a badly punctuated stream of consciousness

ciao a tutti. (hello all)
dammit, had good song lyrics to put in here and have now forgotten. will edit them in when i remember.

ok well huzzah! the good times are still rolling. in fact, sunday i woke up and for the first time since i have been here i realised that i dont want to go home. ok, maybe a better way to put it is that i will be sad to leave, rather then 'i dont want to go home' cos of course i do want to come home, but not the way it was before. i think i have finally settled it. and now i feel a little sad cos almost half my time here is over and it feels like i still have so much i want to do. anyway, i will tell you all about what i have been up to since saturday.
well on saturday night, as you will know if you read my previous blog, i went to the birthday party of a girl in the 4th class. it wasnt a birthday party actually, it was a dinner and dancing type thing at a disco. i had so much fun. i sat with christian, the boy from panama, and also another guy, andrea, who i am freinds with and we were just chatting and laughing all night. the food was good as usual, and i got to talk to a bunch of people which was great. i still had a cold tho and at one point was very embarassed while talking to one guy cos my eyes started watering and he thought i was crying hehe. you know how when you have a cold and your nose runs and your eyes water all the time, well that is what it was. and he started asking if i was ok here and if i was missing my family and stuff. which was ironic cos it was actually the best i have felt in my whole time here, but i dont think he really believed me when i said i was fine. lol. so after dinner we danced a bit but i dont like the music much, and then we went home pretty early cos i was sick and Ely had to play tennis the next day. she has gone to Trento, another town, and has been there since sunday and she plays a match everyday until she loses. so she has won every day so far and will keep winning i suspect, cos she is good. lol.

anyway so sunday was pretty boring for me but i was feeling really very good cos had an excellent night and feel made freinds with people i hardly spoke to before. and on sunday night i went to the nonni's house for dinner and there was a whole bunch of other family there, none of whom could speak english. and since ely was there i was kind of stranded. but we had the dictionary and we managed. actually i think it was very good for me cos it really made me listen and i found i could understand the basics of most of the conversation which was good. i think sunday was another one of those days where i had a 'jump' in my language ability cos suddenly i could understand more and speak more which is awesome cos again, it boosts my confidence and makes me happier. lol. anyway so most of the night i just sat there listening, but at one point i played cards and later i tried to teach the two little girls the game where you make squares. dunno if i am going to be very good at explaining this but: the game where on a piece of paper one person writes a line, then next person draws another line and the aim is to try to make squares and the person who closes the square writes their initial in it and whoever fills the most squares wins. you know the one. remember naomi, we used to love it! well.....i remember i did anyway. haha so i tried to teach the girls, the key word here being TRIED. they were very shy tho cos they didnt know me, like little children are, plus i wasnt doing a very good job of speaking italian so i guess it was hard for them. thier mum understood tho and explained, and then they only wanted to play with her. so i was rejected by little kids. lol.

so then on monday i went to Torino. Huzzah! it was really pretty awesome, apart from the getting up real early to catch the bus. it was about a 3 or 4 hour bus ride, which i had absolutely no problem with cos it is only like half way to brisbane. plus i had my ipod which was all good. then when we arrived we went to an art gallery to see 'gli impressionisti e la neve' ie. the impressionist artists and the snow. so that was pretty good hey. i mean i am no art critic, but i like looking at pictures so it was still enjoyable. i got pretty tired and felt kind of sick at times, but it was good. most of the artists i had never heard of but there was a van gogh and a whole bunch of monet's so that was pretty special i reckon. none that i actualy recognised tho. my favourites were these two ginormous landscapes of switzerland i think, with like farmers or something in the foreground. they were huuuge and really good. and also there was an awesome one of a glacier in switzerland again i think. and it was good too cos i got to have little earphones so that i could hear a commentary in english rather than listening to the italian tour guide, altho at some points the tour guide moved on to the next painting before i had finished hearing about the first. oh well
then after we went to the center of town and had lunch and did a little window shopping before heading home again. the scenery was really quite beautiful, altho kind of a uniform gryish-brown colour, cos all the plants here are deciduous, and i really could see lots of similarities between the scenery i was looking at and the pictures i had seen earlier. and it all looks so different to australian landscapes. have to say i prefer the latter :)

anyway and yesterday i had the absolute best day ever! i am not kidding hey, it was fantastic, and for no particular reason. maybe cos i felt that while in torino i really made freinds with the girls in my class, and so i was looking foward to going to school cos i knew i could talk to them and it would be ok. and also i was looking foward to seeing the poeple i was with on saturday night. and i knew i had a computer lesson, and then after school the conservatorium to look foward to so it was just good even to look foward to yesterday. lol. and so i went to school and all was good lol. everybody was nice and freindly and that was awesome. and then for one lesson i coudlnt find the class i was supposed to be with, they had gone away from thier classroom, so i ran into Christian in my wanderings and he took me back to the 4th class, which was spanish. and now i need you to cast your minds back a few weeks to when i told you about understanding the spanish lesson. well that was in the 3rd class, and when i went to the 4th yesterday they were doing the same stuff in thier spanish lesson. and the teacher knew i could do it, so she asked me a question and i answered it and boy, the uproar in the class then! it was sooo funny. they were all so amazed that i understood it. it was hilarious. and then i spent the rest of the lesson laughing and talking with Christian and Andrea, whihc was probably bad since we were supposed to be doing work, but it was really fun. hehe
and then on the bus on the way home from school i sat next to a guy that i know from the conservatorium and so that was nice since i hadnt seen him in a week or so, and then i saw him again about an hour later at the conservatorium, and also another girl. so it was all good
ok so the bell just rang
ciao for now
love ellen

posted by Ellen of Taranganba @ 2:11 AM