Tales from Italy ch.1: The Beginning
Seeing as I've been on hiatus from livejournal for proabably about a year now, I figured this would be a good time to update while I study abroad. For those of you who don't know, I'm currently spending my spring semester abroad in Urbino Italy! A lot of people have asked how I've been and what I've been up to, so this will make it easier. I'm supposed to be a New Paltz Abroad Blogger for my school, so I figure I'll just copy and paste journal entries or bits and pieces of journal entries from here to there.
ANYWAYYYY
I got to Italy on Saturday February 13th. For me, it still felt like Friday, February 12th since my night consisted of about 4 hours. I had left my house at 11am, got to the airport at 1pm, took off a little late by 430, arrived in Frankfurt, Germany around 520am (1120pm to me with jet lag), and caught a flight to Bologna, Italy at 820am (120am to me). On the first plane, I sat next to a girl named Julia who was on her way home to Russia after living in New York for 8 years. When we got to Frankfurt, we hung out a bit until my next flight (her's wasn't until 9pm that night- she was going to be at the airport for another 13 hours!). After annoyingly passing through 2 securities in Frankfurt, I came to my gate where I sat down next to a window and got on the internet to write home. From my seat I was able to watch the sunrise. My night had virtually disappeared since by the time I would have normally gone to bed back home, I was witnessing daybreak. Fortunately some Tylenol PM helped me catch about 4 hours of sleep on the first plane and that got me through the day. My second plane was a small jet. While this doesn't seem all that interesting, it was the first time I ever had to board a plane from outside and I thought it was so cool :P
After arriving in Bologna, I met with Frederica, the New Paltz-Urbino liason and it was about a 2 hour drive to school. On the way here, we passed by what seemed to be a gazillion groves. We'd pass a house and next to it was maybe an apple grove, some stores then maybe an olive grove, some open space and then another grove! It was so pretty.
When we pulled up to the school, I got a good look at it. La Universita DI Urbino "Carlo Bo" sits on a hill and looks so enchanting from afar (and at night when it gets lit up
)- the big buildings look like castles
(I still have to look to verify this). It's very believable since Urbino is a really old medieval city (for instance, Alex and I walked through an entry way yesterday that dated from the 14th century!). The whole campus is scattered in buildings across the city, with the dormitories just outside the city walls.
When we pulled up to my dorm (Collegio Tridente) Alex was outside and scared me by pressing his face to my window. After my easily-scared self calmed, it was nice to see a familiar face and I instantly felt better about being so far from home. After checking in to my building, I had to lug my 70lb suitcase down 2 flights of stairs and then up the stairs in my blocco (suite). My room is simple yet sweet. Basically, if you ran a wall through the middle of a regular-sized 2-person dormroom in the states, you'd have my room here. It also has a lovely view of the city!
I wasn't in my dorm 5 minutes before Alex and I headed back outside to the bus stop so we could get into the city center. I had to pick up a few things and we both needed cell phones. When we got off we realized that just about every direction was either up or down a STEEP hill. We walked up Via Raffaello (which I am convinced is the steepest hill of them all- I took pictures so check them out when I post them to Facebook) to leave the city and when we got to the top I came to the conclusion that I can look forward to having very sexy legs in June with all these hills :)
We went to a supermarket that I learned later was really far and there are 3 that are much closer. Yet that is one of the great things about getting lost- you really learn your way around. I've been here just 2 and a half days and recognize the main areas of the city now and roughly know where to get what I'm looking for. After we had found the supermarket, we asked a lady for directions to find a store that sold towels. Turned out she was from Puerto Rico and knew English very well. She showed us a store but said it was a little expensive. Unfortunately they were the only store we'd seen all day and that she knew of that sold towels until the flea market next Saturday morning. I didn't have much choice- it was either buy now or don't shower for a week. I disgustingly paid 20 euro (about $25-27) for 2 thankfully very large hot pink towels.
After that, we went in search of a store that sold Voda phones (Voda is pretty much the equivalent of Verizon in the states). It was a little difficult communicating our cell phone plan with the store owner, but in the end we got what we wanted: 2 of the cheapest cell phones and the cheap pay-as-you-go plan... perfect.
