little late, we had to sprint down two flights of stairs with all of our carry-ons and to where our big bags were. When we were claiming our bags, this evil volunteer told us that we had to wear our yellow shirts. The same yellow shirts that we had been wearing the day before. Um how about no. She blocked the door when we refused to wear it, so I quickly put it on and sprinted to the bus which was seconds away from leaving. When the two girls joined me, they said the while they were changing, she said something like "if your mother tells you to do something, you do it", well clearly we would! Just not when some ice queen is blocking the doorway when we are clearly late. 

When we got the the train station, we had yet another round of people to say bue to since we were all going in different directions. The train going to Turin was the last one to leave. So we sat in a little waiting room waiting for our train that wasn't supposed to leave for almost another hour. In that time, the four Americans took time to reminisce all that has happened over the past four days. We all found it strange that even though we had met each other just a few days before, it felt like we had been friends for ages! When we boarded the train, we had to find out carts and load our things into them. Once the train started to move, we all decided that we'd sleep for the first bit since we'd be on the train for quite some time. My ride to Genova was about five our, while everyone else would be getting off in Turin which was another two hours from Genoa. I have a lot of respect for Jamie and Jessica, so I won't post the picture of them sleeping. Anyways, we got to a certain point where the four of us were all awake, so I got up and saw that the other people we were with were all asleep. So, then Jessica got up to see how everyone else was sleeping in the other cart so we could mimic them and go back to sleep. She just so happened to peek the moment that Daniele, our "supervisor" woke up. He came over to where we were sitting to see what was up. He ended up staying with us to help us figure out phrases that we should say to out host families once we met them. 

This was our train group, minus the other girls that were asleep in the other cart.

I managed to do some pretty ambitious things on the train, aka going to the bathroom. Sounds pretty easy, except for the fact that I hate public bathrooms, and the room was rocking majorly when I went.

At about 2:50 ish, Daniele told me that my stop was coming up and that I should get my things together. I was seriously about to have a major panic attack right then and there. While Daniele and Pedro were taking my stuff down, I was freaking out and trying to remember the phrases I was supposed to say to them. The other people I was with were trying to reassure me that everything would be alright. I contemplated asking Daniele to call my host family and ask them if they could possibly meet me in Turin so I could have another two hours to prepare. As I felt the train start to slow down, I said my goodbye to the people that have most definitely become some of my closest friend in such a short period of time, and wished them good luck with their meetings. Once the train stopped, I swear I was about to puke from being so nervous. All the other people had support with them for when they got to see their host family, while I was a Lone Ranger. Once I got off the train, I started to look around for my host mom, but instead I saw the head coordinator walking in my direction. I looked back at Daniele who was dragging my big suitcase for me and said "sorry, I want to run" and I took off sprinting towards Fancesca. Behind her, I saw my host sister and Sonia, the girl from Costa Rica who was currently doing an exchange in the house that I am staying at too. I said hellos to everyone and peeked back at the train to where I saw all the other kids peeking out the door so they could watch me meet my new family. We said bye to Daniele and he headed back on to the train before it left. From there, I met the rest of the welcoming group. I managed to forget all the Italian that I had learned and only got out was "Non parla italiano molto bene" (I don't speak Italian very well) and "Grazie per la tua è ospitalità" (thank you for your hospitality). Thankfully a cute boy was there that had spent a year in America was there and helped translate some of the things that I was mumbling. 

I'll write another post on my host family itself, but I must say that I honestly was no ready for all that was about to be thrown my way. For about the first day and a half, I literally spent it all crying. That whole explanation deserves a post of its own.

Funny little extra note, when we were walking around Rome, some of us were hoping that we would be mistaken for an international pop star. Just like in the Lizzie McGuire movie. Didn't happen, although for Jess, one of the other exchange student went up to her in front of the coliseum and yelled "OH MY GOODNESS IT'S HANNAH MONTANA!" I'll leave that up to your imagination on how people reacted to that. (Hint, no one reacted)

I'm extremely sorry if this is all over the place, so much happened and I didn't know how to put it all together into one post.

Until next time,

Shushu!