First week in Italy!

Ciao ciao!!
I apologize for not writing earlier, but I have been very very busy!! I have been keeping a travel journal though so I will not forget all the details between blog posts.

School is getting better and I am starting to understand some entire Italian sentences (quite a feat since they talk so quickly!). I was assigned a Philosophy essay on 'why we live' 'where we come from' and 'who we are', which I have to write in Italian...luckily Antonella is going to help me with the translation.  It is strange to have school Saturdays.  It makes the weekends very very short.  Friday night we went to one of Giovanni's friend's birthday dinners, and it lasted until almost one AM! The food was incredible and just kept coming for three hours.  I have never seen so much seafood at one table before! I met the birthday boy's daughters, as well Friday night, and they invited me to spend a weekend with them in Milano. I am very excited and hopefully I can go! 

Now to recount the rest of the week... I arrived Saturday the 11th in Rome and we drove from the airport straight to Cossignano...It took about 2.5 hours.  Sunday we went to the beach in Grottamare, but it was freezing cold so I did not get to enjoy the sun or the sea.  I ate my first Italian gelato!! It was delicious and frozen Nutella flavored :)  Monday I went to Antonella's school and then walked around downtown San Benedetto.  I found a cute little market selling clothes and fresh bread, fish, fruit, etc.  Later on in the week, I found out that there are a bunch of these little market places all around San Benedetto and Grottamare! Tuesday I started school and met all of my very nice classmates.  Everyone was interested in the 'American girl' so I got a lot of Italian practice. Luckily though most of them speak English well so they are very helpful in teaching me words and such.  In this school, they do not change classrooms or classmates for all five years of school so they all know eachother very well which is a better intimidating but also good.  I also went to Cossignano (the actual town part) later Tuesday afternoon.It is very pretty and very very old and calm.  It was interesting seeing the Medieval era infrastructure that is still left, and equally interesting to see the little 'houses' people live in in the center. Wednesday and Thursday were both frustrating school days, but then we went to Offida and I got to see a theater and church from the 14th century!! Both were goregous and I have never seen something that old.  Yesterday I went to the supermarket with Antonella and holy cow! It really was Super! It is absolutely incredible how many kinds of pasta exist in Italy! And their cheese, wine, and fish sections are the size of small stores themselves! They have hundreds of wines organized by region, and I had some from Cossignano the other day! It was very good...I put a picture of the local grapes up :)


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Open Air Market, Downtown San Benedetto (sorry its sideways...)

It feels like it I have been here longer than just a week!  I feel pretty adjusted to my family's schedule and Valerio and Francesco are starting to open up to me a little bit.  Two nights ago, I taught them how to play chess in horrible Italian, so now they are more comfortable making mistakes in English. We all are warming up to each other.  Antonella is very very informative! She is full of information and always is telling me something new.  She knows about the history and culture of practically every town in Italy. It is incredible how much she knows! Saturday night we spent an hour in a book shop, and she had read almost every book in there! She is very well-read to say the least. Plus she knows and speaks German, French, English, and Italian, so their personal library is full of books from all over Europe.  

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It wouldn't be Italia without a scooter! Everyone has one of these :)



Last thing and then ciao...Marshmellows. Last night, Antonella asked me what a marshmellow was and I didnt know how to explain it!  I guess they talk about them in TV shows and movies a lot, but no one here has had one! Valerio got very excited at the mention of them because he thought I might have brought them with...but I asked my aunt to send some, so they will be very pleased!