Walking back with all our bags was a little difficult seeing as it had just snowed the day before. The sidewalks were uncomfortably coated in about 2 inches of slush (my lovely boots are in need of a scrubbing!).
We eventually made it back to the bus station where I decided to call my parents and let them know I was alive since I didn't have internet access yet, and hadn't contacted them since the airport in Germany. Of the 5 euros my phone came with, I used up 3 in my 3-minute call home.
While at the station, we learned that buses don't pull up to the curb; you have to walk up to them while they sit parked in parking spots at the station. We learned this as our shivering selves watched our bus pull away without us after we thought it had just turned on. We ended up having to wait another 10 minutes for the next one. Lesson learned.
When I got back to my blocco, I unpacked and settled into my room. I introduced myself to my suitemates and it was obvious that I was an international student seeing as my Italian was so poor, but they were very friendly nonetheless.
Some additional brief things I learned while in my blocco:
1: you need to supply your own toilet paper and bring it with you to the stall every time;
2: there are 2 outlets in our rooms and they are 3-prong outlets, not 2-prong like the rest of Italy;
3: the fuse box is across the hall in the next blocco for when you blow the fuse out in your room (I spent the first night without power before discovering this; note to self: adapter+ American 3 to 2 prong converter+ American powerstrip+ appliance(s) =BAD);
4: my room door does not lock upon closing like I thought, so I don't have to worry about being locked out, but I still must remember my keys ALWAYS;
5: the door knobs do not spin- they have a black button on the top;
6: When the door won't open, don't fear that this is the end and you're locked in a bathroom stall forever- just push the black button harder;
7: I have my own bathroom cabinet! I decided to make the journey to the other end of the bathroom and discovered that the extra room was just extra sinks and extra cabinets (including mine- yay!), not a doorway to another blocco like I thought.
After settling in, I met Alex for dinner in the mensa which is like a cafeteria. Fortunately for me, the mensa is in my dorm and I don't have to walk far (YAY!!!). Food there is served on a line like the middle schools and high schools do back home- complete with tray. First you grab a roll (apparently Italians like their rolls stale/ hard because they leave the bags perforated), then you get pasta or soup, then a meat and/or cheese with a side of vegetables, then a fruit, juice, or yogurt, then a little plastic cup for water. To get water, students go to a cabinet full of empty glass bottles and fill them with water from a sink with filtered water. It took me 3 meals before I could get through the whole process without messing up and mixing up or missing out on part of my meal. For example, yesterday I asked for grilled potatoes and a side of what I thought was pineapple. Turned out the pineapple was just more potatoes cooked differently- I had a whole plate filled of just potatoes.
When dinner was over, I came back to my blocco in desperate need of a shower (since Friday-Saturday was really like ONE day to me). Before I got in, I heard one of my suitemates speaking perfect American English on the phone. I waited till she was done and asked where she was from. Her name is Maura and she got here last semester from California. Unfortunately she leaves Friday since she's not staying for the rest of the year, but she introduced me later that night to her English-speaking friends Luke, Katie, and another girl who I can't remember the name of. Luke and Katie are staying the rest of the year and speaking with all of them that night made me feel more comfortable about what I was in for over the next few months. Luke gave me some advice about learning the language: make friends with both Italians and English-speakers. Speaking with Italians really helps with fluency, but it can get frustrating after a while and at the end of the day, it's nice to have English-speakers to return to. They also gave Alex and me a temporary internet sign-in name from a former student so we could get online until we got our own login and passwords. Getting back online and contacting friends was lovely :)
Around midnight I went to bed. It was then, when I was alone and in the dark (a- because it was night and b- because I blew out my fuse) that everything really hit me. I had a lot to look forward to, but homesickness really began to take over. I missed home and my family, I missed Andy and getting to speak to him before bed like I usually did, I missed all my friends, I missed simple communication, I missed what I was used to, and most of all I missed English. The physical distance between my friends and family, and time before we could be together again, was so overwhelming and I had a rough night.
