Monday of this week saw another day of school in the 4th Class, kicking off with three hours of Latin and Greek and one hour of Chemistry before things went a little bit differently. We had what they call an "assembly" although it's nothing like an Australian assembly, rather it is a few hours put aside where the class is left in the classroom, without a teacher, to talk about any and all problems they have been having with one another. I don't know who organises when this will happen (as every class does them at different times) or how often but I suppose they must need it considering they're with each other in the same place in the same room for 9 hours every day. But basically there are two "captains" of the class who run the meeting (although all they do is make sure every topic is covered) and other than that they seemed to spend the whole two hours yelling at eachother, just getting everything off their chests!
So I was left during this time to entertain myself. At first I took to the white board, drawing myself a cat, and then someone added the speech bubbles, and then I decided to draw every member of the class. After I lost interest in that, one of the boys in the class produced a pack of playing cards and I spent probably an hour or more attempting to build a house of cards; a particularly difficult task considering how often one of the students would accidentally knock it over with their hand gestures while trying to make a point in their argument.
 |
| My stunning whiteboard artwork |
 |
| Without me realising the boy who gave me the cards had taken my phone and documented my effort in photos and videos |
Also this week I was all alone and sister-less as Alice's class went to a place in France called Belfort for one week as a part of their French studies. This meant that after school I didn't have to return immediately to Chiara's office for Alice to study, so after school on Monday I went to Duomo on a mission to find two souvenir T-Shirts to mail to my best friends in Australia. The trouble was that all of the shirts I had seen in Duomo were extremely over-priced at €10 each and I was determined to find a bargain. The first two places I went to wouldn't budge, but I was proud of myself when I managed to bargain with the man of the third stall, in Italian, and saved €4! How Italian of me!
 |
| Afternoon sunset in Piazza del Duomo |
 |
| My wonderful shirts! |
We woke up on Tuesday again to the most horrid, cold and wet weather. In the car on the way to the metro Massimo asked me if I had an umbrella and I didn't. So, not wanting that I get sick, he gave me the only other rain protection he had in the car; a bright orange raincoat they normally use for the dog when they are out.
 |
| Just another fashionable day in Milan |
And would you believe it, I arrived at school, admittedly dry, and trying to take off the raincoat I dropped my bag...and out from the bottom of the bag came an umbrella. Oh the luck of it all! School then continued in an ordinary way, with the exception of a little bit of lunchtime fun, before I had to leave early for my Italian lesson with Eugenio.
 |
| Some of my classmates, Martina, Lorenzo and Regine, enjoying miniature ping pong. Turns out the class keeps this little table on the top of the cupboard at the back of the room for the more boring days |
This time I did a 2 1/2 hour less with Eugenio and walked away feeling like my head was going to burst from the amount of knowledge I had gained. So, naturally, I went home and drowned my feelings in Italy's best invention yet; Nutella. (Yeah, I didn't know the Italians invented Nutella either.)
 |
| Tuesday's thoughts: "Italian is stupid." "English rocks. I like English." "Why did you just teach me 300 words in 2 hours?" "Everyone should just speak English." "No, I don't want to learn 30 ways to conjugate one word." "Wait, how do I say "andiamo" in English again?" "The Italians really should have stuck with cooking." "Did it seriously just take me an hour to read two pages of a children's book?" "My brain is going to cave in." "Praiseeee the Lord Jesus above that the Italians invented Nutella. And named it a word I can pronounce." |
Wednesday morning was a bit of a mess as for some unknown reason that family's alarms didn't go off as usual and we found ourselves running extremely late. Chiara was then worried about me being very late but I told her it didn't really matter because two of the teachers my class had that day were away with Alice's class in Belfort and the other hours were Latin & Greek and my class doing a 2 hour written exam. So Chiara said, "oh if you're doing nothing and then they're spending the afternoon testing you can leave early...oh but you're going to get there late so you won't be there that long...maybe if we do this or that" and eventually she decided it would be best if I just spent the day exploring Milan solo! So after taking Filippo and Francesca to school we stopped in a wonderful cafe for coffee and a Brioche (pastry), or in my case juice and a Brioche. They cafe was also some kind of cake store and it was absolutely beautiful, decked out in pre-easter spirit and buzzing with people stopping for coffee on their way to work.
 |
| The strangest apple juice I've ever seen and a wonderful brioche |
Afterwards we went to Chiara's office where I left my school books, she gave me a map and off I went! My first mission was to mail the T-shirts and a couple of other small gifts to my friends in Australia. And it is here I recount the herculean story of "The Post Office Debacle". Read on only if you dare.
All I needed to do was buy a post-friendly cardboard box and send it, one small package, to Australia. Just one package to Australia.
So Chiara told me where the nearest post office was and wrote down on a piece of paper how I could ask my question. I memorised the two sentences and stood in line, waiting for about 20 minutes before I was served and began to ask the man my question. However the second he heard my accent he rolled his eyes and rudely told me he couldn't help me and that I needed to go to Cordusio. So I thanked him, left and promptly called Chiara asking where on Earth Cordusio was. She told me it was no problem because the post office in Cordusio is the main post office of Milan and just one minute's walk from Duomo.
