La Punta Metà - The halfway point

Ho ricevuto una lettera dal'ufficio di intercultura oggi.

I got a letter from the intercultura office today.

I have made it halfway!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! It really only seems like it's been a couple weeks! It's amazing how fast just living is! I have filled out an evaluation of my trip so far to send in to intercultura, and I think they will be happy to see what I wrote!

It is pretty incredible that all of this has happened to me, and that I'm really in ITALY. I still forget how awesome that is sometimes... and when I remember I flip out.

I decided to post this picture as a marker of my progression... longer hair... new rose hairclip... bunches have changed about me! I took this picture just now, so it is perfectly current too!

Ho ingrassato qui, veramente - I've gained weight here for sure.But you can't really tell in this photo... oh well, fa la stessa! I think I have figured out a little more about this weight gaining business, In the beginning we gain weight because of the stress, and the great food you never want to stop gulping, but also because your body has to adjust to the extreme diet shift.

The good news is that my italian tutor told me that italians have the healthiest diets in general because of how they eat small breakfasts and more for lunch and dinner. I don't remember why, but it is scientifically proven that eating less in the morning like italians do is better! Or something like that... =P

A general breakfast for me is a cup of hot milk with sugar (but this week with honey instead because I have a little bit of a cold, and everyone here insists that honey in your milk will fix ya right up!), a couple cookies, and maybe a little crunchy cookie/cracker-thing with jam or nutella.

So, the big news is that yesterday I went to Milano! It was with my class (3^a linguistico) and one other and we went with some of the art teachers at our school. Our trip's aim was to visit the Pinacoteca di Brera (A famous art gallery/museum) and the cathedral! It was all gorgeous! The cathedral is breath taking! It's huge andit's got all these spires! And guess what!!!! At the pinacoteca I saw paintingsby Raffaello Sanzio and Donato Bramante!!!!! ISN'T THAT SO AWESOME!!!!!!!!!!??????????????????????

Go art! And even better! My art teacher gave me a book she bought at the gallery gift shop (in english!) as a souvenir for me to remember her and the gallery! Isn't that ridiculously wonderful!

I bought myself a little journal because I only have a couple pages left In the one I brought with me. I'm proud of myself because this is the first time in my life that I have consistantly kept a journal! And I actually write in it everyday!

Back in the New York airport when I was writing in it, the AFS volunteer that was travelling with us, Karen told me that when she was my age she went to Hungary with AFS and she kept a journal too. She said that a couple weeks before she had found it and reread it after over 20 years and that she loved it! She said it was like reading a novel about a brave young girl who was a complete stranger! Hearing that kind of inspired me to stick to writing everyday and to record who I am during this amazing time of my life!

O.K. So this next picture is a little random... it is a picture of a building and a field that I pass by everyday when I go to school or the library, or anywhere really, but I think that maybe I have little photography skill afterall! I know I have taken some pretty horrendous photo's with heads chopped offand blurryness and all, but I hope this makes up for some of it! I think it's pretty...

Thats all for now folks! Ciao ciao!

Obama in Italy...

So, perhaps you are all wondering how sad I must be that once my true love (or maybe, just my prefered candidate) was elected president of the United States, off I went to the other side of the planet..



Actually, I find Barack Obama in my everyday live in Italy aswell! He is in every newspaper, he is always on the evening news, and he also found me in France last week! It was on the final day of my trip in France and we had some time for shopping before the long 7 hour busride back to Fossano. I bought myself a lovely black 3/4 sleeve shirt and some chocolates for my host family, Sofie bought an intensely brilliant blue shirt with sequins, Luisa boughtsoap poppy bubble bath things for a friend... but Lucia



Lucia, the shopaholic fashion queen of the class bought a Yes We Can Obama shirt.



I feel ridiculously patriotic sometimes...











Then Elena Armellini (her nickname is Armelline,isn't it pretty!?) bought this magnificent T-shirt:






























Now, this is something else that I bought in France... Crepe aux chocolat. Only the most heavenly thing in this universe...



BEFORE:



























































AFTER:

I ate that magnificent crepe with 5 other girls in my class we were all speechless afterwords... once we were able to talk again we went back to the tiny little kitchen and profoundly thanked the cook, Michel.

It was an afternoon well spent.

This Week... Questa Settimana

Io ho solo tre giorni di scuola questa settimana, e domani è l'ultimo!
I only have three days of school this week, and tomorrow is the last one!

Huzzah!

Dopo scuola domani io vado con i miei amici nella mia classe a Cuneo per pranzo!
After school tomorrow I go with my friends in my class to Cuneo for lunch!

