HOST FAMILY

I got my host family!
They live 30 miles east of Bologna

 So I requested Rome or Milan because I was looking for a city life, and this was my biggest worry I would live in a country suburban area, and that happened. Well, Faenza's kind of a big city, but yeah.I mean I'm okay with it though. There's Pietro, who's retired. My host mom is Amalia, who's an employee at a catering company. She loves animals and nature and she's super outgoing I hear! I already love her. Then there's Roberto, who's 17, Marzia who's 10 (turns 11 May 5, happy birthday!), and Valerio who's 7 (turns 8 on May 9!) The PDF Quest sent me makes them sound super sunshiny and nice! :)

THEY LIVE IN A HOUSE YAY THAT MAKES ME HAPPY so I'll be sharing a room with Roberto. I haven't shared a room with anyone since I was 4! I wonder how that'll go! There are advantages though. It'll be truly Italian because I doubt anyone's heard of Faenza! ALSO WE LIVE BY BOLOGNA WHICH IS THE FOOD CAPITAL OF THE WORLD. We could go there a lot! I hear they travel a lot like short trips and all, and I live 40 minutes away from the beach, SO BOLOGNA (AMAZING FOOD) AND THE BEACH A LOT HOORAY. 

I didn't get my school yet, that's gonna come soon! Hopefully I don't get out at 2 PM like some schools, but 1 or maybe even 12! The family sounds gracious and everything is perfect, except that dang location. I can live with it though :)

So here's one of the piazzas. I mean it's not bad looking, like I said, it'd be truly Italian without any tourists, but it has it's pros and cons. I am, however, truly grateful that they even found me a family.

UPDATE: So I can't find anything about the town other than the fact they make fancy plates.

But I searched "Faenza" on youtube and I found this!

LOOK AT IT ITS SO PRETTY

I HOPE THIS ISN'T THE WRONG TOWN YOUTUBE DON'T LIE TO ME

THEY SENT ME AN EMAIL TODAY. Sorry for tons of caps, I'm just so excited! Roberto and Lia emailed me and they're so sweet! They travel a LOT (YES) to the big cities and all over Italy. The dad has relatives in Rome so we're gonna go there a lot! So they want me to meet them around August 20 in one of their vacation homes in Sicily! I went to Sicily for a few hours it was pretty interesting. It smelled like citrus. But they love going to the beach and around Italy and it sounds great! So Faenza is over 10 times bigger than my town apparently! Maybe it's meant to be to not live in a huge city. Someday! I was kind of freaking out yesterday because it was a place I've never heard of plus it looked really boring but I explored it more and it looks really nice :) 

I can't wait to communicate more with my host family. Bye! 

Reasons and My Story (2/2)

Now, my story, but more detailed than in An Introduction

I then went to high school (the middle school and high school are joined but different buildings by the way) and I already had a few foreign friends, but I found one from Milan! She's really pretty. But I also made more friends with the exchange students, and I hang out with them when I don't hang out with that group. They were saying what an experience it is here and how much they love it. Then just for fun, I started looking at study abroad choices just because.
But however, this turned into something serious. I started reading up blogs about those who studied abroad, so then I somehow brought up the huge topic to my parents and they were surprisingly calm about it. This was about November 2012. I asked for brochures from AFS, YFS, Rotary, Greenheart, and none of them satisfied me. I couldn't go home for Christmas or choose the city for any of them, and a lot of them just didn't seem... human.
On page 17 of google, actually, I see Quest International Exchange, and thinking it'd be another failed attempt, I didn't even click on it. Who knew that'd be the program I'd choose! 2 days later luckily I remembered the name and went on their website. I looked at it, and I was able to go home for Christmas (I mean the kids at my school can so why wouldn't I be able to?) and I could CHOOSE THE CITY it was small like I wanted! I asked for a request sheet thing, and before I knew it, I received all the information and an application! Over 4 months this happened. Over this time, my parents and I were debating because they wanted to send me to England because it's English, or France since I know French, or Spain to learn Spanish. But I insisted on Italy, and I think I gave them a pretty convincing argument. Also, it was spent talking to the academic deans of my school (2) and they were totally for me going and they loved the idea! Lucky me!
Now this is late February. This time I was starting out my application. I needed all my teachers' signatures, some signatures from Admissions and a letter of recommendation (Thanks Mrs. Hacker! You're the best). 1/3 of the app was required to be filled out by the doctor. So we faxed it and he said it'd be back in 2-3 days. Okay, no problem.
ONE WEEK LATER IT COMES.
We ship it the next day (March 11)
I got my acceptance April 4!

NOW I'M WAITING FOR MY HOST FAMILY AND LOCATION WHICH I AM SO EXCITED FOR.
When I get that info, I'm going to go all out. I'm gonna see the cafes nearby, the shops nearby, schools, how the neighborhood is, distance from there to certain places, I'm gonna do everything

Wow this post was LONG sorry for boring you, but I felt I had to tell literally every detail about like everything, my bad. Next time hopefully will be an update on my host family and location, unless I have another urge to blog about nothing whatsoever. The Crazy Thoughts of Elijah Rodriguez: An Autobiography. Have a good week, see you later :)

Reasons and My Story

Saturday night, April 13. On the couch, as the amazing taste of Penne Pomodori flows through my tastebuds while Paramore is playing on the speaker. As I'm reading other blogs, I really started to think why I want to do this. There's reasons because of school, culture, and growing up, and I'm going to divide the first two reasons into paragraphs, and say my story but in greater detail (that's in part 2)

School

There's the diversity aspect of school and the typical teenager drama stuff

Diversity
So my school is about 90+% caucasian. There is very little diversity in my school which I really don't like, Everyone looks the same, it's kind of ridiculous. Europe, while yes it's caucasian mostly, actually has culture. Italians have so much culture compared to kids of the USA for the most part.

Typical Teenager Drama Stuff
I hang with a group of kids. They're the artsy kids. I love my friends in that group to death. However, there's some kids in that group that are just catty, rude, judgmental, and bring such a negative aura into the room. They just annoy me a lot and there's more to it but I'll stop now from sounding like a typical angst-filled teenager.

Culture

Ever since I was little, I've always been fascinated with different cultures. When I was little (around 2nd grade) I was in LOVE with Japanese culture! I learned basically everything there is to know about Japan and started to learn Japanese. I got a Japanese picture book and a dictionary. I got into sushi and everything Japanese, I completely immersed myself in Japanese culture and it went so well. Now I know Japanese and I can answer anything about Japan and say any fact about Japan! Japan is wonderful. In fact, this year I had to do an oral on Japanese culture and I didn't even write it. I did everything off the top of my head and I got an A! I still love Japan, not as much, but that flame is still there.
Over time, I started moving towards European culture, and specifically French culture. In 7th grade, I had to start a language. Originally I was going to do Chinese, but yeah that wasn't going to turn out well. So I did French!... much to my parents' dismay since they wanted me to learn Spanish, since my last name and all that fun stuff. Now I know some Spanish! I still take French, but I also do individual outside studies and I consider myself near-fluent if not fluent.
Anyway, then there was this amazing opportunity to go to Europe in February 2012! I took that opportunity and counted down the days since 5 months before, and before I knew it, I woke up with my dog on me, put a scarf on her and hopped in the car to LAX where I would go on an 11 hour nonstop flight to Paris with some of my best friends. We then took a 2 hour flight to Rome, where 10 days later we would return to Paris. It was such an amazing time being there, and from there, I had such an urge to go back, and I got kind of depressed seeing how boring Los Angeles was. I really started to realize how uncultured LA was! It was such an eye-opener to me, and I couldn't thank God enough for opening my eyes to this. I just love everything about Italian culture so much. It's so beautiful! The language, THE FOOD, even the air there. When I was there, the air felt so fresh and it smelled really good too! Oh and the women but I won't bore you with those details.

