Chapter 17: Whaaaaaat? Regan finally updated her blog? OMG

The family + family of Dani + Pino Pardo AFS

A few months ago Alessia, my host sister, asked me if I had updated my blog recently, "Nah, I can't figure out what to write about," I replied.  And I realized, I can't think of anything to write about because my life feels normal here –normal, in the sense that I don't feel like the odd one out anymore, not in the sense that I am not stunned every single day by the beauty and history of my cute, little Sicilian city. 

One of the very first pictures we took together 

I still have my routine here; I still have to go to school and do piles of homework that I always put off til the last minute, I still stay up way too late because I lost track of time reading some book, I still eat way more chocolate and pizza than I probably should, and I still laugh the most at my own dumb jokes. But the thing is that I do it all in Italian, nearly 6000 miles away from Prescott where I've lived for the huge majority of my life. Maybe it won't make sense to anyone that hasn't been an exchange student, but this year spent in Italy feels like its only lasted for a week, but at the same time I feel like I've been here for years. My routine is familiar and comfortable here, and it feels like I've been doing it a helluva lot longer than just 9 months.

Ale and I about 3 minutes after meeting each other

Already, today is May 21 and theres only about a month and a half left of my exchange. I can't believe it. I remember arriving at the airport and being smothered with kisses like it was yesterday, even though its been more than 8 months since I first set foot in Sicily. Time is flying! And boy is it such a bittersweet feeling knowing that in a few short weeks I will be leaving home to go home! I can't wait to see my family in Arizona because its been a long, long, long time and we have so much to catch up on but I am also dreading having to say goodbye to everyone here and leaving this year behind. On the bright side, I've already made everyone swear that they'll visit me in AZ and I promised to come visit as often as possible.

A picture that we took in February maybe? About the middle of Exchange

Anyways, I finally had a second to sit down and type out a blog post to let y'all know that I'm still alive and well, and having the time of my life out here!

xx Baci

First sight awwwwh

PS. Here's some pictures that I don't think I've posted from my very first day in Sicily with my family. And some other photos from the beginning of my exchange, the middle, and now the end with two of my closest friends here, Sara and Simona.

The most recent picture of us

PPS. Please text/message/email me y'all's addresses. I want to send out a gazzilion post cards before I leave! 

Chapter 16: Sweet 16

Last Thursday, February 19th, was was my 16th birthday, a birthday that I have been looking forward to since I was a little kid and realized that I was when I could drive a car by myself. It also kicked off one of the best weeks of my exchange so far. 

Thursday: My host family gifted me a beautiful leather purse and my dear friend, Giulia, gave me a matching wallet. Giulia also surprised me at school with donuts, double chocolate muffins, and miniature 3 layer chocolate cake with a candle.  

Friday: My class 3AL, along with my English teachers, threw me another little surprise party with a big chocolate, cream, and fruit cake.

3AL

Saturday: I went out with Giulia and we ate Nutella crepes and a Sicilian treat called "crispelle", which are sort of like churros but 100x better and made with rice instead of wheat or whatever. After these few hours with G Alessia and I were supposed to go to another friend's house for a sleepover but Alessia called and said that there was a problem with the car so the sleepover was off. Giulia offered to take me home on the way to a dinner party that she and her family were heading to but as soon as we entered the house Alessia and her class jumped out of the dark yelling surprise. 

Alessia and me 30 seconds after I nearly had a heart attack
from 20 teenagers jumping out of the dark screaming

Joy, me, and Giulia at the surprise party

Then Sunday evening, my best friends from my class, Simona, Alberto, Sara, and Erika took me out to dinner for pizza. It was a great evening spent laughing, eating, and teasing. They even made a video of all our photos put to music and clips of them wishing me happy birthday, singing, and dancing. We ended the night outside singing random little snippets of all the songs that came to mind. 

I love these kids a ridiculous amount and we're already making plans for them to visit me in AZ. 

Also thank you to ALL of the people that wished me happy birthday! I loved all of the kooky voice messages, the heartfelt letters, and the adorable posts. 

BACI xx

Chapter 15: Time and the Halfway Point of Exchange

Time has a weird way of existing while you are on exchange; days seem to last forever, but weeks seem to pass in seconds.

It has already been 5 months since our plane touched down in Rome, and 5 months since we met our host families, almost 5 months since I started school, and more than 5 months since the last time I saw my biological family in AZ.


It's only been 5 months since I moved out here, but in a lot of ways it feels like I have been here for much, much, much longer.


I can't wait to see what the next 5 months have in store for me!


