Good news! Yesterday I found out that I will be going to an Intercultura (AFS) camp from Sunday to Wednesday! That means I get to meet other exchange students in the area and bond over funny exchange student stories! Lol. Anyway, I’m super excited and can’t wait to tell you all about it in my next post :)

This week has been pretty normal. Monday I had school and then flute lesson in the evening. Tuesday it rained really hard, so after school I just stayed at home the whole evening and read, watched tv, and studied. Wednesday I had my first test in school. It was in my Italian class, and the teacher gave all of the students three pieces of paper with documents on them. They were all in Italian (obviously), but luckily, the teacher gave me a general idea of what they were about. Ironically, they were all about people migrating to different countries and how they felt when they left their original homes. The test told everyone to analyze the documents and find similarities and differences between them (I think?), but I was told to just write about my own experience with leaving home (since I couldn’t comprehend the documents completely). The teacher told me it would be okay if I wrote in english, but I decided to take a leap of faith and write in Italian. I used all of my knowledge of vocabulary, conjugations, and tenses, and I think it turned out pretty well! Although, my grammar was pretty rough. I was trying to use the past tense for most of my writing, but there were some irregular verbs that I hadn’t learned the past participle for (such as avere and andare), so I kinda just guessed on those. I looked up the participle later that day and realized that I was totally wrong on some of the verbs haha, hopefully my teacher will still understand what I wrote. Anyway, I was proud of myself for writing in Italian :) After school I went to my Italian lesson, and then my host family took me to the cinema (movie theater). We watched “Everest.” It was an amazing film, and I could understand a lot of the Italian! During the movie, I remember watching a really dramatic part where everyone was holding their breath because it was so intense. And then all of a sudden, the movie just stopped and the lights turned on! I thought something had gone wrong with the projector, but then on the screen, the word “intervallo” showed up. Then I realized it was intermission! It’s so fun to see the little differences between America and Italy.

Today I had a physics test. I didn’t realize we needed calculators for it, so I didn’t bring one to school. Luckily my friend Natalia lent me her extra one. The test went alright. The teacher let me use my notes for the first part where I had to describe the differences between different kinds of forces (gravity force, elastic force, friction force). The second part was solving equations. It went pretty well because I had studied the night before, but there were some problems that I didn’t understand because of the Italian vocabulary. Today was really cold and rainy, so after school I went straight home. I ate lunch, watched tv, and worked on my new Youtube channel. I decided to make a Youtube channel where I will post monthly videos of my time here in Italy! The videos will basically show small clips of my life here. I uploaded my first video today, so check it out with this link! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7laU0MFrmdg

Until next time, Ciao tutti!