Advertisement
Published: March 16th 2008
Edit Blog Post
My Soccer Team
We have a game against Siena soon! We will lose TRAGICALLY. Laura the Liar
Italy is turning me into a liar. When I meet people I tell them that I am here to “study”. This is clearly not true as I attend uni for two hours on Mondays and Tuesdays, do not understand a word, frequently leave early, and even more frequently don’t even show up due to “commitments” in Milan, Florence, the Alps, or my local café. But there are also plenty of other lies, particularly to my roommates. This is not because I am a bad person, it is more a case of an inability to communicate properly in Italian, and also sometimes laziness, when saying “I understand” or “si” is so much easier than saying “no, because…” and then explaining something really complicated. For this reason one of my housemates thinks I have a brother who lives in New York (by the time I learnt how to say “he came back” it was a bit too late to change my story). Another of my housemates thinks that all fashion students in Sydney have to have utes which they can drag jeans behind (I was talking about Ksubi and other Australian designers). And the owner of a nightclub thinks
that I want to work as the door girl for him (I said “yes”, not knowing what he was asking me) and calls me all the time asking me when I can work next. However as my Italian improves let’s hope that the number of lies I tell a day decreases accordingly!
Madness in Milano
Towards the end of February, during Fashion Week, Liv and I made a trip up to Milano to greet Bronny, Jacqui and Chiara as they arrived from Sydney. We planned to stay just for the day, but didn’t actually make it home until three days later…let’s just say that there is a LOT to do in Milano! We went shopping, went to some fantastic restaurants and cafes, and went to a church that had been turned into this amazing nightclub were we were treated like royalty with drinks and bowls of fruit brought to our table. We shopped some more (the shopping there is REALLY good!) and also managed to make it into a Fashion Week party. It was a fantastic couple of days, but Liv and I were quite relieved to get on a train back home to Bologna, where you don’t have
The top of the Bologna tower
It's bad luck to climb it before your exams...lucky I don't have exams! to look like a million dollars every time you leave your house, and where everything is also a lot cheaper!
Snow bunnies, Sicilians and Squillos
I returned to Bologna for a week or two of normal life (ie: partying almost every night, going for walks to the park near my house on the increasingly frequent sunny days, eating lots of lovely food, and getting full marks for the 15 minute speech Kayla and I had to give to our class (in Italian) because my lovely roommate Margherita wrote it for us). After such strenuous activities, six of the other Aussies and I decided we deserved a holiday, so we booked a chalet in the Italian Alps, jumped on a train, and enjoyed a PERFECT week of skiing. It was just beautiful (as you can see from the photos). I traded my snowboard for Liv’s skis for two days, which was hilarious for everyone else as I hadn’t skied since I was about 10.
Our cultural learning continued when we met some attractive Sicilian boys on the slopes. They invited us to a party that night, and we swapped numbers. We were therefore very surprised when that night one
Firenze
On the Ponte Vecchio of the boys, Giorgio, kept pranking my phone every half an hour. This was hilariously confusing for a while, but soon grew tiresome as we actually did want to go to the party (with or without the Sicilian boys), but didn’t know where it was, and couldn’t find out if Giorgio wasn’t actually going to call my phone for more than 1 second! When I returned to Bologna I asked my roommate Giulia about it, and she explained to me that the “squillo” (a prank) is common practice for southern Italian boys when they like a girl and want them to call back.
“Isn’t it a bit…childish? Stupid? Annoying?” I asked.
“YES!” Giulia responded, “It’s extremely stupid! Extremely attractive boys from the south are ALWAYS extremely stupid! Do not ever get involved with one of them, and don’t ever give one of them your phone number again, particularly since you have blonde hair!” Now Giulia is from Venice (in the north), so could possibly be a little biased, but I’m still yet to meet a boy from the south who is both intelligent AND attractive!
Anyway, I’m now off to Prague for 8 days with Bronny and Wisey. We’ll
Heart Pasta
The heart pasta Liv gave me on Valentines day. I invited Liv and Evelien over for dinner to eat it... be there over Easter which should be nice! Hope you’re all staying well at home.
Miss you all!
Love Laur xxx
Advertisement
Tot: 0.149s; Tpl: 0.017s; cc: 9; qc: 49; dbt: 0.0916s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.2mb