Roma!
We took a school trip to Rome and Milan for 8 days from November 13th to 21st. The entire student body along with the staff and other guests made up a traveling bunch of about 250. We had almost an entire train to ourselves on the overnight trip to Rome!


In Rome the students stayed in two monasteries at the heart of the center, within walking distance of all the famous places: the coliseum, St. Peter's Basilica, the Vatican, etc.

It was really amazing.



We saw the Pope on the first day, and had a private audience with President Giorgo Napolitano (of Italy). At the Papa Benedetto's appearance 5 of us or so got to go up to the front row of everything and see the pope from about 5 feet away. It was really a neat experience. There were other events; a conference on Eastern Europe, a recital by ex-music scholars, and various cultural visits and dinners; but besides these, we had lots of free time to see the city and get to know the area. I feel pretty confident now that I know my way around central Rome!
I took loads of pictures.
It's hard to say what I liked the most about Rome because there was little about that part of the trip that I didn't like. I guess highlights include lunch at Circo Massimo with Shashank and Ammar, taking pictures of the Coliseum at sunrise, taking pictures in general, having American food at Hard Rock Cafe with Heidi, Diana, Salma and Elroy, getting lost with Urska on multiple occasions, cozy cafes, and just wandering around Rome in general.
On the last day I got to see Lucy's sister Nora who is on Rotary in Sicily, and got to have dinner with Lillian, an old friend from Senegal who's been in Rome for about a year.

Then, on Monday (Nov. 19th), we all took buses to Milan where we stayed with host families! We had a meeting with the Mayor of Milan and other important people, but the best part of the experience in Milan was, for me, the host families.
Adesso parlo italiano!
Now I speak Italian! This is a little bit of an exaggeration because I am still very far from being totally comfortable speaking, but I can communicate now and after about 1.5 days with my family/host sister and their friends, I was communicating quite comfortably.
La mia sorella italiana si chiama Beatrice. My italian family couldn't have been nicer and more hospitable and invited me to come back and stay when I'm in Milan next!
I loved hanging out with Italian teenagers for the first time and really speaking the language for a while with people my own age.

Both the cities were lots of fun, I had a great time in general.

We took buses back to Duino on Wednesday, and had school off on Thursday to recover. Coincidentally enough it also happened to be thanksgiving so the Americans spent the afternoon cooking and we had dinner at Anne and Jean-Paul's flat (teachers and residence tutors of Pala) because Anne is American. They had a 25 lb. turkey (which I of course didn't eat) and we had loads of other nice food.
It was fantastic.
Then we had school on Friday, and the weekend again!

I realized that tomorrow I will have been here 3 months and that yesterday we only had 3 weeks left until winter break!
It's weird how fast it's gone but how I still feel like I've been here forever. It will be nice to be back home for a while though to see my family and have some familiarity, but it will also be hard to be away from the people here for so long.

Ciao!