SMILE

Ciao!!!! So this week has been awfully crazy. I don’t even know where to start. Finally I can say I am not horribly homesick. I think I was so homesick because I was bored and had nothing else to do but to think about home. But I’ve found ways to keep myself busy. The gym has been good. I like the bikes. Yesterday, March 2nd, I went to the gym. It was all great and I was feeling a little thinner when I looked down…I have a gut. Stupid bread! I now like doing crunches and other random ways to help my bread-belly decrease. I decided also to put myself on a diet. I know you are probably thinking, “A diet?!?! While in Italy, the place known for their amazing food?!!?!” well, it’s not totally like that. My diet consists of no seconds, unless super starving, and less bread. So it’s not really a diet, but maybe those seconds and extra bread are making up my pouch right now. So about 2 weeks ago I found out about a trip thing that AFS has planned, called “exchange week”. “Exchange week” consists of me (an AFS student) picking a place in Italy to stay for a week. While there, I will get to go to local museums and do AFS planned adventures. Since I am located in northern Italy, riding along the Alps, I of course decided to go south. I really wanted to go to Sicily, but Sicily is a very popular place and they can only allow so many students in each area. I was pretty much thinkin I wasn’t going to Sicily, when Elisa, my local chapter volunteer, called me and told me that Monique (an Australian girl also in Udine) and I are both going to Sicily and to the same city. Ahhhhhh yay! I am now super pumped. The reason for this trip is not only to see and experience a different part of Italy, but to experience it with other AFS students that you are friends with because otherwise we don’t really get so see each other unless we are really close. I will be staying in Calt……I don’t know. It’s in the center of Sicily, but the name is long and I was too excited to remember it. It’s a big city, so if you look on a map, you should find it easily. I leave on March 20th and return March 27th. Then the next day I get to go to Austria! We were supposed to go Saturday, the 27th, but “exchange week” interfered. So I will just go a day late. We are going to see some friends and family of my host family. Oh and in May I get to go to Trieste—a city south and to the right of Venice—for a race thing. I am still a little confused on what exactly it is, but AFS invites everyone close and we get to run in it together. It should be fun. I can’t wait for this next month. I can’t believe it’s already March. I think I am less homesick now because I realize I can’t mope around being homesick any longer, because before I know it, it will be time to go and I would have had a poopy attitude the whole time and had no fun. So from now on, well as much as I can control, no more being homesick.

On a different note…school is good. I think I will be switching to an older class some time this month. I will miss my new friends, but hey…this means more chances to make new friends. It’s getting warmer. I now don’t wear a scarf everyday and I am back to my black jacket—the one I bought, but was too cold to use at the beginning so I was using one the family let me use. Usually on the way to school we don’t see the sun rise, it just slowly gets light and the sky is covered by a thick layer of gray clouds. The past few days, we actually see the sun. It’s so beautiful! When the sun is out, the mountains light up and you can see the fresh snow and it feels like they are close enough to touch. I have begun taking pictures randomly, like as I walked to the gym or on the way home from school. The landscape, besides the mountains, has become normal to me now, but I realize that it isn’t for you…so I am trying to capture everyday views so you can feel like you’re here.

It is getting late here…well for me. We go to bed like super early here…it’s actually kind of nice  well anyways. I am going to go to bed. I love you and miss (but not in a homesick way) you.

XOXO
Sarah.