I slept in till noon the next day before going in to meet Alex, Luke, Maura, Katie, the girl who's name I can't remember, and a student from Spain -with a name I'll never be able to pronounce correctly- for lunch. It was nice to have made some friends. After lunch, Alex and I went back into town to get some more things we had forgotten the day before. Unfortunately for us, we picked the worst time ever to go. Not only was it Sunday and a lot of stores were closed, but between the afternoon hours of 2 and 4, just about everything is closed (and that goes for every day, not just Sundays). So we meandered about learning ways around. On the way we passed a cinema that's playing Paranormal Activity. Since I already know the plot and that would make understanding the Italian dubbing easier, and since I never got to experience it in a theater, I am debating on going to see it some time this week. Later, we found a closer grocery store and waited for it to open at 5pm before giving up and leaving around 515 after having killed time and waiting in the cold for over an hour. On our way back to the center, we kept discovering new stores (like ANOTHER grocery store that's about a minute's walk from the bus stop; not 20 minutes like the one we had gone to the day before, or 15 like the one we waited for to open all day) even though they were closed. This pretty much consisted of our entire day. Even though we really learned our way around and got some extreme exercise on all the hills, we only accomplished being outside in the cold for about 4 hours and bought nothing.
There was one exception to all this though, and that is hot chocolate. About halfway through our day, with Alex sick and both of us freezing, we went into a cafe named Romana and ordered hot chocolates. To put it briefly: OMG ITALY HAS THE BEST HOT CHOCOLATE EVER AND IT PUTS OURS TO SHAME. You know when you make pudding on the stove top and you have to stir it till it thickens? Well, only stir it until its cooked about halfway. That is their hot chocolate- thick yet liquid, rich and not watery. HEAVEN. And it tastes like pudding too!!!
Romana also had a beautiful gelato selection that made my mouth water, but with the freezing temperature, I had to resist my temptation. I look forward to trying their Nutella gelato in the spring :)
Yesterday I had also managed to reach both my family and Andy on skype. Despite the several-second delay on skype due to distance, speaking with my parents was very helpful with my homesickness. We were able to speak for an hour and by the end of it, the delay didn't bother me anymore. At the end of the day, I was exhausted and was glad that I was able to reach Andy and make our skype time sooner so I could go to bed earlier. Talking to him was wonderful since it had been a while since we last spoke. I loved being able to catch up, and he made me feel a lot better about everything that was getting me down since arriving. This goes without saying that being able to see him on the computer made everything even better :) Skype is wonderful.
Today (Monday) Alex and I finished all of our shopping (I finally have a hair dryer!!) and picked up our Tesserino (student cards). It was quite the process and we were sent up and down stairs to several different people before getting it done. We then had to take our cards next door to a machine where we could put money on it. The machine was very simple and you only had to press 3 buttons. We paused briefly to see how much money we each had on us to put on the card and we spoke in English to each other. This was apparently gave the lady who was watching us from behind the counter the impression that we were incapable because she started telling us we had to press "continua" ("continue"). We were both like, "uh, duh" (obviously to ourselves) and told her that we knew, but she wouldn't stop so she came over and did it for us. Her lack of faith in our ability to understand 3 simple buttons (of which 'continua' is a COGNATE of 'continue' in English) made us start to second guess ourselves when we were going to do it right all along. It was very frustrating.
Afterwards, we went to the closer grocery store (it's location is so wonderful now that we know it exists!) and I got a box of toilet paper (yay! I can stop using tissues!), more tissues (since mine vastly depleted in the substitution of toilet paper), and water. All together it was only 5.03 euro! This made me happy since all I had on me was a 5 euro bill. I still have over $40 that needs to be exchanged, not to mention a significant portion of the remainder of euros that I had on me went to my student card to pay for meals.
We came back to campus for lunch, where I had my first successful ordering of my meal- no problems! Not to mention a quick swipe of my new student card meant no confrontation with the cashier and attempting to explain my situation. It was fantastic. Alex mentioned having learned who we were to speak to about getting our internet access names and passwords but that we had to go back in town and we only had till 2pm (it was already 1). So we had a quick lunch and met at the bus stop.
On my way up the stairs I ran into Frederica as she was checking in the student who was studying abroad through New Paltz, Laura. Since I was in a hurry, I could only talk breifly, but invited Laura to dinner with us at 730.
