Three months in Milan!

29/4 - 5/5
On Monday this week at school I was talking to my English teacher about improving my Italian and she suggested that I try and listen to some music in Italian. I then spent all day asking my class and Alice's class for suggestions of what songs are nice in Italian and that night, talking about it with Alice, she mentioned to me that I could listen to Disney songs. I was amazed. As it turns out, all disney films are translated into several languages, which means all of the songs are translated and re-recorded too! I still cannot believe what good news this is!

Naturally, I immediately went to download all of my favourites

On Tuesday during lunchtime I was chatting to one of my friends in my class, Tania, who is in fact Russian as her family moved to Italy when she was ten. For some fun she was teaching me a few phrases in Russian and somehow we got to talking about how it was written, and she showed me by writing everyone's names on the board!

Madeline written in Russian!

Wednesday, then, was a public holiday! Honestly, I didn't understand exactly what for, but it was nice to stay home sewing while it rained outside.

Thursday was then, a very celebratory day. Firstly because it was pizza day at school, which, as we all know well, means that there's gelatooooooo!

Secondly because, being the 2nd of May it marked exactly three months from when I came to Milan and moved in with the Massettis, so during dinner Fra very cutely found three candles and put them inside a piece of bread and they sang me happy birthday in Italian.

On Friday I was excited to find that during Italian we did something fun and interesting as usually I don't participate in Italian because they read very old literature in ye olde Italian that I'm not able to understand.

In Italian, it's important to understand that the "real" Italian is usually only spoken on a day to day basis in Tuscany, namely, Florence. Everywhere else there are a number of "accents" and "dialects" that exist, although it is also true that in some places dialect is dying or dead. For example in Naples dialect is still spoken every day, only at school and watching television do you hear real Italian in Naples, whereas in Milan dialect is spoken rarely, only by grandparents. The way it is dying out is generally that today, the Grandparent-aged generation speak the dialect, the Parent-aged generation understand the dialect and the son/daught-generation (everyone around my age) aren't able to speak or understand the dialect. 

Point of the story, the lesson of Italian was looking at the way in which it is often impossible to translate from one language to the other literally, without losing the meaning. So the teacher had taken a number of songs that had been translated; from spanish to italian, italian to english, etc etc. He put the lyrics of both versions on the board and we listened to the song and heard the way that they had changed the phrases,  at times completely, to try and keep the story the same. The most interesting example was when he took a song that was in old Milanese dialect and put the Italian translation on the board, so we could see how close (or far) the dialect was from Italian today.

Although it's hard to see, the left-hand side is Milanese dialect and the right-hand side is Italian

When I was on the Florence trip with WEP, all of us who met in Rome spoke about how much we wanted to catch up again before the people on 6-month programs went home and everyone decided it would be great to do at least a day in Milan as I am the only one from the group who lives in Milan here and the rest of them wanted to see it, so I offered to play tour guide.

One of the Australian girls, Keira, lives in Rome here so the train trip is quite long and expensive and doesn't really merit a day-trip, so she asked me if it would be possible to stay for the whole weekend with me and my host family. When I asked Chiara she loved the idea and told me I could also invite another friend to stay if I wanted, so I asked my Swiss friend who lives north of Milan here, Céline, to come and stay with us. So on Saturday morning Chiara dropped Alice (as Alice had to go to tutoring later) and I in Milan with Louise while she went to do something for work and we went for a walk through some of the markets before going back to the office until Keira arrived. Around midday I went and got Keira from the train station and took her to have lunch in my favourite Pizzeria, the Egyptian one where we often go.

Alice from the window of Chiara's office

Looking down at a typical Milanese street from Chiara's office

Talking Louise for a walk

Recently in Milan there was a week-long festival of design, so a number of different events took place. One of them, it seems, involved putting coloured frogs in the river so that they could race each other to the end and decorating all of the houses on either side of the river with the same coloured frogs!

Saturday markets

Corso di Porta Ticinese, one of the best shopping streets which is very close to Chiara's office

Pizza!

Soon after we had finished eating, Céline arrived too, so we went to meet her in Duomo before I started showing them around and we did some shopping.

Oh...and stopped to get Yoghurt from the new Yoghurt place that just opened near Chiara's office! 

We found a little store that I had never noticed before called "Cupcake Couture" which was so so cute and Céline even bought a recipe book!

Céline and I waiting while Keira tried something on

Keira first clothing purchase in Milan!

Keira and Céline's first time to Zara!

That night, we had prepared earlier the menu of the evening so we could have a proper "Cascina Rovina dinner".

Menus on the plates, ready to go

Céline brought along with her some typical Swiss sweets for us for dessert called "Magebroot" which turned out to be absolutely amazing! Especially after they were decorated with all of the appropriate flags.

At some point during the dinner conversation the topic of Australia's "Big Things" came up and Céline found it absolutely hard to believe and hilarious that in Australia we actually have things like the big banana, the big fish, the big guitar, the big pineapple and so on and so forth. So we made a diagram to help her picture it!

The next morning we got up early so Chiara could take us in to meet up with the rest of the group.

The Naviglio in the early morning

Keira and I

Céline and I

We met with five others, Ellen, Alex, Ishka, Georgia and Ben in Duomo and the first thing we wanted to do was go to see the inside, but without thinking Keira and I were wearing dress that left our shoulders and knees uncovered, which in Italy means you can't go inside. Determined, however, to make sure everyone got the most out of their time in Milan we decided to compromise; to make shirts I took Georgia's denim jacket and Georgia took Ben's jumper, then from underneath we pulled our dresses down until they made skirts long enough to cover our knees. Still, neither of us can believe we were actually dressed so ridiculously for even a moment in the dead centre of Milan, nor that they actually let us go inside!

A photo one of the other girls took of me in this moment which I didn't know about until it finished on the internet. Classic.

After the traumatic trip into the Cathedral it was time to go on the roof! I've been wanting to go up ever since I arrived but never found the right moment, but this day even had the perfect weather for it.

Me, Céline, Georgia, Keira and Ishka

By the time we arrived on the roof it was almost lunch time and as we had organised for everyone to bring along something typical from their town we decided to have a picnic on the roof!

Going back down to the street I walked everyone up Corso Vittoria Emanuela (shopping shopping shopping), past my school and then we got on the bus to go to my favourite Gelateria near Chiara's office, Cioccolati Italiani.

Just as we were finishing our gelatos it started to rain, but we soldiered through and I continued my tour through a few more of my favourite places; a tiny street full of vintage stores, a shop where Maltesers are sold (the ONLY shop where Maltesers are sold), circling back around to Duomo.

Shopping selfie!

 Quickly though it was time for Keira to catch her train so Keira, Céline and I ran to Chiara's office where we had left their bags that morning and onto the metro to get Chiara to the train just on time!

Céline, Keira and I just before Keira left

By the time Céline and I caught up with the others they were waiting for their trains too, so we sat down to eat some Thai food for about an hour or so, talking about everything, until finally their trains came too.

The trains arrivals and departures at Milano Centrale