22/4 - 28/4
Thanks to Italy's "Liberation Day" celebrations this week was a three-day week of school! The week kicked off with Monday, a day like any other where I was feeling a bit homesick and upset that I was having trouble speaking Italian, but after a long talk with Alice and going to swim with Ceci after school I felt much better and from Tuesday Alice decided to help me by speaking to me only in Italian and forcing everyone else to stop speaking English with me. After school on Tuesday, whilst waiting for Chiara to finish working and Alice to finish her Latin and Greek tutoring, Fra and I went and did some shopping. It was the first time I had passed Duomo in about two weeks and it felt like such a long time!
Our first night speaking all and only Italian, we even went out to dinner! The restaurant is close to our house here, run by a very good, experimental chef.
Wednesday was a lovely day as it was sunny enough to sit outside at lunch (how Australian!) and the girls from my class decided to teach me the Greek Alphabet!
 |
| The Ancient Greek alphabet! |
On Thursday the holidays started! It was another beautiful sunny day so we went to a nearby town called Vigevano to have breakfast. Vigevano is a very small, very old town with a beautiful Piazza in the centre, and we spent all morning exploring the streets.
 |
| The beautiful main square of Vigevano |
 |
| Attempted family shot |
 |
| A very Italian breakfast |
 |
| Alice! |
 |
| Chiara |
 |
| Fra |
 |
| Beautiful houses! |
 |
| This church, although not one of the biggest or most famous I've seen this year, was by far my favourite. It was decorated very differently to the others, mostly purple, but it was just stunning inside! |
 |
| Louise |
 |
| Federation Day ceremony in the main park |
 |
| Here on the map you can see that the park is in the middle of Vigevano's Castle, Castle Visconteo Sforzesco |
 |
| Castle tower |
 |
| Shopping in Vigevano |
 |
| Walking up one of this streets there was a small room that protruded onto the street from on of the buildings, with no door, just a small window on one side, so Massimo and I went to have a look. How nice. |
The rest of the afternoon was spent at home sewing Francesca's dress until that night Alice, Fra and I went out to eat with some friends from Alice's class at an "all-you-can-eat" Chinese restaurant and I learnt the valuable lesson that Asian food in Europe is almost inedible in comparison to Asian food in Australia!
 |
| Elena and Alice |
 |
| At some point, one of the boys at the table pulled out from his wallet old Italian money, "Lire". Italy only changed from the Italian Lire to the Euro in the year 2000, so they still speak often about their currency and certain phrases like "I don't have even one Lire" are ways of saying "I don't have any money", although this was the first time I had actually seen the money! |
On Friday Alice's friends organised to have a picnic, although thanks to the rainy weather it was held inside at Gaia's house. Alice and I spent the morning shopping before going to Gaia's house which was a lot of food-and-wii-dance-filled fun.
On Saturday we had a day at home so I Skyped my parents, and that night something exciting happened! After speaking only Italian since Tuesday I was able to watch my first movie in Italian without any subtitles (a thriller called 40 Carati (40 Carats in English)) and I understood everything!
After going for a run on Sunday morning I was excited to come to home to my first package in the mail! It was from my friend Jayana, who is also doing exchange this year, but in Denmark. It was a book, because this year within my group of friends, being our first year out of school, we are doing doing completely different things with our lives, many of us especially staying away from home for some part of the year. So we came up with the idea to have a book that we mail around to each person and each person can write something about their year and put in something representing where they are and what they're doing, so this was the first time it arrived to me and I was very excited!
 |
| My first package! |
 |
| The book and a few souvenirs and sweets from Denmark! |
I then decided it might be a good idea to add an Australian touch to Fra's party and decided to back some ANZAC Biscuits. Although it is important to note that whilst in Australia our recipes are often written using cups and tablespoons/teaspoons as measurements, in Italy they've never even heard of that system and only use grams. Long story short, it turns out that a coffee cup is not the same size as a measurement cup and my feeble attempts to make it work resulted in the worst ANZAC biscuits I have ever seen or tasted in my life. Ever.
 |
An embarrassment to Australia. I'm sorry I even added the flag.
Thank God I didn't try Pavlova. |
In any event my spirits were lifted when I went over to the party and there was Pesto Lasagne again, after which the rest of the day was spent eating until we went home and I continued sewing my dress!
 |
| Pesto lasagne, my love. |
 |
| Backyard soccer, oh how European we all are |