Our trip back to the center was very fast. When we got our internet access I learned that mine is somehow different since I'm considered faculty (I'm a teaching assistant for English), though I have yet to discover how it is different yet. We were done in about 5 minutes and managed to catch the bus after it had only gone around once, allowing us to use the same bus ticket since it was within the hour (yay! I saved a euro!).
When I got back, I tried the Italian way of things- with a 2-hour afternoon nap (part of the reason the stores are closed between 2 and 4; Why don't we do this in the states?). When I got up, I skyped with my parents. Now the sun has set and I'm ready for dinner! YAY FOOD!!!
All in all, everything is getting better as I go. Just give everything time time time!
Hopefully my next post won't be as long if I manage to update sooner- wish me luck!
CIAO :)
ANYWAYYYY
I got to Italy on Saturday February 13th. For me, it still felt like Friday, February 12th since my night consisted of about 4 hours. I had left my house at 11am, got to the airport at 1pm, took off a little late by 430, arrived in Frankfurt, Germany around 520am (1120pm to me with jet lag), and caught a flight to Bologna, Italy at 820am (120am to me). On the first plane, I sat next to a girl named Julia who was on her way home to Russia after living in New York for 8 years. When we got to Frankfurt, we hung out a bit until my next flight (her's wasn't until 9pm that night- she was going to be at the airport for another 13 hours!). After annoyingly passing through 2 securities in Frankfurt, I came to my gate where I sat down next to a window and got on the internet to write home. From my seat I was able to watch the sunrise. My night had virtually disappeared since by the time I would have normally gone to bed back home, I was witnessing daybreak. Fortunately some Tylenol PM helped me catch about 4 hours of sleep on the first plane and that got me through the day. My second plane was a small jet. While this doesn't seem all that interesting, it was the first time I ever had to board a plane from outside and I thought it was so cool :P
After arriving in Bologna, I met with Frederica, the New Paltz-Urbino liason and it was about a 2 hour drive to school. On the way here, we passed by what seemed to be a gazillion groves. We'd pass a house and next to it was maybe an apple grove, some stores then maybe an olive grove, some open space and then another grove! It was so pretty.
When we pulled up to the school, I got a good look at it. La Universita DI Urbino "Carlo Bo" sits on a hill and looks so enchanting from afar (and at night when it gets lit up
)- the big buildings look like castles
(I still have to look to verify this). It's very believable since Urbino is a really old medieval city (for instance, Alex and I walked through an entry way yesterday that dated from the 14th century!). The whole campus is scattered in buildings across the city, with the dormitories just outside the city walls.
When we pulled up to my dorm (Collegio Tridente) Alex was outside and scared me by pressing his face to my window. After my easily-scared self calmed, it was nice to see a familiar face and I instantly felt better about being so far from home. After checking in to my building, I had to lug my 70lb suitcase down 2 flights of stairs and then up the stairs in my blocco (suite). My room is simple yet sweet. Basically, if you ran a wall through the middle of a regular-sized 2-person dormroom in the states, you'd have my room here. It also has a lovely view of the city!
I wasn't in my dorm 5 minutes before Alex and I headed back outside to the bus stop so we could get into the city center. I had to pick up a few things and we both needed cell phones. When we got off we realized that just about every direction was either up or down a STEEP hill. We walked up Via Raffaello (which I am convinced is the steepest hill of them all- I took pictures so check them out when I post them to Facebook) to leave the city and when we got to the top I came to the conclusion that I can look forward to having very sexy legs in June with all these hills :)
We went to a supermarket that I learned later was really far and there are 3 that are much closer. Yet that is one of the great things about getting lost- you really learn your way around. I've been here just 2 and a half days and recognize the main areas of the city now and roughly know where to get what I'm looking for. After we had found the supermarket, we asked a lady for directions to find a store that sold towels. Turned out she was from Puerto Rico and knew English very well. She showed us a store but said it was a little expensive. Unfortunately they were the only store we'd seen all day and that she knew of that sold towels until the flea market next Saturday morning. I didn't have much choice- it was either buy now or don't shower for a week. I disgustingly paid 20 euro (about $25-27) for 2 thankfully very large hot pink towels.
