SCHOOL'S OUT FOR SUMMER

3/6 - 9/6

The last week of school was for all of the students an overload of assessment, for Chiara and Mago time to go to Prague to celebrate their wedding anniversary and for me a great opportunity to catch up on some blogging (...some).

That was, until the fun started on Friday; the last day of the school year! The best part? It was a short day, so instead of finishing at 5pm we finished at 2pm! For the first few hours my class kept on finishing their final exams, but I entertained myself by sitting in the back making fairy bread for my class and Alice's class, to add to the Lamingtons I had baked with Alice the night before (at 1.30AM). Finally, at 11.00 the bell rang for the first break and we pushed all of the desks together to make a big food table, put everything else to the sides of the classroom and had a feast! The rest of the day went on like this, all of the classes in their classroom eating, talking, listening to music or in the case of my class having a sing-a-long, as one of the boys played his guitar. I had a lot of fun "party bouncing" from my class to Alice's class and back again. The next best part was that the teachers (who in Italy have a very, very formal relationship with students and almost never chat to students outside of class etc) were in on the fun and went from class to class taking food and a lot of them even joined in on our sing-a-long!

Maria Pia and I

Cathy and Mapi

Australian party food!

The girls playing in the park

Andrea and Fabio

My class and our party food!

Yes, that is a home-made lasagne you see in the top right hand corner that someone prepared and brought for everyone
Amazing

On the left: Prof. Visconti, maths and physics teacher
On the right: Prof. Dendi, English teacher and vice principal

Carlotta, me and Regine

Alice's class's feast!

Alice's class <3

Viola and I

Ludo and  I

Myself, Margherita and Bianca

Bianca and I!

Back to my class, Ettore singing to Prof. Dendi

Myself, Visconti and Cathy

Visconti, Tania and Dendi

Cathy, myself and Prof. Sturaro, the teacher of Latin, Greek and Italian

Cathy and I! <3
#vivanapo

Carlotta, myself and Tania

Maria Giovanna and Cathy

Arianna, Alice and Martina

Sing-a-longs!

Yes, that is Gangnam style. 

My favourite bidella, Rosa!

The shirts the "seniors" made for their last day ever of school; the character on the left is Prof. Sturaro, the one on the right is a student flying away with the highest mark you can get on the graduation test

Prof. Lodi; history and phylosophy

Prof. Lunardini; Law and Economics

Finally, the craziest part of the day was when my class announced that it was time to do the toast and went around getting everyone to come back to our classroom for it. A few teachers then overheard and were extremely excited, telling other teachers to come too because my class had wine! It hadn't occurred to me but as in Italy the drinking age is 16, it was completely okay for the teachers to be there, encouraging us to pop the cork and toast all together. 

Sara and Regine

Alessandra and I

Carlotta!

A few minutes before 2.00 everyone gathered around in the main hall and tried to do a count down for the bell to ring, marking the start of the three-month-long summer holiday! Although no one had their clock set exact enough for the countdown part to work, it was a great scene when the bell finally rang everyone started jumping up and down and screaming and cheering and clapping! After taking a photo with Cathy and Maria Giovanna, I turned around then to see Alice's class and was absolutely shocked to find almost all of them crying. Then I remembered that, as in Italy if you want to do an exchange year you can only do it in the fourth year of high school (the year Alice's class will start from September), so several of Alice's classmates wouldn't be returning the next September or for a year or six months after that. For me that meant that I wouldn't get to see some of my good friends, Viola, Margherita and Chiara, again before I leave to go back to Australia, so shortly I was in tears too.

As soon as we finally got out the doors of the school and onto the street we got more and more excited that that was the last time we'd be at school for a whole three months! And Alice found out that she had passed all of her subjects, meaning she wouldn't have to study at all during the summer! Alice, Nadia, Sara and I headed to Duomo jumping and dancing around!

Alice, just a little bit excited

The reason, in fact, that we were with Nadia and Sara looking around and doing nothing (we even stopped for a very Australian-style slurpie as the sun and heat was feeling very Australia-like) was because Sara has decided that next year she will move to the Linguistic part of our school, so she won't be in Alice's class anymore. She's been a bit worried about making the move, not being in the same class as all her friends anymore and having to make new friends in the Lingusitic class, so Alice and her friends had organised a little surprise party for her at Sara's own house, even with the help from Sara's Mum!

Me, Sara and Nadia!

Decorations the girls put up in Sara's house

"Sarai sempre una di noi" which means "You will always be one of us"

After the surprise party Alice and I went home and, seeing as Mago and Chiara were still away, put on some loud music to dance around for a while, before spending the rest of the night comfortably in front of the TV, because SCHOOL. IS. FINISHED!