San Martino

Ciao ragazzi!

On Monday, there was a special celebration called San Martino. This celebration consists of new wines for the coming year and the Italians basically just use it as an excuse to get drunk. There seems to be a lot of different 'wine' celebrations throughout the year, so I've learned.

So on Monday at scuola we had an assembly which the Italians define as doing nothing for the entire day. The first two hours of school I was supposed to be in class and the second two hours of school I was supposed to have different assemblies in the auditorium and gym. So I go to class in the morning and the first thing I notice is that nobody has brought their backpacks with them. A little strange, considering we were at school. I decided to let it slide, sat at my desk, and proceeded to become surrounded by 14 year old children who were eager to know of my plans for San Martino. Let me tell you this, 12 hours earlier, my friends and I had no idea what we were doing. I'll get to that later. So these children are crowded around me and I'm just sitting there thinking to myself, shouldn't we be learning italiano? What the h*** is going on? Then the one kid in the class who speaks English walked in and informed me that when it is the day of an assembly, nobody wants to do anything beforehand, so they don't. They just sit in class for two hours and talk to friends until it is time to go to the auditorium. Interessante. I eventually went to the auditorium and happened to know the guy with the mic, who so kindly called me out in front of the school and asked how I was. Perks of being friends with the popular fifth year guys. Not. The assembly was completely pointless for me to attend because of the fact that I still don't understand Italian, so I just talked to my friends for the whole thing and made faces at my friends who were up in front. It was incredibly fun. Note the sarcasm, please.

I returned home after four hours of school, ate some lunch, napped, then met up with my friends because we needed to finish planning what we were going to do that night. As I previously mentioned, we planned the night in a bit of a rush. I guess my group of friends doesn't like to plan things, because it was the night before San Martino, we had a guest list of about 60 friends, but no place to party with no food or wine. We spent Sunday night walking around the center, asking if anybody knew of a place that we could rent for the night. So it comes to Monday afternoon, we have a place and we have a guest list, but we have no food and wine and no idea of the plans for the night. My friend called me at about four and told me to meet him at the park with seven euros. Casual. So I go to this park where I find about 15 of my friends hanging out with a ridiculous amount of money, a piece of printer paper and many intense conversations happening. They were going around collecting seven euros from everybody on the guest list, which they had printed out on a spreadsheet. Things were getting serious. Three guys left with about 200 euros to go buy a ridiculous amount of alcohol and wine, some others left to find chairs and tables, and yet another guy left to find speakers. The party was happening in approximately four hours. Awesome.

9 o'clock rolls around, my friend arrives with her dad to pick me up, we pick up two other friends, then arrive at our destination. Boy do Italians know how to throw a party together in no time. The location was prime, the music too loud, the wine disgusting (oh well, teenage boys can't be expected to make good wine, can they?), a large amount of hard liquor (however, teenage boys can be expected to buy too much vodka), and an overabundance of pizza, calzoni and other typical Italian fast foods (about 200 euros worth). And so the party began. Tons of people came, many new friends were made, drinks were spilled, dance moves were displayed, and another successful party came to an end early Tuesday morning.

Yes, I said early Tuesday morning. Meaning, school. That was the most difficult thing of my life, having to wake up after a mere four and a half hours of sleep and go to school. The lack of sleep made things difficult, but also the fact that I had partied for many hours, using too much energy and not having any left to go to school the next morning. During my first two hours of Italian, I slept. Yes. I put my head down on my desk, said buonanotte and went to sleep. Third hour I had English, but luck of the Irish, my teacher wasn't there! So my class went to the auditorium and a few of us got cozy together and continued to nap. The story didn't change much for my fourth hour of Italian. I went to the class, sat in my chair, put my head in my hands and I could not tell you anything that happened in that class afterwards.

I sometimes wonder why I am even required to go to school for the first few months of my exchange. Granted, parties don't happen every single school night. However, my day at school was pretty normal. I didn't do anything in class, the teachers ignored me, what else is new. I've learned absolutely nothing while at school and I've understood even less. I think the only reason AFS has us go to school is so that we can make friends. That literally is the only benefit I have gained from school. Oh well. More time to think, more time to write, more time to talk to friends.

As for now, I have to study for an English test. My teacher so kindly informed me about it today, even though I'm not even supposed to go their class tomorrow. Looks like I'll be skipping an hour of Spanish to fail a test. Lucky me.

Ciao tutti.

Until next time,

Ali