What's New

Okay so I have finally gotten around to writing this post.
It's probably good to fill everyone in on what's been happening with me lately.
Since the last time I really updated (obviously) a lot has happened. We celebrated an Italian-style thanksgiving which was surprisingly successful. With the help of our neighbors, my exchange student friends, and my host family we had a great feast. We had turkey, gravy, stuffing, mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, pumpkin pie, frutti di boscho (because we couldn't find any cranberries. So this is basically just a mix of different berries), along with of course bread!
I was feeling pretty down earlier in the day thinking about how I wasn't with my family and I was really missing the U.S., but everyone worked so hard to make this happen for me, it made my homesickness go right away! Now to tackle Christmas... Which I am starting to get sad about. :/ For once I just want the holidays to be over!
I also went to Nuoro (a city in the center of Sardinia) with my friend Karoline! Our Italian teacher also has a travel agency type thing with his family and he invited the exchange students to come to one of the trips he does every sunday (now they're finished for the season). So me and Karoline decided to go to the one in Nuoro and we had a ton of fun! We had to get up really early and go to the bus stop and then we left with all the people doing the excursion (we were the only young ones on the bus lol). It took 2-3 hours to get there and then right when we got off the bus it started raining! :( So all day I was trying to share an umbrella with Karoline or Marco (italian teacher). We walked around Nuoro eating Sardinian specialties and seeing other cool traditional stuff. I ate horse too! Sorry if you're reading this and you like horses.. They eat horse here (among other things) and I thought I have to try it at least once! Overall it was really fun and we felt really independent for a day without our host families or anyone. :)
We also had our AFS camp in October! We have three camps throughout the year with all of the kids on Sardinia. One at the beginning (October), one in the middle (February I think), and one at the end (June). It was so fun hanging out with all of the other exchange students! They also took us to the beach and we went swimming in the ocean in the middle of October!
I've also been hanging out a bit with some of my new italian friends from school, visited different cities (Porto Torres, Castelsardo, Nuoro, Stintino, the suburbs of Sassari, etc), went to my first discoteca, eaten some more food, gotten to know my city, taken public transportation alone, met some new people, and more.
Now I understand sooo much italian, it's crazy! Sometimes I feel very discouraged because when I am with a big group of people I don't understand everything, but for the most part (when i am having a conversation with someone) I understand everything without problems. my assistent/afs tutor person told me a few weeks ago when I met with her how amazed and proud of me she was because of how much my italian has improved in this short time. At the beginning we only talked in english, and now we only talk in italian.
Okay well I can't really talk about EVERYTHING I've done because otherwise this will go on forever.
I will try to start blogging once a week or once every few weeks at least, from now on.