a badly punctuated stream of consciousness

alicia suprise florence goodbye

quando i bambini fanno oh
che meraviglia, che meraviglia
ma che scemo vedi però però
e mi vergogno un po'
perchè non so più fare ooohh
e fare tutto come mi piglia
perchè i bambini non hanno peli
ne sulla pancia, ne sulla lingua
- Piovia (i think that's his name)

i try to go on like i never knew you
i'm awake, but my world is half asleep
i pray for my heart to be unbroken
but without you all i'm going to be is....
incomplete -Backstreet Boys

ok i know i know, it's backstreet boys. but i like the lyrics, cos they kind of sum up pretty well how i felt when i first got here. i missed everybody soooooooooo much, and i guess my world really was half asleep, incomplete. and now, life is going soo incredibly well, and i love this place and these people so much that i dont want to leave, so probably when i go home i will be homesick for here, but will just have to go on like i never knew them. so that is the best i can do to justify putting the words of a backstreet boys song on my blog.....
and the other one is an incredibly popular song here and i really like it. the lyrics are somewhat stupid (when the babies go 'oooh,' how marvelous, how marvelous........they have no hair on thier stomachs or on thier tongues.) but the tune is so infectious and 'up' and it always makes me smile, plus, i know all the words, which is so cool to be able to sing in italian, even if what i am singing is ridulous. but apparently the guy who sings it is donating all the profits to childrens charity so i reckon that's a good enoguh reason to like the song too. :)

aanyway, moving on. wow, i have so much to say. so incredibly much. but first, birthday wishes.... Happy birthday to Liam Richmond for te 4th, Kenny for yesterday, and since i wont get to a computer for a while, also to ben Noy for the 14th, grace for the 23rd, and Bib for the 30th! And of course, a ginormuos happy birthday to my dearest mummy! Am so sorry i wont be with you tomorrow, but hey, you wrent withme on my birthday either so i guess we are even! and while we're all here, Happy Birthday to ME!!!!! want to thank all the aunties and uncles who emailed me, and also Sage and courtney and Liam, for thinking of me :) and thanks mum and dad for waking me up at 7.30am on my first day of sleeping in after waaay too long of not being able to. oh no wait, it was only like 3 days...but still, it was long looked foward to. aah well, was nice to hear your voices :) but before i get onto all my birthday stories, i have to talk about alicia!

woooot! alicia came to visit! maan, it was fantastico, incredibile, meraviglia! apart from the difficulties in the actual arrival process, HUZZAAH!!!!!!! to explain, my aussie freind maddie and i caught a few trains to bologna to meet alicia at the station on the thursday arvy. we found the right platform and sat waiting for the train to arrive. it was a little late but that was fine. train arrives, we searched up and downt he platform and there was no alicia. after more frantic seraching and retracing our steps over and over (i.e. we walked up and down that platform maybe 7 or 8 times) we finally came to the conclusion that she hadnt got off that train. either a) she never got on it in the first place or b) she was still on it, probably asleep, and therefore missed the stop! turned out to be the second but we didnt know that at the time. so was incredibly nervous and worried about my baby alicia all alone by herself stuck somewhere, and how would we gt in contact. rang home a few times, tho was completely unable to hear a thing as some stupid organiser has put the pay phone in the tunnel directly underneath the train track, so of course everytime a train went over there was a hell of a lot of noise. aanyway, we eventually decided to catch the train back modena and then elisa picked us up on her way home from training. got home and found that alicia had called and luckily erica, my oldest host sister, managed to communicate a little in english with her. we headed back to modena to pick her up and then back home, dinner and after taking maddie home we stayed up talking for a very long time! turns out what had happened was her first train was late, so she missed the connection to bologna and the next one arrived at 8.30, nearly 2 hours after the original. aanyway, next day i let her sleep in and i went to school, then int he afternoon we went into town and wandered around the piazza, ate a little gelati, and in the evening went to a concert at the conservatrium. the saturday we got up very early to take a train to mantova and spent the day with maddie and nadia, aussies, and a whooole big bunch of american uni students who wre here on some kind of 3 week teaching prac with my organisation. however, hardly any of them speak italian, so i dunno why they came here instead of doing thier prac in american schools.......
aanayway, sunday was a lazy day, as was monday. we ate more gelati, real italian pizza, and watched 'il fantasma della opera' twice! tuesday and wednesday we both went to school and then wednesday arvy caught the trains back to bologna to send her away on a very long bus trip :( . it was incredible to see her. it felt so completely normal to be together, and totally surreal at the same time. difficult to describe....i guess only alicia will know exactly what i mean. alicia, it was so good to see you, to talk to you, to reminicse (yeah, i dunno how to spell it either) and just be here with you! thank you so much (and tahnk you alicia's parents) for making the effort and braving the trains and everything for me!

so the next day was my birthday, and like i said, i had planned to sleep in, but that didnt happen. we had a nice family lunch and that was really good. the nonni were there and they all gave me some lovely pressies. i honestly hadnt expected anything. i wasnt that excited about my birthday, it has always felt pretty much like any other day, plus i wasnt in oz, so i really didnt expect them to get me anything. i forgot to say before that the 2nd June is a public holiday here so that was good cos everybody was at home and we ate together and i was just happy to be not at school and to be with my 'family.' i guess i have conquered the homesickness now, so i really wasnt missing home all that much which was good. then int he afternoon i went out for about an hour with Yuri, the son of the mother tongue english teacher at school. we went to the piazza to get an icecream and ended up sitting in a bar(aka. a cafe) for a while chatting. he took me home and what should there be outside my house but a whole bunch of people andmusic and streamers and balloons! they threw me a surprise party! how incredible! it was awesome! all my favourite people were there and i just had so much fun. it was particularly good cos i didnt think i would get much of a chance to see half of them again before i left s it was just so nice. maria and maddie managed to keep thier mouths shut for weeks before hand about it and it was such a nice surprise! so, in conclusion, i had a really really really good birthday :D

hmm. then my other news is that i went to florence. unfortunately we only went for the afternoon cos my host mum ended up having to work saturday morning, but still, it's only about a two hour drive and we went and wandered around and saw michelangelo's david, among other things. also ate the best gelati i think i've had here so far. it was expensive (cos everything is in those major tourist destinations, it was the same with rome and venice) but totally worth it. lol.

and today is, no, was, the last day of school for the year. it was realyl hard cos i had to say goodbye to so many people. te goodbyes felt so unreal tho because it was basically just like the end of antoher school day. last night i went to my class dinner and that was a realyl lovely evening. i said goodbye to them all last night as well as today, so thatwas a little drawn out. and so tonight it hink we are having a little dinner with a few people from elisa's class who i am freinds with, which will be good. am looking foward to seeing them, even tho i know it will be the last time. and then tomorrow i am having my final pizza for lunch with maddie and maria, and it will be so incredibly hard to say goodbye to them. and after that..... friday i go to paris with my host sisters and next mondy i'm gunna go trough the 'chunnel' to london and by this time next week i guess i will be almost about to see mum and dad and naomi again! and this time in about 5 weeks my feet should be back on australian soil again.........
what an amazing journey. seemed like the time woudl never pass at the start, and now it seems like yesterday that i arrived. wow. i will definately be back here becasue there are so many people i will want to see again. but for now, i will tell you all back home that i love you and miss you, but will see you (relatively) soon. i might even get a chance to keep updating this in the UK. we'll see.
love always
ellen

posted by Ellen of Taranganba @ 2:29 AM