Le Mie Prime Tre Settimane in Italia! Correctness credit to Giacomo!

Alright, I know I've neglected  my blog but here's my first real post!

New York Orientation & Flying to Zurich -
I've been away for three full weeks now. This has definitely been the most interesting 21 days of my life. I'm not even really sure where to start. New York was pretty cool cause of all the people I met, but it was just an overnight orientation in Queens. We did watch Ferris Bueller's Day Off before we left though, so that was fun! So we left the hotel at like 5pm or something on Thursday and headed to JFK. It was a pretty exciting bus ride because of all the anticipation for Italy. But then when we got there it was just a bunch of waiting around. I do remember getting pizza for $10 though. It was good, but I dropped it on the ground. Meh. So then we boarded the big ol' plane to get ready to go to Switzerland. It was a pretty chill flight, like eight hours. I watched The Hangover completely in Italian - that was intense. Then I sorta kinda learned how to play solitaire, lost a lot of virtual money playing blackjack, and then slept a bunch. The layover in Zurich was pretty cool. Everything was awesome and European and I found out that the Packers beat the Saints the night before! And also there were lots of posters of Leonardo DiCaprio wearing a watch incorrectly.

Rome Orientation -
So after flying over the extremely photogenic Swiss Alps, we landed in Rome. And partied. Actually there were a bunch of organized orientation activities. The first morning neither of my roommates or I set an alarm so we woke up two hours late, which was kinda lame. But the good thing is that we all partied both nights. The first night there were a  bunch of us Americans having a dance party on a balcony, and the second night was all the exchange students and then a party with some crazy Egyptians that got broken up by the AFS volunteers! We did have an intense game of ultimate frisbee with some Polish (I think) and Turkish people at one point. My frisbee ended up in like four trees, but we saved it! Then on Sunday morning everyone left the AFS compound, as we called it, with their departure groups and headed on over to the train station. (A sad little side note is that I left music playing on my phone the night before so when we left in the morning, I had 11% battery. Which in turn meant no music all day D: ) Our train got delayed like half an hour but it wasn't too bad cause people watching in Rome is pretty funny. It was something like a five hour train ride and it was hot and crowded, so needless to say, it wasn't the most exciting five hours of my life.

Arriving in Modena -
When I got to the Modena train station it was everything I expected and more. The Belleis all met me there, along with Luca, Giacomo, and Gloria. It was absolutely amazing meeting them in person for the first time. The first place Marcello took me was Maranello, so I could see all the Ferraris. It was sooo cool! There were literally Ferraris everywhere; we saw like 20 in 10 minutes!

Starting my Year in Sassuolo -
 After the awesome Ferrari detour, we went to the house and I can't really remember what happened exactly but I got a tour of the house and we had really good lasagna for dinner. After dinner at like 9, Marcello, Andrea and I went to Temple Bar which was sweet! It's mostly all outside and all the people my age go there, so I met a whole lot of new people! My first week here pretty much consisted of getting acclimated to living here and going around to see everything. My host family's house is really close to downtown Sassuolo, which has a lot of little cafes and shops. The streets are brick and cobblestone, and the buildings are all really old and cool looking. There's nearly 50,000 people living here, but every time we go downtown we see someone we know, so it really has a smalltown feel! Another great thing is that we went out literally every night, went to bed at like two, and got up no earlier than eleven. It was an awesome week!

Camping in Tuscany -
The weekend before school started (September 19th) we drove down to Tuscany and camped by the beach. It was super chill and really cool seeing how Italian camping works. Swimming in the sea was really nice too, and the water was crystal clear. There were tons of sweet rocks on the beach, and I took a bunch of them and put 'em in a vase, which looks pretty awesome on my shelf. The Bellei's relatives were there with us too, it was cool getting to know them.

School **Don't read this part if you don't wanna be real bored** -
I'm not really sure, but it seems like school here is a lot harder here than in the States. I really can't follow anything the teachers talk about all day, but I do know that they assign a lot of work. The good thing is that they're still skipping over me when they check everyone's homework, so woo!

Here's a normal Italian school day for me: Wake up at 7ish, walk/bike to school, walk up to our 3rd floor room (that we stay for every class), say hey to everyone that loves to greet the exchange student in English, wait for the teacher to actually start the lesson, sit there and draw/write in my journal all day, have some delicious Italian bread and pesce Esta The (tea) during the 15 minute break at 10.45, space out and think for another few hours, then finally walk/bike home at 1 or 2.

My classes are crazy...

• Math 
• Gym
• Italian 
• History
• Design
• Biology
• Chemistry
• Physics
• English
• Philosophy 
• Religion 

I am however trying to change some classes around, so that this year will hopefully be a little more bearable. At least I've got a bunch of cool people in my class to talk to and get to know this year! I think I'm eligible to get credits back home so this year won't be completely academically useless, but I'm not sure I want to, cause I still can't understand anything that's being taught. Oh well, even if I fail all my classes here it'll still be a great year! 

Italian Food - 

So the food here has definitely lived up to what everyone says about it. We've had pasta pretty much every day, and it's always real good. I have no idea what all the kinds of pastas are called, but it seems like the variety is endless. We usually all eat together for lunch and dunner, and its really late compared to America. Lunch is at 1.30 or 2.30 after school, and dinner's usually around 8.30. The pizza here is good too! Just like at home it depends on where you get it from, but most pizza places are awesome! It's really common here to put hot dogs on pizza, which is weird but good! 

My Host Family - 

My host family is really nice, and I get along with them incredibly well. I have two host brothers; Marcello who's 19, and Andrea who's 15. They're both real cool and we all do a bunch of stuff together, so I'm glad its such a good fit. Both my host parents are also really nice. They're veterinarians with their own clinic, so they also like animals. They live in an awesome two family apartment with their relatives on the other floor. (Apartments here are like the size of houses in the States) Something really non-Italian about them is that they don't like soccer! Also one of their cars is a Land Rover Defender, which is a huge British military-looking car. Its pretty sweet. Me and Marcello made some delicious southern sweet tea this week... It was soo good! That's definitely a perk of having a host brother who spent a year in Charlotte!

Well that's a bit of my life here in Italy. It's pretty great! But it's also stressful at times too. I'll try to update this a little more often as things get rolling for me around here. If I left anything out of this that you're really dying to know, let me know and I can add more stuff next time!

Ciao dall'italia,

Jake