Buon Natale!

Christmas Time is my favorite time of the year!! Besides the fact that Im Jewish and I don't even celebrate the holiday, the atmosphere is always so loving and fun and warm!! People get super excited for Christmas Here! My other host family started decorating their house at the end of November for Christmas, maybe even before that It seems like!!

I am actually pretty excited to finally celebrate christmas for the first time!! I have already helped decorate 2 christmas trees!! Its so much fun! And also my other favorite activity to do is eat the amazing Christmas time sweets. In Milan one of their signature deserts which almost every eats during this time is Pandoro, or Panatone, it is special for Milan and its basically this huge volcano shaped cake bigger than the size of my head! And the Pandoro is with out stuff inside like just plain and the other one has raisens or chocolate chips. They come in a huge bag and what you do is open the bag pour a huge thing of powdery goodness on top and then shake the bag as hard as you can so its all over the cake mmmm is sooo good!! Its so biggg gah I want to go eat it right now im getting so hungry writing this! Moving on... So, December 13th is a holiday is certain parts of Italy called Santa' Lucia, in Milano they don't celebrate this but specifically in Brescia they do! So, all or atleast most of the kids from AFS in Lombardia all met in Brescia for this holiday and celebrated it!! Basically for the places in Italy where they celebrate this they get all their christmas presents the 13th, and also lots of candy! And then when its christmas they still celebrate it normally but without getting the gifts on Christmas day! So, when we got to Brescia all of us kids got different costumes in the Christmas theme and dressed up to be in a parade around Brescia! I was an elf! there was also, santa clauses, lumberjacks, angels, mooses, and one girl was santa lucia! After taking many pictures we went around in a huge long line and paraded around the center of Brescia. Since I was an elf I got to be in the front of the line and helped giving out candy to everyone we passed and saying "caramellle? Buon Natale! Auguri!" It was fun! Every few minutes we would then all stop in one spot and start christmas caroling, basically singing, jingle bells, we wish you a merry christmas, ect. Unfortunatley, we had no practice, and half of us didnt know the words to any song!! I felt bad for all the public gathering around us hoping for this like professional choir and we sucked it was hilarious at one point of the volunteers made me go in the front of all 50 of us and help him sing "all I want for christmas is you" which about 5 people knew the words to so that was a fail! At the end of our little parade we actually came across like a marching band so we joined them and as they played we would sing which I think boosted our amount of goodness with them in the background! Also, it was SOOO cold outside! But overall it was a super fun day and at the end we all went and got yummy hot chocolate! By the way, Hot Chocolate in Italy is NOT equal to american, it is like super thick and kindof like hot fudge syrup but its amazing! Esp when you get it with gelato in the inside!! YUMMM Food here is amazinggggggg!

Lets see, hmm well AFS Monza had a christmas Party on Friday night and we all had to bring food so I brought my signature cookie cake and also I made this amazing mexican dip thing which everyone loved!! Unfortunatley the cookie cakes I keep making suck!! I made 2 cookie cakes because I had to bring one into my school christmas party the next day and both of them had way too much butter in them!! Oh well they were still rly good! Sooo hmm yah my school xmas party was about 4 hours long! During the morning of saturday which was our last day! There was soo much food! And also something that would never happen in the US, 2 bottles of champagne which we were drinking in school at our party and also beer, this is so funny for me because this would NEVER happen in the us but hey when in Rome... anyways, I am so excited for this winter break and to celebrate xmas for the first time! Tomorrow I am going to venice and verona with Jasmine and its freezing, snowy and all the water in venice is super high so its gonna be crazy! Ill be sure to write about that!

XOXO Mollie

La Scuola Italiana

Ciao Tutti!

Today is December 9th meaning I have officially not been in the United States for exactly 3 months today. It is seriously crazy to think that it has already been 3 months because it went by super fast and so many things have happened in such little time!! Recently some fun things I have done include, changing families(which is NOT FUN), then since my new host brother is a bycyclist I went to his race in milan which he came in 1st place in all of Lombardia for! He is super good, but hes always working out or doing something for his races everyday its very time consuming, anyways I went to the race in the pouring rain, and I have never been so muddy and wet in my entire life! It was also interesting to watch all the jacked racers getting changed...weirdly enough in the same room as the girl racers in their underwear while rubbing some weird oil all over their bodies and I think I was the only one who though it was a little strange but hey im in italy I guess thats how they do it here no problem there it was a nice show! Anyways, I have been in Milan a lot lately and now they have a huge Christmas Tree in the center of Duomo its soo beautiful!! I love Milan! Sometimes I wish I lived right in the city but im pretty close to it anyways so its not big deal because its not a hard place to get to when I want. I was lucky enough to have this Monday and Tuesday off from school, meaning 1. I got to finally get one nice day of sleep in that I had been waiting for! and 2. Me, Jasmine, her family, and Eva got to go to the Fiera in Milan, there was a HUGE I mean MASSIVE craft shop type thing there it lasts about one week and it has shops from all over the world literally every country, The US section had tons of western cowboy type things that were weird I wasnt impressed but there was sooo much it was so overwhelming! We got there around 2 or 3 in the afternoon and left at 10:30 at night meaning we walked around the whole day in this one place and I didnt even see all of it thats how big it was!!! The picture above me jasmine and Eva took with some random Tiki person we found at the Fiera. NOW moving on to what this entry is actually sopposed to be abouttt!

