a badly punctuated stream of consciousness

rambling along

Another winter day has come and gone away
in either Paris or Rome, but i want to go home....
-Michael Buble
ok, that isnt actually how i feel at the moment, but a few weeks ago these lyrics were pretty apt. plus, it's buble! do i need an excuse?

Hi everybody, or should i say Ciao?
Well things are going pretty well today! Firstly I want to say happy birthday to frances linnane for this Friday, so somebody pass on the message if she isn’t reading this. And also a belated happy birthday for Beccy A, Courtney G and Kieren for last week! So Happy Birthday you 4!
Nextly, yes naomi, you can borrow my socks! since i am feeling generous today, i give you permission to borrow everything, as long as you return it when i come home....and in good condition!
Josie, I realise i write long blogs, and i am sorry if they take too long to read sometimes. I am glad you like them tho, cos i like writing them :) And if you have no time, just do what domenic does and read only the beginning and then the end! thank you for finally emailing by the way dom :)
have i mentioned before that sometimes i can see the appenines on the way to school? well i can and it is pretty awesome!
Hmm what else? Well today at school, I actually understood most of the Spanish lesson! ‘Spanish?’ I hear you say. Yes Spanish! I didn’t necessarily undesrstand all the Spanish words on the board, but I pretty much got the gist of the lesson cos it was about putting emphasis on the right part of the word, so the Italian that she was speaking wasn’t particularly complicated, and the Spanish, like I said, I did not always understand, but usually it consisted of the teacher saying the word three or four times to demonstrate the difference in ephasis. Per essempio (eg.) ‘MU-si-ca’ ‘mu-SI-ca’ and ‘mu-si-CA.’ so I pretty much understood what she was going on about. the correct one is MUsica by the way. Other than that though, my Italian is coming alone rather slowly. I guess I maybe expected to understand more by now, but I am still usually using the other students to translate what the teachers say, and speak mostly in English. I have noticed though that even if I don’t understand, I can now pretty easily distinguish between the different words, instead of hearing one big jumble of words. I guess it goes without saying that I find it easier to understand when people speak slowly, but usually that doesn’t happen. I also find I understand a whole lot more if I read rather than listen. If I see something written down it is much easier to figure out what it means, partly I guess because there is more time to think about it, and also because often words are spelt similarly to English words, but don’t necessarily sound the same. These words are called ‘cognates’ for those of you who want to learn grammar. And believe me, I am learning a lot, cos you just have to it seems, in order to learn Italian. But who has ever heard of the ‘conditional’ or ‘simple present’ or the ‘infinitive form of verbs’ before?????? Everybody here has, that is for sure! But I am learning slowly, and by the time I come home I will be ‘conjugating’ like a pro…..i hope.
In other news, it is molto molto freddo (very very cold). VERY cold! Minus 6 degrees yesterday I think, and I heard it was minus 7 today! We are officially in spring, but it sure doesn’t feel like it! And despite the freezing temperatures, it hasn’t snowed in over a week. At least if it was snowing I could forgive the cold…..
Well I think I have officially established that just because I am in another country does NOT mean I am any more coordinated than I was in Oz. I fall over ALL the time! Not just tripping on shoe laces, but I fell up the stairs at school yesterday, in the first week I fell of a chair while trying to pick up a biro, and the big one, last Friday, I fell of the bus! Here I am minding my own business and trying not to draw attention to myself and I fall down the stairs getting of the bus and landed in the gutter!
Stop laughing, because I did not escape unscathed! I skinned my knee! And I cant believe how much it hurts. I am a wimp I know, but I am proud cos I didn’t cry, but everytime I bend my leg my knee hurts cos scabs don’t like bending you see, but other than that, only my pride was hurt. I ripped my jeans the tiniest bit, but I didn’t care. I just wanted to get away from all the people watching! Oh the embarrassment! Now stop laughing. Especially you Sage! J
What else? Well Alicia, I am glad to hear you have now made some solid friends. I feel that I have too, although most of them are other foreign students. Maddie and Maria I have mentioned before, they are the other two girls I was on the plane with from Oz, and we get to see each other every Friday for our Italian lesson. Maria couldn’t come last week, so we met up on Monday afternoon so I could give her the homework and stuff and then we did a little window shopping. Oooh I want to buy everything! Christie, you would absolutely LOVE the shoes. And there are so many! Everytime I walk past one of the many many shoe shops I think of you :) And the rest of the clothes and stuff are pretty great too! I plan to do a bit of shopping soon cos I just don’t have enough clothes. Atleast not enough warm ones. And things take so long to dry in this weather that I have to make sure I don’t put everything in the wash at once cos it is likely I wont see it for another week atleast.
The other friends I feel I have made are Astri and Christian, students from Norway and Panama respectively, and I am at school with them. As for making friends with people at school, so far only acquaintances really, which is to be expected. We are not really supposed to spend too much time with other foreign students I don’t think, but it is hard not to, and it is nice to swap stories. But I like most of the people I have met, and the ones I see outside school are Elisa’s friends who I like a lot. And yesterday when I was playing the piano at the conservatorium, two girls came in to see who was playing. I was rather embarrassed cos they happened to hear me playing one of the few songs I can play properly at the moment, having hardly practiced in over a month, and they wanted to hear more, but most other pieces I have need lots of practice to actually sound any good, but they didn’t seem to mind. My sight-reading was put to the test and I guess I am rather pleased that they heard me and thought I was any good in the first place. They are both flute players and are students at the Conservatoria here and have invited me to go out with them sometime, and I am also going to watch their rehearsal tonight. I think it is some kind of orchestra or band so I am looking fowrad to that. Alicia, I have to admit that when I read your words ‘music is celebrated here’ in your blog, I was rather jealous cos it seems almost the opposite here. At least, it is rare and I haven’t met anybody at school who plays an instrument, so I was really pleased to find some people with similar interests. So I gave them my mobile number and after I see them tonight I guess we will organise to do something one day after school. Hooray!
Now I really have to send a huuuge thank you out to Rebekah, Amanda and Ian for leaving messages on my phone card thingy! It was soo great to hear your voices! I checked my messages for the first time on Sunday, because when I first tried to use the card it did not work so I have been hesitant ever since. But it does work, so feel free to give me more messages everybody. Remember they are free for you to leave, so any time you feel like it just ring up and tell me all the news from home. And I am sorry Ian, but I am not going to send you snow in a bottle. But it did make me laugh
Well I think that is about all I have to say

posted by Ellen of Taranganba @ 5:04 PM