Poi...then...

Dopodomani è il compleanno della mia sorellina Agnese!!!!
The day after tomorrow is the birthday of my little sister Agnese!

Poi...then...

Il giorno dopo dopodomani vodo a Torino per la gita con gli altri ragazzi stranieri con intercultura!
The day after the day after tomorrow (Friday) I go to Turin for the trip with the other foreign students with AFS.

Poi...then... domenica...Sunday...

PASQUA!!!
EASTER!!!

E la miei cari amici è quando mangio il montagne di cioccolato nella cucina.
And that my dear friends is when I eat the mountain of chocolate in the kitchen.

Sei geloso?
Are you jealous?

Penso di si.
I think you are.

Ma la migliore parte è che non vado a scuola ancora fino a mercoledi prossima.
But the best part is that I don't go back to school again untill nest Wednesday.

La vita è buona.
Life is good.

From left to right: Serena(AKA sere), Elena(ALA Ela), Serena(AKA Sere), and Sofie(AKA Zof)

Some of my friends when we went out for breakfast together at a tiny little cafe before school! And the beautiful cappucinni!

The croissants al cioccolato at this cafe are claimed to be the best in town! I definitly believe it!

I am also working on a massive photo update on facebook so check out what I have up so far! I will worn you that I took over 300 pictures in the past 4 days from my trip to France so It may take a while getting you up to date!

Do you all remember me?

Try really hard to picture me in your mind's eye... short light brown hair, green eyes, freckles, a smile, shy, quiet, good natured... Now, try to add the backround of a typical american bar, dimmly lit, loud music, a pool table, beer, the works.

Ladies and Gentlemen: Michelle Olguin went to the James Joyce Pub!

I went with Silvia, my host cousin, and a group of her friends to said pub in Savigliano which is about (frantically trying to convert from km to m!) 8-10 miles from Fossano. We monopolized one end of the tiny little pub both physically with about 15 of us crowded around two tiny little tables, and vocally(which is really easy to do with even just one italian teenager...).

Most of the kids I hung out with didn't know I was american so when we were introduced everyone hasa thousand of questions to ask me! They also all loved trying to speak the little english they knew with me and heartily rejoiced upon success! It was very fun, but I, of course wanted to speak italian, and I made I deal with Simona (a girl I hung out with for a good portion of the evening) that she would speak only english with me, and I would only speak italian with her!

I am so proud of myself because the whole night I spoke italian with pride anf joy! I was actually socializing without fretting over not being able to communicate! It felt kind of like a test as to if I could actually use my italian where speaking was the main event of the whole night, and I passed with the flying colors of joy!

You are also probably wondering about the alchohol aspect of this being my first time in a pub where I could legally order alchohol...
I had coffee (Which, in italy signifies a tiny little gulp of coffe with lots of sugar!). But, for all of you out there who were hoping I was daring and drank a big glass of rum, I will admit that I tried some of a frineds beer, and another's mojito.
And of course, what is a night in Italy without eating something! So we also all shared an order of hot, melty fried buffalo mozzarella.

It was a delightful night overall, but one aspect of it that I haven't mentioned isthat I was a teenager. For most of my time here, I have been very mature, and studious as I spend more time with adults and friends older than me outside of school, but for this I got to relax and just be normal. It's not that I have been holding my breath this whole time, being careful to not let a toes out of line, and always being ridiculously polite, it's just that I hadn't been socomfortable with others my age yet in a setting where I could laugh and be noisy and teenagerish...
You may ask me "Well why haven't you been social?! You have friends at school, right?" and I will reply that it is true, but at school everything is so much more formal with the teachers and with the strange schedule and format of everything, there isn't much time to just chat, unless it is about Petrarca, or come trovare la equazione della retta che passante per punto (1, -3), and as much as I love math and old, dead, vain, italian poets, I prefere the James Joyce Pub.

So there you go! Tata! Ciao ciao!

PASTA

Last night I went to a restaurant in Cuneo called Just Pasta (It's really hip to have stuff be in english over here...).

Everything literally was JUST PASTA.

The menus were little flip books and every page was a huge picture of one type of pastas. The picture was labeled with arrows pointing to everything in that type. The book had different sections, the first was alcohol (pasta made with vodka in the sauce, etc.), classic (spaghetti with fresh tomatoes and basil), with vegetables or Legumes, Specialties, Meat, Fruit, and Dessert.
There were well over 100 different types of pasta to order.
There were pastas with edible little flowers, with strawberries... you name it!

