These past few weeks I have learned a ton bout the current situation with the government in italy as well as how the youth today are responding to it. Each day I always feel like i've progressed more than the last and I'm learning so much! This week at school is called autogestazioni. This means that the students together organize themselves for the week full of courses and lessons different from normal everyday school lessons. The students become the teachers for a week and take over the school. At first the president of our school resists and says that it's not possible for us students to do this, but after a small manifestazioni outside her office she gave in and decided to let the kids do it. If she didn't let the students do it then the students will break into the school and occupy it even during nighttime. This happened at the old school I used to go to. The students protest against the president of the school and he gives over the keys to them, then the kids all sleep in the shool at night and during the day they do autogesttazioni courses. This is a different type of protest against the government to get attention to the schools. It seems like a totally different world here! At my school we don't sleep over in it, we have the classes during the day and we can choose from a range of things to take. Yesterday I saw a course on hip hop dancing, juggling, politics, graffetti( designing on paper not on walls) a jam session where people bring their instruments and play together, and I dragged one of my friends to a conversational english class as well. Today I did courses on CPR, media awareness, drug awareness, watched a soccer game, helped teach the english course to students and then finished the day off with a salsa dancing lesson! It really amazes me how united the students are here, even with other schools the students are able to come together to organize themselves and make themselves heard. All of the students of the school all work together. I've met so many different people this week because it's a different atmosphere than the normal classes and it's so much fun! On Monday I got interviewed for the school newspaper, all conducted in italian.
Outside of school last week I mentioned I was trying a course on circus with my friend from school. I went last wednesday and tried out the unicycle, the balance beam, juggling, tight rope walking, summersaults off the balance beam and did acrobatics with a group of people who made pyramids and other statues. It was such a different class from what I've done before and it was very very fun! On the weekend I went running alot because it was nice and sunny out and I ran over 20 kilometers last weekend. This weekend I went to my friends house of vacation in the countryside. There were around twenty of us and we all took the train there together. We went to her house because she had her birthday this week so we went to her birthday party there. It was surrounded by beautiful scenery, rolling hills with trees and fields. There were lemon trees in her yard as well as olive trees. I always learn things even when I don't mean too. I learned that italians don't believe in fast food. In Canada for parties the normal routine is to swing by costco for an hour or so and pick up a giant quantity of food to fee everyone. But here everyone cooks their own food all the time. At the part there were platters of homemade tartes and omelettes and potatoe something or others. And then for dinner of course pasta with olives and vegetables. We all danced and sang and people played guitar and it was one of the most fun weekends i've had here. I've also made a breakthrough on the exchange student front too! I'm extremely happy about this because from the time we got here until now we haven't had connection with any other exchange students except the ones in our club. Last week i decided to get a list from my councillor and e-mailed all of the exchange students on it. We were then informed that there's a facebook group with all the exchange students in it. Now after school we've been talking to eachother and trying to organize to meet up and experience eachothere cities. Today there's three girls coming to my house from bologna and they will stay here for this weekend. We plan on going on a tour of Rome with them and showing them around. I think it'll be really good to meet other exchange students from other parts of the world.
Right now the weather is not cold, but it's not hot either. I'm currently wearing shorts.. but with tights underneath them. it's been raining almost every single day this past week which is normal for this time period. When it rains in Rome, the whole city goes crazy and nothing gets done very fast. One day on my way to school we spent over ten minutes trying to get across one intersection in the bus. It was like a symphony of everyone's different sounding car horns all at one time. For ten minutes. I spotted the first christmas decorations last week showing up around the streets. It feels still like the ending of summer for me so it seems really weird to see Christmas decorations now! Per Christmas I'll be staying at my friends house for a few weeks. This is to experience another Italian family and also because my host family doesn't celebrate Christmas.
As for the Italian, it's coming along really well. Each day I learn new words and I only speak to my friends in Italian. In class I still don't understand alot but I think it may just be because it's school and it's hard to think in a different language early in the morning. But then other times if I'm hanging out with friends and someones talking about something funny I start laughing with everyone and then I have to stop and think, wow did I actually just understand that?! That's my favourite when I understand what everyone is talking about. I think my english has gotten worse now. This is the only time I write in english so i don't have much practice at writing it.