ITALIAN SCHOOL!! Well lots of you keep asking me about school so I guess I will thoroughly explain or attempt atleast to explain school here. They have 5 years of elementary school, then 3 of middle school and 5 of high school. One thing I find really funny is that in elementary and Preschool here all the kids have to wear the same smock/doctor gown to school everyday which is soo ugly and all the kids look like little ghost children but oh well. For elementary and middle school they usually don't go on saturdays but LUCKY me in Highschool(Liceo) gets to go Saturday morning bright and early yayy! Sooo here the school system is super different from the US in many many ways. Even if I could think of all of them right now it would take forever to write all 10000 of them down so ill skip to the basic ones. Okay, so here when you enter Highschool you choose what kind of school you want to go into based on what you want to do in the future or atleast for the next 5 years, and this school you choose all the subjects are based around it, for example if you choose Liceo Scientifico ( science) you will have lots of science and math classes, or like me Liceo Artistico, I have lots of design classes and not much math or science. I have heard of tons of different highschools they have here such as, Scientifico, Classico( greek, philosophy, latin stuff), Artistico, Sportivo(tons of gym class), Technologico, Economia, Linguistico, Cooking, Farming, Film, and a bunch of random others. Becuase here you cant choose any electives or anything you choose which school you want and they come with I guess you could call them electives but pretty much all classes seem equal to me here in the wanting value of it all. Now, when I say you choose which "school" you want you are choosing the school in the form of study, there isnt actually a school for only science and a different building is an art school they are all in the same building, for example, my school has Scientific-Teconologic, Artistic, Sportivo,and ITIS( another easier form of school kind of science), and thats it. My school doesn't offer Latin to any of the students while most Liceos have it. Also even though im in Liceo Artistico its actually artistico-tecnologico, so a lot of times we have tech classes more than actual art classes. Here instead of saying im in 9th or 10th grade in Highschool well every school here they say im in 1st 2nd 3rd year so technically im in 3rd grade here!! Also here, your classmates stay the same and you never move classrooms you always stay in the same place and the teachers come to you! yay lazyness! Now I am going to write down my schedule and what I do in all my interesting classses!!! I start school at 8:15 and end at 1:45 everyday except wednesday I end at 4.

MONDAY( LUNEDI):

1st hr: Italian Litterature ( studying poems and authors of italy, interpreting latin poems FUN)

2nd hr: Philosophy ( learning ab philosophers! but from a book...lecture style...and not the actual philosophy of it the life of the philosophers)

INTERVALO (1o min break)- during this time everyone goes outside and smokes..even teachers or goes to the bar(cafe) and gets a panino or coffee or hang out in the halls

3rd hour: Math( math is hard in italy! but right now were doing geometry which I did last year so im doing super good)

4th hour: Physics ( I have no idea whats going on in this class its so confusing!!! but somehow im passing! yay being a foreign exchange student)

INTERVALO (10 more mintues)

5th and 6th hour: VISIVA..drawing class( we just did profile designs of faces but now were making collages)

TUESDAY ( MARTEDI):

1st and 2nd hr: Chemistry ( confusing! we take notes, read from our book, pretty similar to science in the US, prob more boring)

INTERVALO

3rd hour: English( were studying shakespear time and also grammar...im failing the shakespear section right now yay!)

4th Hr: History of Art( first I hated this class but now its actually really interesting now that I understand italian and know what my teachers saying)

INTERVALO

5th hour: NOTHING ( my class has religion and I go to the library and go on facebook!)

6th hr: Math (again!)

WEDNESDAY ( MERCOLEDI) (long ass day)

1st and 2nd hr: Italian Litterature

INTERVALO

3rd and 4th hr: Chemistry(for this day I go to prima and I do experiments in the lab with them white lab coat and all)

INTERVALO

5th hr: Math

6th hr: Archetecture ( geometric drawings, drawing floor plans for houses, drawing straight lines with rulers is not something im good at so this class i struggle in also measuring everything using the metric system gets confusing)

INTERVALO

7th and 8th hr: GYM ( only 2 hrs a week, its always entertaining seeing how competitive my class gets over a relay race or a volley ball scrimmage)

THURSDAY(GIOVEDI):

1st and 2nd hour: VISIVA ( more drawingss that I suck at)

INTERVALO

3rd and 4th hour: ARCH ( usually thursday we go to the computer lab with the oldest computers ever and make geometric graphs on the computer or powerpoints fun stuff!)

INTERVALO

5th hr: English

6th hr: Physics

FRIDAY( VEDERDI):

1st hr: Math

2nd hr: ARCH

INTERVALO

3rd and 4th hr: History of ART ( my teachers crazyyyy so my class tends to play this game called Manchuria where we all pick a fruit and randomly during the class ppl will yell out names of fruits and if its ur fruit you have to stand up and then sit down and when they say manchuria we all stand up together weve been playing this almost every friday and it rly never gets old but my teacher is always pissseeeddddd ab it)

INTERVALO

5th hr: History ( we've been studying the reniassance which I learned alot ab last year so when I was interogatted on it I didnt have trouble reciting everything from last yr and getting a passing grade yay)

6th hr: Math

Saturday( SABATO):

1st and 2nd hr: ARCH

INTERVALO

3rd and 4th hr: MATH ( for this math I go to scientifico because theyre doing harder math than artistico that I need to learn for the US)

INTERVALO

5th hr: Italian Litterature

6th hr: English

So in conclusion since one day I was super bored and counted all of this I have exactly:

7hrs of math a week ; 4 hrs of Visiva ; 4 hrs of Chemistry ; 4 hrs of Litterature ; 2 hrs of Physics ; 3 hrs of English ; 3 hrs of History of Art ; 6 hrs of Arch. ; 1 hr of Philosophy ; 1 hr of History ; 2 hrs of Gym...yup thats ab it!!! I really find the schools here way more strict in general, some classes when my teacher walks in we all have to stand up as they enter and we cant sit back down until they do, its very formal. I honestly I written so much I cant feel my fingers so I am going to stop here but I could really keep writing if I wanted to for hours ab school!! Thats all for nowww...CIAOOOOOOOOOOOOO xoxoxo