Grazie a tutti per questi 5 mesi! xx

Chapter 14: Crepes, Nicknames, and the Terrible Weather

First of all, have you ever had a crepe? If the answer is no, you should probably stop reading this and go get one. If the answer is yes, then have you ever had a Nutella crepe made by two 16 or 17 year old boys? I'm guessing that you haven't, but if you have then you are one lucky duck! Anyway, a couple weeks ago, I got to eat Nutella crepes made by two of my friends, Mario and Salvo, and they were heavenly. Apparently, unbeknownst to me, crepes are incredibly easy to make, so the two guys decided to whip some up to silence the whining mouths of the rest of the group. 

Anyway, Mario and Salvo II (because there's two other Salvos') went to work on the crepe batter. By the time Ale (pronounced Al-eh) and I arrived, the batter wasn't looking too good, resembling a chunky mess, and I thought that they were just messing around with random ingredients they had found in the kitchen. But no! Within like, 7 minutes Salvo was flipping crepes and Mario was generously spreading Nutella all over them and folding them into triangles. Salvo was like an artist, flipping each crepe twice and then flinging it over to Mario to lather with Nutella; again and again til they'd made roughly 25. And not a single one went to waste.

A few years ago, like maybe 5, my darling cousin Maddy Mae started calling my Regibear. I don't really remember why, but it's stuck ever since. But I thought that I had left it behind in Arizona, and I didn't think anyone would pick up on it. I was wrong. A month or so ago, when my group of friends was just sitting around freezing our butts off outside, one of them swept me up in a bear hug. As we were hugging he said "Haha, Regan you're like a teddybear." And I replied, "Mhmm, so I have been told. It's an old nickname." "Aspetta (wait), like a Regibear? Regan and teddybear, Regibear." This made me burst out laughing because, the likelihood of this nickname traveling 6,000 miles with me I had assumed was 0%. It was nice to hear it again though, because until then everyone had been only using my name, which is weird for me considering all of my close friends and family in AZ use my nicknames. 

Don't ask me why I assumed this, but I though that living on an island would mean endless perfect weather.. Again, I have no idea what I was thinking. In the summer, living on an island is like the coolest thing ever and the weather is always warm and amazing and humid, but geeeesh in the winter it's completely the opposite. It is really, really freaking cold, really dark, and really, really damp and foggy. On the upside though, this weather makes a good excuse to stay in bed for extended periods of time, drink lots of tea, and binge on sweets.

***

I will be updating you all with a Christmas/New Years/Traditions post as soon as I can. Also I will try to include more pictures soon, although because I am using a non Windows minicomputer, this is proving to be a bit difficult. Please be patient! 

Chapter 13: Road Map of my Exchange Year

Today is January 7th, 2015. At this time last year, I was submitting my application to study abroad. And every single day I was going back and forth with my decision: was I positive that I wanted to do this? Was it the right time? Would my academics suffer? Would I graduate on time? In the end, I decided that I was positive, it was the perfect time, and all my academics could easily be fixed when I returned so that I could graduate on time, and even a bit early. So I submitted the application and waited.

After months of revising and waiting, and waiting, and waiting, I found out that AFS Italy, known locally as Intercultura, had accepted my application. Then I had to wait again while they found a family for me. By May, a month after Intercultura accepted my application, I had a family in Sicily. My host family consisted of 4 people, Luca (dad), Antonella (mom), Alessa (sister), Andrea (brother). Alessia and I are 3 months apart, and Andrea is only a year behind us. Finding out that I had a family finally got me excited for my exchange. Until that point it hadn't quite sunk in that in a few shorts months I was going to be living in another country, on a completely different continent for a year.

Then more waiting... and packing.. and waiting.. and shopping.. and waiting.. and working.. and waiting.. It felt like the summer was gonna last forever. During this period of the endless summer I went on vacations with my family and best friend, got my driving permit, and counted down the days til August 26th. August 26th was the day that I was going to fly to Washington DC to spend a few days with my Great-Aunt Pat and Great-Uncle Ernest in DC and NYC before being dropped at JFK and beginning my journey with AFS.

DC and New York were amazing. It was completely surreal. And for me, it seemed like all of my dreams were coming true over the span of about a 6 days. Aunt Pat and Uncle Ernest were fabulous guides for these cities, because they had lived in both. In New York, Aunt Pat told stories about her jobs working in the center NYC, and Uncle E filled me in on all the amazing history. And, I got to see my dear friend from Orme, Nick, who I hadn't seen in forever. DC was wonderful too, and I think that I fell in love with the East coast. As an Arizona girl, it amazed me how green it was out there! We packed a lot into the few days that I spent with them.

After a week, I was dropped off on September 3rd at one of the many airport hotels and my journey with AFS had officially begun. 10 seconds after I walked into the lobby, I was surrounded by a crowd of other nervous and excited almost-exchange kids. For the next 24 hours I'm not sure that we were so much living off oxygen and proper nutrients as we were living off of our own hyper energy.