I ended up ordering linguini alla puttinesca which was with olives and capers, in a magically flavor infused tomatoe sauce. I was in HEAVEN.

There were 9 of us total. Me, Elisa (my italian turtor who is a college student at a university in Torino, but lives on a farm in a tiny little town with a library that is only one room, and is run by volunteers), Simona (the sister of Elisa who goes to my school, we have talked on facebook before, but this is the first time we've met), Lorenza (friend of Simona who is actually an identical triplet), Sabrina (best friend of Elisa), and four other friends of Elisa.
They all knew a lot of english, but the whole evening we spoke in italian,only occasionally needing english to understand one another (I like to think that I spoke my italian with pride and grace, but maybe I was just happy I could communicate).

One suprising thing about northern italians is that they have extremely low tolerance for spicy foods. IT wasn't until after Elisa tried my pasta and admitted that her tongue was on fire perchè era troppo piccantè (because it was too spicy) that I even relized that it was spicy at all!
Because I live in exotic Arizona so near to Mexico, northern italians marvel at my love for spice.
Turns out that my linguini alla puttinesca was a roman and therefor southern italian recipe.

Everyone ordered one pasta each, but we shared everything, so I also tried some of Simona's tiny little ravioli with vegetables inside (but really tasted more like creamy salty elegance all wrapped up and drizzled in hot olive oil), and someone elses pasta that is hard to explain. I have never seen the type of pasta, or that type of sauce before in my life. The noodles were tiny little disc/ frisbe shaped things with a rich--but not heavy--white cheese sauce (nothing like alfredo sauce which doesn't exist in Italy). It was thick and delicious, and I loved it all!

Beverage-wise there pitcher/vase-like things of water to pour in these artistic, classy little goblet/cup things, but also me and three other girls split a bottle of white wine (I've found that my taste for white wine has grown being in Itlay where the hills surrounding Fossano are coveres in grapevines).

Then for Dessert--please try to contain your burning curiosity and excitement--we all split one big dish of hot penne pasta covered in nutella and walnuts. And yes it was very much like pure love on a plate.

So there you go.

Another meal happily devoured!

ONE MONTH IN!!!

ONE MONTH!!!

It can't be!!! I thought I just arrived a couple days ago!!! Time is going lightspeed on me!!! Maybe tomorrow I will be on a plane heading back to the U.S. already, and I haven't even gone to a disco yet!!! My life is flashing before my eyes and pretty soon we will all be dead!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I can't stand mile markers.

One month... that means I am one 5th of the way through this life changing experience, and I only have 4 5ths left! (I had to show off my math skills somewhere...) Why didn't I choose the year long program? I now realize that even if you are worried about getting homesick, the year long is the way to go.

Oh well! I'm over it. I am in Italy right now, and I am not going to waste all of my time moping about how little time I have left in Italy.

The big news for this post is that I WENT TO TORINO YESTERDAY!!!

I went with Doriana my host aunt and Silvia, my host cousin who is my age! (Doriana has another daughter who is on a foreign exchange trip in Germany right now, her name is Claudia)(and aren't Silvia and Claudia astoundingly classy names??!!).

We basically just walked around and saw all of the big piazza's and the castle, and the palace, and the river Po! IT was wonderful! It was rainy all day, so my toes got soggy, but I would say that all of the beauty that got soaked into my memory was worth some soaked up socks! I got many beautiful pictures, but when we went into the Palace (Palazzo Madame) I wasn't allowed to take any pictures! :( We took a tour, and I couldn't understand the tourguide, but It was magnificent! There were tons of rooms and a banquet hall, and a dancing hall (camera di ballo) and every room was so incredibly ornate and gorgeous that I turned into my 6 year old self and all I wanted to do was play dress up and run around from room to room with Opera music blasting from the cherub covered ceilings untill I collapse on the luscious rose patterned carpets and fall asleep to Andrea Boccelli.

It was like I was transported into the past and everything was waiting for me, but I couldn't fully step into that reality because the tour guide would just yell at me if I stepped off of the designated tourist rug...

Oh well... Did you know that Torino was the first capital of Italy when it first united? In fact, Italy has only been the Italian Republic and one united country since 1861 (yes, the same year as the beginning of the civil war), so technically the U.S. is an older country... Anyways, From 1861 to 1865 Torino was the capital of Italy, then I believe that it switched to Florence (Firenze) and then to Rome...

That was your history lesson for today!

I will try to post some pictures of Turin and my friends at school soon...
Ok! That all folks! Ciao ciao!