This past weekend has been full of adventures! Let’s start on Saturday morning when I took a train to Milan. I met up with my friend Cecilia, another exchange student from Brazil! She went to Sicily with me for the exchange week in March. It was really fun to see her again after 3 months. We walked around Milan, visited the Duomo, the Galleria, ate gelato, and even watched a movie at the movie theater! This was the second time I’ve been to a movie theater his year. Compared to the first time in September, I would say that I understood a lot more Italian this second time!! We watched “Mother’s Day” with Jennifer Aniston, Kate Hudson, and Julia Roberts! It was pretty good! After a couple more hours of walking around, dipping our feet into fountains, and talking about our mixed feeling of going home in 10 days, she left for the metro and I met up with Tiantian for the night. For dinner, Tiantian and two of her Chinese friends took me out to eat Chinese food! We went to this restaurant that serves Chinese, Japanese, and Italian. So I got to eat food from three different countries that night! Sunday was a relaxing day, Tiantian and I slept in, she studied for her exam for college, and I listened to more of my book on tape with my new audible.com app. Right now I’m listening to “Delirium” by Lauren Oliver. Sunday night we ate Chinese again. On Monday I took a train from Milan to Novara where I met my exchange friend from Alaska, Cameron! It was so exciting to see her again and it was a nice break to speak english! We walked around Novara, shopped in shops downtown, and ate dinner at a cute pizzeria in the center of the city. It was such a fun night talking to her about this year, dancing to music on the street without a care in the world of others seeing us, and watching “The Edge of Love” together for 10 minutes before her falling asleep on me. In the morning Cameron and I cooked a vegan Indian Curry with couscous for lunch which was delicious! Luckily I wrote down the recipe for my fam bam back home. We than walked around the city again, and then I took the train around 5:30 for Pettenasco.

The long weekend didn’t stop there though! 20 minutes after I got home, Pigi drove me to visit Lake Mergozzo! It’s a small lake above Lake Maggiore and it was so beautiful!! To me, the town next to the lake looked similar to the town near the lake I live next to, Orta. It had the same cobblestone streets, cute shops and restaurants by the lake, and the same, colored structure of the buildings. We ate at a nice restaurant by the lake. I ate cold fish salad and fish ravioli while Pigi ordered cold fish salad with fish risotto. As you can see we ate a lot of fish last night! We had an extraordinary view of the lake from the restaurant, and there was a nice sunset in the distance behind the mountains. Today is a more relaxing day. I’m at home in Pettenasco, writing my blog, working on making my next video for the month of June, and watercolor painting. I just started working on a new watercolor of Lake Orta with the island in the middle. Hopefully it turns out ok, I’m using canvas paper so I’m not sure how the watercolor paints will turn out.

This Friday my host family’s generously taking me to Switzerland! They have friends who live near Zurich who are having a party, so we’re staying at their house for the weekend. I’m super excited and I’ll be sure to tell you guys all about it next week!