September 5th, I think, and we finally made it to Rome, nearly 450 of us from all over the world. And I think that's also the point when most of us admitted to ourselves that we were totally insane and absolutely amazing for signing up for this. In Rome, we spent 2 days in orientation after orientation after orientation. It was incredibly boring, and we were all itching to meet our families on the 7th.

The flight from Rome to Catania was a short one, only about an hour and a half. But we spent another hour and a half waiting for our baggage, which was super delayed. After waiting for months, we got to meet our families. I recognized mine immediately and was the first AFSer through the gates.

***

And now here I am, already four months into my exchange. And here are some of the important and random things that I have realized so far:

• Traveling and being an exchange student are two very different things. When you travel you stay in hotels, hostels, or campsites, somewhere lovely but impersonal. When you're an exchange student you're staying with a family, you have a normal life, you learn the language, and tourists begin to mistake you for a local because they can't pick up on the small grammatical errors you make when you speak in your host language. And it feels 100% normal, despite the fact that sometimes you still have no idea what everyone else is saying. You still watch Netflix in bed for hours, and you still love mac n cheese, and cold pizza for breakfast. People don't seem to realize that an exchange year isn't going to be that different from your life back home, but it's still going to change your life in ways that you cannot even begin to imagine. 

• Exchange is a wonderful, magical experience. It gives you another life, fresh knowledge, and most importantly new perspectives and relationships. Exchange students are crazy, amazing, adventure seeking people who leave behind their lives back home for a whole new one in a brand new country. They're great friends to have cause they speak other languages, they have awesome stories, and they know good international vacation spots. 

• Nothing can prepare you for going on exchange. No matter how many exchange blogs you read, or how many YouTube videos you watch, nothing can prepare you for the way exchange is gonna affect you because each experience is different. But I promise you it is more amazing and more challenging than you could have ever possibly imagined. 

• Obviously there are some predictable aspects of exchange: exploring a new culture, learning a new language, making new friends, trying new foods, etc. But there are other aspects that come out of nowhere and hit you like a rogue sack of bricks. Like, how much you're going to change over the short span of time that you spend in your host country. Your perspective is either gonna change or become rock solid. Your exchange year is gonna have some downs, but it's also gonna have even bigger ups. So don't get into a total funk if you're having a few bad days. This experience is going to impact you no matter what, so be open to all the change and new experiences that it offers you. 

• When you're about to leave on your exchange you make your sisters, brothers, best friends, classmates, and everyone else around you to promise that things will be the same when you get back. You make them all promise that they won't forget you and to write all the time. And you convince yourself that life in your home country will basically be paused for the next 10 months, while you are off on exchange. But then you realize that it isn't paused its on play, sometimes it even feels a bit like fast forward. Don't freak out when this happens. 

• Exchange is great, and it is 173% worth the emotional roller coaster that comes along with it. So go and sign up and have the year of your life. 

Chapter 12: I AM SAVED

Thank goodness! I have a working computer once again.. 
Thank you to my darling Grandma Annabelle for providing it for me! 

Anyway, hopefully my blog will be up and running with at least one post every two weeks, although I will probably post more than that. 

Thanks for stickin out this period of technological disfunction! 
xx ciao!

Chapter 11: Technology Troubles

First off, I apologize that it's nearly been a month since my last post. My beloved laptop bit the dust, kicked the bucket, died.. Right now I am using my family's iMac, which has an Italian keyboard so bear with me if there are any weird typos, the layout of the keys is completely different from what I am used to.

Anywayyyyy! I have done a ton of cool things since the last time I wrote.. here's a super quick summary because I'll be writing individual blog posts about them in a bit,

• visited Taormina (Google it right now!), a beautiful old city on the Northeastern tip of Sicily. You can actually see the toes of Italy from some of the lookout points.
• ate Nutella filled crepes made by two 16 or 17 year old boys.. I'm not sure about you all, but this was the first time I'd ever seen two boys cook something without there being any sort of incentive. 
• visited my Mamma's family in Mistretta, a little town in the North of Sicily where heavenly bread is made.. It's definitely worth taking the treacherous, vomit inducing drive to get there.  
• celebrated All Saint's Day on November 1st, its a lot like Dia de Los Muertos (Day of the Dead) minus the sugar skulls and food. 
• carved a pumpkin for Halloween
• listened to my math teacher try to convince me that he looks just like Obama
• and got renicknamed Regibear and Regs; although Regs is pronounced here like Rex or Reeeegs. 

Alright, thats all I got for now but like I said I have a couple other posts in the works with more details and photos from my adventures. 

Ciao ciao. xx