I didn't want to make this too long, so check out part 2!

Some Worries

Hi, hope you're having a good day
Due to my inability to get a normal amount of sleep, I usually spend that time late at night/early in the morning imaging myself in Italy.

MY NUMBER ONE FEAR is grades this year. My parents said I have to get everything above a B- in all my classes or
I
Can't
Go.
This worries me horribly. I have a C+ in honors history, a B- in honors bio, and a B- in math. We barely have any school left and I fear that I can't raise them. It's been causing a LOT of tension.. It's horrible. It's actually eating me alive thinking I wouldn't be able to go cause I have a B- in biology or something... I can't even describe the feeling..
So I'm extremely paranoid about that, so I'm now working as hard as I can to see if I can go for sure, but I'm not super hopeful :(

So sadly I found out I have to take Honors Rhetoric and Style from my school here in the US which I HATE! I hate the English program in my school because it's extremely rigorous. I mean I have a B in my current honors English class, but still I've always hated English at my school. It's diction and syntax which I DESPISE, but for the whole course. The whole online course, on the one thing I hate. Wonderful. And now since I'll be living in another language and using different grammatical structures and whatnot, how will I write the 437328948 essays I'll have to do for the class without TONS of mistakes later in? I'll be completely immersed in Italian and most likely forget some English in the process, so I'm extremely worried about that.

Another worry I have is my placement. What if they can't find a family for me or something like that? I chose Rome or Milan like I said, and I said a few of my little preferences (likes to travel, I HAVE to play tennis, really artsy, etc.) and I'm just scared I'll get a family I don't like. I really don't want to change families sometime throughout the program. My biggest fear is probably having a family who's overly conservative. I am Christian yes, but I'm not totally devout, and I wouldn't want a family who's like, super devout, and I mean those who, say, will restrict what music I listen to, or won't let me watch shows like shows meant for my age and things like that. I'm totally okay with a religious family, just not those like Ned Flanders on The Simpsons. I know it sounds a little dumb, but everyone has their own slightly shallow fears for their host families. But I'm super excited for my family though!

Aside from the little worries, I'm just getting by in school. We get out May 30, so only 36 school days left! I'm thinking of buying an American flag and bringing it on the last day, and having all my friends sign it, then bring it to Italy to hang in my room. Then when I leave, I'll buy an Italian flag and have my host family and friends abroad sign it, then hang both in my room. Or I'll use one Italian flag for everything to represent coexistence between my groups of friends halfway across the world, and use an Italian flag instead of our flag so represent my departure (my USA friends' messages) and my home for a year. I'll figure it out.

Sorry for boring you with this post, so here's a few photos of Italy I took last year on my phone c:

My first gelato in Italy! Vatican strawberry lemon gelato is wonderful.

Some really cool buildings (one of my favorites I took) (this is actually my background on my laptop!)  (This is the photo above)

More buildings!

The Coliseum! (One of my favorites as well)

Oh hey Milan.

Florence! I originally picked Florence because it's to me the most beautiful city in Italy, and maybe even the world, but it's too small, which was a deal breaker. I'll be better off in a big city, and I LOVE Rome and Milan too! I plan to study abroad in Florence during college (and Paris, London,Tokyo, and maybe Dubai and maybe Berlin).

Oh look it's me in Florence on top of the Duomo.

ACCEPTED

GUYS I GOT ACCEPTED IM SO EXCITED I CANT EVEN BREATHE. Today I woke up at like 1:30 (don't judge okay it's spring break) and the guy sent an email saying I GOT ACCEPTED! I immediately went downstairs and my mom almost started tearing up and I comforted her. But yep!

LOOK AT IT (this is actually what woke me up)

So that's all I have to say. Now to look forward to my host family and location (hopefully Rome or Milan like I requested)! See you later :)