So I went to this office (a HUGE building taking up a quarter of the main square of Cordusio) took a ticket and waited about 35 minutes to be served before I asked my question again, and again this extremely rude lady rolled her eyes and told me I should have known better than to come to this office and that I needed to go to Cordusio 2. So I left without thanking her, walked outside and called Chiara again, who this time didn't know where Cordusio 2 was. She then looked it up on the internet, gave me directions and off I went to a confusing building with many different entrances, and after considering for a minute I went in the door that had post-related words written on it like "postage stamps", "letters" and "parcels". Here, I waited 50 minutes to be served, asked my question in the best Italian I could master and was told this time, thankfully by a very kind man, that he couldn't help me and I needed to go to the other postage office of Cordusio 2.
Because every building should have TWO post offices inside. Okay.
So, as the man had told me, I went to the other post office of Cordusio 2 and found many people sitting around holding numbered tickets, waiting to be served. I went to the ticket box where there were several different kinds of tickets depending on what help you needed. And I didn't recognise ANY of the words describing which ticket meant what. I asked someone standing nearby if they spoke English and could help me, but they didn't, and directed me to a young lady standing in the corner of the room holding a clipboard. I went to her and, praise the Lord above, she spoke English perfectly! I told her what I needed and she directed me to the desk that could send packages to Australia. This man then, when I asked my question, told me he couldn't help me and I needed to go to the main office in Cordusio. I told him I had already been there and that they sent me to him and he shrugged his shoulders, apologising.
By this point, having spent almost two hours trying to send this one parcel, I was extremely frustrated and admittedly getting a bit teary so I walked outside, where it was raining, and walked up and down the street for a few minutes eating an apple.
By this point, having spent almost two hours trying to send this one parcel, I was extremely frustrated and admittedly getting a bit teary so I walked outside, where it was raining, and walked up and down the street for a few minutes eating an apple.
I then decided the best thing I could do was go back into that office and ask the english-speaking lady what I needed to do. She very kindly explained to me that inside the main office in Cordusio, if I walk around the side of the office, there is a small shop where I can buy the box and then come back to this office of Cordusio 2 and the man would send the package for me. And it took two hours for someone to tell me that!
So off I went back to the main office and into the little store where there were several different sized boxes on display. I asked the lady working there if I could try to fit my things into the display boxes to know which fit best and she said yes, but also something about the apple that I was still eating. I understood that she didn't want me getting apple on her display boxes so I sat the apple on the shelf above them and went on fitting my things into the boxes. About 5 minutes later she came back and starting yelling at me, and I mean actually yelling, way too fast for me to understand, something along the lines of "something something something APPLE something something something APPLE something s*** something something apple s*** something something" and I said "I'm sorry, I only speak a little Italian" to which she responded, in Italian but more slowly this time, something like "OH OF COURSE YOU DON'T SPEAK ITALIAN! ****ing foreigners come here and don't speak Italian, making a mess of everything and don't speak Italian, **** **** *****". She then indicated to me that my apple had left on her shelf a small droplet of water and that I should wipe it off with a towel. I told her I didn't have a towel with me (is that something I should be carrying around?) and she stormed off to get a towel of hers to clean it up. Now, I was amused and tried to avoid laughing while paying for my box.
Finally, back to the office of Cordusio 2 it was where the nice man helped me put together the box and write the address, before sending it away for me. As a thankyou to him and the english-speaking lady for being the only helpful Italians to me in all of this I gave them each one of the Australian 5c coins I carry with me.
Although in all of this I didn't stop to take any photos I think I can sum up with this video we were shown at our orientation in Rome. In my six weeks here I have found everything about this video to be true, paying special attention to the part about "bureaucracy".
Next, it was time for lunch so I stopped in at a nice cafe and ordered something which in complete honesty I didn't know anything about except that it had tomatoes in it. Luckily it turned out to be a really nice sandwich and to make things better, came with a freshly squeezed blood orange juice.
 |
| As I was leaving the cafe I spotted on the menu a picture of what looked like a hash brown and I couldn't believe it! Hash browns are something that I hadn't sen before in Italy and I had been trying to describe them to my host family who have never seen or heard of them before. So I excitedly bought one - and it tasted just like breakfast Sunday breakfast in Australia! |
The rest of the day was spent walking through a part of Milan I had never seen before, and despite the rain I found it absolutely beautiful. And only got completely lost about once.
