water shape: Memories from Italy

It's been a while, guys! Does anyone ever read this blog? I sure hope so! My computer is quite uncooperative at the moment so I hope this even makes it through! Can I even write in English?

Italy was an incredible experience. I was really worried beforehand about so many things, but everything turned out really well and I found out – once again – that I’m just an uptight worrywart and I need to loosen up a bit. The only thing that I might be regretting is the amount of money I spent *cough* Kiko *cough*.

The whole week was, to put it bluntly, amazing. Though I ended up burning my shoulders on the second day and denying it for the rest of the week and they still felt a bit burnt when we came back to Finland, everything was so dazzling, gorgeous, marvelous – I don’t think I’m ever going to forget this experience.

Cinque Terre was... I don’t think I even have the words for this. It was so incredible – the scenery was simply so beautiful. Unfortunately I don’t have many pictures – I didn’t have a camera and my phone’s camera is not exactly good, but I do have something! I think.

Yeah, here we go.

I’m also very proud of the fact that I understood some Italian, and by that I mean that I actually understood something, not just “I recognized one word of that sentence yay”, but I could really understand whole sentences at times. I was also able to practice my French a little bit, as my host family’s mother spoke it. I assume my English conversation skills have improved vastly thanks to this project too.

One thing I’m still very confused about is the last day in Firenze. We were eating at McDonald’s (imagination what’s that) and one of the employees, the only one who spoke English even a bit, first asked if I’m working and then, when I said that I’m a student, asked me about my age and then told it to everyone else behind the counter. And all their faces looked so surprised and I think I heard something along the lines of “no way” and I’d still like to have an explanation for this?

The school was great, too! It's a pity we couldn't get our own violins, I would have loved to play in the orchestra myself, but I don't think I would have been able to play a violin I'm not used to. But singing in the choir was very enjoyable too, I think. At least it sounded really cool!

Oh, and about Pisa too! The weather wasn’t so nice, unfortunately, but I had a nice time there too (bye bye money). The tower was somewhat of a disappointment, though. I don’t know what I was expecting, but when we got there the tower just sort of was there and I got this feeling like I should have been more impressed. Maybe it had something to do with the amount of people all around it, I don’t know.

I miss you guys!