You know you're a part of the family when...

·         You share a bed with your host brother

·         When your little host brother introduces you like this “This is my sister, my American sister”

·         When they don’t need to know ask what pizza you would like for dinner

·         When you are recruited to look for more underwear for your brothers

·         When your host brother tells people to “Not make fun of the American accent”

·         When your entire family corrects your grammar mistakes

·         When your become your host brothers alarm clock

·         When your host brother waits to go to sleep until you and your cousin return from a ‘discopub’ because he was “Afraid someone would murder you and bury you under the snow”

·         When you watch Lord of the Rings with your little host brother and both get really excited about the talking tree part

·         When you braid your host cousins hair every night

·         When the entire family is comfortable walking around the house in their underwear

·         You’re asked to take the garbage out

·         When you told “We left the maid at home this week”

·          You have your brothers open mustard and mayo cans for you

·         When your little brother is waiting in the doctor’s office and draws a picture of his mom, his dad and you inside a house.

·         When you openly discuss which boys you find attractive and which you do not with your family

·         When your host dad buys you tampax

My Eavesdropping Abilities have been Severely Compromised.

So I'm at this really cool part in learning a new language where I can follow a complete conversation and give my input to the conversation. However something I've really begun to miss is eavesdropping. That may seem kinda bad but I'm really good at it. Ask my parents. But here in Italy I'm not able to follow a conversation that's happening in the kitchen from my bedroom or when I'm out to lunch I can't creep on the people next to me because I have to focus on the Italian conversation I'm having with someone. Oh the art of following two conversations at the same time. When I get back to the States I'm going to go on an eavesdropping frenzy. Don't say I didn't warn you family, everyone who sits next to me at restaurants and those who stand next to me in the check-out line. Anyway and example of this (though not exactly eavesdropping) is the other night before dinner Paola was talking to me about some current event while Lorenzo was talking to me about monster trucks. I couldn't follow either conversation. So I had to pick one. Monster trucks won. But it's just frustrating because I love being involved in multiple conversations (or involved without permission). I also now dream in Italian. Sometimes all Italian. Sometimes all English and other times a mix of both.

How's the family? Things are good. We are heading up to the mountains to go skiing for a week on the carnival break. Lorenza cut his hair himself, without a mirror. Paola was horrified. I laughed and all the brothers told him he looked cool and he modestly replied "I know". He has since then offered to cut Paola's hair, she politely declined. Though she told me the other day in the car she is terrified that one days a parent of one of Lorenzo's friends is going to call inquiring about why their child came home with no hair.

School? School's fantastic. I wrote my first essay in Italian at school. It was only about my American family but my Italian teacher was very proud and asked if she could cry when I handed it in. All my classmates have presentations about an english-speaking country and my friend Andrea has problems with pronuciation, so I went through her notes and wrote the 'italian spelling' for the English words she has problems with. For example the word "Jewish" she couldn't pronouce because Italian doesn't have a 'J' so I wrote "Giuesh" and now she can say Jewish. It's fantastic. Then after school today I went to a friends house and helped her study English verb tenses for a test tomorrow. I think she's pretty ready. Anyway when we got to her house it was lunch time and she's like we only have Pizza. But not only Pizza, homemade Pizza by her Uncle. Only homemade by your uncle pizza? well this lunch is going to suck. NOT. And she was worried the whole time that I didn't like it and that there was only Pizza. She's too sweet. It was wonderful pizza (: