I just realized now how fast time went by this month! It feels like Christmas was yesterday! I've done a lot since my last blog.
A few days after Christmas me and my host family and Anna went to Napoli for the day together. It was about four hours by train. In Napoli there were more palm trees than Rome and it had a bit more of a tropical feeling. It looked alot like typical Italian cities with little streets and markets selling things. There was one street with all of the characters sold for nativity sets for Christmas. The nativity set is a big Italian tradition especially in Napoli. We went for a walk around the city to see a few various sites like the Duomo and an ancient castle with the view of the mediterranean. We ate Napoletanean pizza and a typical napolitanean dolce called "babba." It's shapped like a little cone, made out of sweet bread and inside is liquid rum. There was also napolitanean sweets that looked like sea shells with ricotta cheese in the center. Napoli was a really fun trip and it was y first time being more south than Rome in italy.
After Napoli for New Years went with my friends to a city called Siena for New Years. It was close to Florence but we didn't go to Florence because we just were there for one night. Siena looked a lot different than Naples with tall skinny trees and rolling hills. It was very pretty! We stayed in the house of my friend with about 25 other people to celebrate New Years. We took the train there and back and it was about five hours each way. It was a New Years to remember for sure! The train ride was beautiful on the way back with the sun setting behind the hills and the little country houses in the background. It looked like a scene from a magazine, typical wine country setting.
On January 6th there was a national holiday called Ebifania. It is a day to celebrate the man made by god. The tradition for Ebifania is to put a sock like a christmas stocking by the fireplace for the Bafana to come and put gifts and sweets inside. For Christmas we do this is north America but not in Italy. The Befana is actually a friendly witch who flies to each house. We opened a few small sweets in the morning and little presents. It wasn't a big celebratory day but a day where families are together and not working.
The 10th of January I started a new course of Italian that's for three weeks long. It's a course for foreigners to learn Italian grammar and the basics of the language. I'm in the second level with other eleven people. There's three from China, two from Venezuela, one from Poland, three from the U.S, one from Mexico, one from Lebia, and me. We all speak only Italian because it's the only common language we have. The course is during normal school hours and after these three weeks I will go back to the other school. I do homework everyday for the course like it's normal school and I'm really liking it because it teaches me all of the grammar that I didn't know before. It's also very fun to talk to other from around the world and learn about their cultures.
On January 15th was my 18th birthday. In Europe 18 is the big birthday like 16 is a big one for us. Everyone celebrates with friends and is normally a big event. the two Venezueleans in my Italian class made a typical Venezuelan food for me and the rest of the class. It was a sandwich normally eaten in the morning. It had pulled meat with spices and sauce between two slices of homemade bread with corn flour fried with the frying pan. I had a big party with my friends at night, glow in the dark where everyone wore white t-shirts and we all celebrated until the morning. My friends gave me a new pair of rollerblades for my birthday beause they go rollerblading parkour sometimes and I didn't have any to go with them. We all went yesterday actually and it was so fun!
I moved houses this week again. Now I live in a family of four people, dad, mom, and two daughters. One of the daughters spent two months in Australia a year ago for a short term Exchange and then four months in the States this year for another Exchange. She speaks English very well as well as German because she went to a German school. We're the same age and it's really fun to live with her. Her sister also speaks English and has studied in France last year. We speak Italian always though. I live in the center of Rome now near a famous plazza called Piazza del Popolo. It's a realy nice area to live in, close to everything downtown and the family is really nice. The only thing that's not so good is right now there ìs a soccer game between Roma and Lazio which means the city is completely blocked with traffic and the sound of horns blaring non-stop! Soccer games between Roma and Lazio are insanely crazy because Soccer is Italy's sport and Roma is in the province of Lazio so it's two teams of the same area competing against eachother. I want to go see a match one time but the fans are a little crazy and it can be sometimes very dangerous to go!