 |
| I feel ridiculous for not having known this but as it turns out, Milan has a castle! You can see it here on the left-hand side of the photo |
 |
| A beautiful church I unfortunately didn't go inside of It's called "Santa Maria della Grazie" meaning "Saint Maria of the thanks" and it's adjoining building is where Leonardo Da Vinci's world-famous painting "The Last Supper" is kept. Even my host family has never seen it before because you have to making a booking about 5 months in advance to go in, so we are hoping to see it later this year |
 |
| Returning back to Chiara's office at the end of the day, my shopping purchase in hand |
On Thursday, unlike Wednesday we awoke punctually and I prepared myself for another long day of school. However after our first one-hour lesson of Latin and Greek everybody got up to leave. It turned out that my class and several other classes of the school were going to see a movie in French at a cinema, so I figured I would be going along. But when we were waiting downstairs about to leave the French teacher saw me and asked what I was doing. The girls told her I was going along with them to which the French teacher responded "But just doesn't speak French, she didn't get a permission signed and we haven't bought her a ticket". I thought she was being a bit unfair considering she had never given me a permission to have signed, but she still decided I couldn't go with them. As they weren't going to be back at school for five hours the French teacher told me I should have my host mum send in permission to leave and go home. This school is much more old fashioned than mine in Australia and always insists on having a signature of the parent for a student to leave early, so I had to wait in the school for about an hour for Chiara's fax to come through, and then I was free to spend another day exploring Milan!
 |
| While I was waiting I managed to get some good photos of my classroom empty |
 |
| I figure it's important that you see the beautiful ceiling of this room that I spend a lot of my time staring at |
That afternoon I went again to the theatre class at Portafranco with Bea, yet didn't understand anything more about the play than I had the last time. The poor teacher doesn't seem to know what to do with me as I sound ridiculous in speaking parts, so mostly I take the role of "standing in the background looking pretty".
 |
| Bea and I at the theatre class |
Chiara decided that after our class ended we could all go out to have dinner at our favourite Egyptian pizza restaurant, with Bea too as her sister Francesca is staying with our family anyway. There was a bit of confusion with who was where however, and Bea and I had to find a warm place to sit while we waiting to be picked up. So we bought ourselves a hot chocolate at Cioccolati Italiani.
 |
| European hot chocolate; not actually drinkable. Served with dipping biscuits and a spoon. |
 |
| For lunch I had already had myself a pizza so for dinner I decided to try something a little different from the menu; a cheesey tomato pasta dish which was buonissimo to say the least! |
 |
| Fra and I |
I decided I would skip dessert that night as I really had eaten enough already. But the second I said no Francesca told me I was making a grave mistake and ordered something for the both of us I hadn't yet tried. It's called "tartufa" and is basically a ball of gelato, wrapped in a layer of another flavour of icecream, rolled in icing sugar and coconut. Guess who now has a new favourite dessert?
One of my favourite things about the Massetti house is that it is angled so that the backyard is directly facing the sun in the mornings, and on Friday morning I managed to get a few snaps of it.
School on Friday was a regular day where my class did two exams. After school though I went with Chiara to where her and Massimo often play tennis on Friday night and became sports-photographer Maddie.
 |
| Something strange was that while in Australia tennis courts and usually outside, this court was in a kind of plastic bubble to allow players to use it in all seasons of the year, even when it's snowing outside! |
 |
| Walking in we saw that the cafe of the tennis centre had tartufa, and after how much I'd loved it the night before I couldn't walk past another opportunity |
 |
| Would you believe they didn't even know this photo was been taken? |
In the last five minutes of their session they decided that I should have a go at playing Massimo (who, let's not forget, plays tennis for several hours usually 6 days a week). Luckily we had had gym at school that day so I had my runners in my bag although no time to change into my sports clothes, so I played in my school clothes of that day.
 |
| A perfect night sky as we were leaving tennis |
After dinner that night Fra and I were watching Gossip Girl on TV and talking about jewellery and she said in passing how much she loved her Tiffany jewellery. My immediate reaction was something along the lines of "wait, you actually OWN Tiffany jewellery?" and she said "yeah of course, want to see?"
Oh, Milan.
 |
| My first time touching Tiffany jewellery! |
 |
| Soo prettyyyyy |
 |
| She brought back Macaroons - my first ever real French food! |
 |
| Scrumptious! |
 |
| I was very excited that she also brought back for me the famous French cake called "Madeleine", a type of plum cake |
 |
| To celebrate Alice's coming home we all went out for a gelato at Grom! |
In France it had been very cold and snowing and Alice got sick, so while Chiara took her home Fra and I spent the rest of the afternoon shopping.
On Sunday the rain returned yet again so we spent most of the day inside with the fire, with the exception of going to have lunch in the restaurant at the tennis centre where I had bought my Tartufa on Friday night. The restaurant is owned and run by a husband and wife, the husband being the chef. They are both lovely people and the man actually has many awards for his cooking!
 |
| First dish; penne al ragu with an excellent cheese on top I hadn't tasted before |
 |
| Second dish; the all famous Cotoletta Milanese. Cotoletta is a dish typical of Milan which is very similar to chicken schnitzel and this here was the best Cotoletta I have yet had in Milan |
 |
| Left to right; Fra, Filippo, Mago, Chiara, Alice and I |
 |
| At the end of the meal we were treated to a little something to celebrate the Easter season |
 |
| AND THEN WE FOUND POPPING CANDY |
Finally, Sunday night Alice was still feeling sick but needed to go to school the next day for an exam, so to cheer her up I recreated the rubber-glove-man named "Spike" my mum always made me when I was sick in Australia. Although I couldn't manage to draw the eyes quite as well as my Mum I think Spike still worked magic and now we are all ready for another long week of school starting tomorrow!
No comments:
Post a Comment