After that, we went in search of a store that sold Voda phones (Voda is pretty much the equivalent of Verizon in the states). It was a little difficult communicating our cell phone plan with the store owner, but in the end we got what we wanted: 2 of the cheapest cell phones and the cheap pay-as-you-go plan... perfect.
Walking back with all our bags was a little difficult seeing as it had just snowed the day before. The sidewalks were uncomfortably coated in about 2 inches of slush (my lovely boots are in need of a scrubbing!).
We eventually made it back to the bus station where I decided to call my parents and let them know I was alive since I didn't have internet access yet, and hadn't contacted them since the airport in Germany. Of the 5 euros my phone came with, I used up 3 in my 3-minute call home.
While at the station, we learned that buses don't pull up to the curb; you have to walk up to them while they sit parked in parking spots at the station. We learned this as our shivering selves watched our bus pull away without us after we thought it had just turned on. We ended up having to wait another 10 minutes for the next one. Lesson learned.
When I got back to my blocco, I unpacked and settled into my room. I introduced myself to my suitemates and it was obvious that I was an international student seeing as my Italian was so poor, but they were very friendly nonetheless.
Some additional brief things I learned while in my blocco:
1: you need to supply your own toilet paper and bring it with you to the stall every time;
2: there are 2 outlets in our rooms and they are 3-prong outlets, not 2-prong like the rest of Italy;
3: the fuse box is across the hall in the next blocco for when you blow the fuse out in your room (I spent the first night without power before discovering this; note to self: adapter+ American 3 to 2 prong converter+ American powerstrip+ appliance(s) =BAD);
4: my room door does not lock upon closing like I thought, so I don't have to worry about being locked out, but I still must remember my keys ALWAYS;
5: the door knobs do not spin- they have a black button on the top;
6: When the door won't open, don't fear that this is the end and you're locked in a bathroom stall forever- just push the black button harder;
7: I have my own bathroom cabinet! I decided to make the journey to the other end of the bathroom and discovered that the extra room was just extra sinks and extra cabinets (including mine- yay!), not a doorway to another blocco like I thought.
After settling in, I met Alex for dinner in the mensa which is like a cafeteria. Fortunately for me, the mensa is in my dorm and I don't have to walk far (YAY!!!). Food there is served on a line like the middle schools and high schools do back home- complete with tray. First you grab a roll (apparently Italians like their rolls stale/ hard because they leave the bags perforated), then you get pasta or soup, then a meat and/or cheese with a side of vegetables, then a fruit, juice, or yogurt, then a little plastic cup for water. To get water, students go to a cabinet full of empty glass bottles and fill them with water from a sink with filtered water. It took me 3 meals before I could get through the whole process without messing up and mixing up or missing out on part of my meal. For example, yesterday I asked for grilled potatoes and a side of what I thought was pineapple. Turned out the pineapple was just more potatoes cooked differently- I had a whole plate filled of just potatoes.
When dinner was over, I came back to my blocco in desperate need of a shower (since Friday-Saturday was really like ONE day to me). Before I got in, I heard one of my suitemates speaking perfect American English on the phone. I waited till she was done and asked where she was from. Her name is Maura and she got here last semester from California. Unfortunately she leaves Friday since she's not staying for the rest of the year, but she introduced me later that night to her English-speaking friends Luke, Katie, and another girl who I can't remember the name of. Luke and Katie are staying the rest of the year and speaking with all of them that night made me feel more comfortable about what I was in for over the next few months. Luke gave me some advice about learning the language: make friends with both Italians and English-speakers. Speaking with Italians really helps with fluency, but it can get frustrating after a while and at the end of the day, it's nice to have English-speakers to return to. They also gave Alex and me a temporary internet sign-in name from a former student so we could get online until we got our own login and passwords. Getting back online and contacting friends was lovely :)
Around midnight I went to bed. It was then, when I was alone and in the dark (a- because it was night and b- because I blew out my fuse) that everything really hit me. I had a lot to look forward to, but homesickness really began to take over. I missed home and my family, I missed Andy and getting to speak to him before bed like I usually did, I missed all my friends, I missed simple communication, I missed what I was used to, and most of all I missed English. The physical distance between my friends and family, and time before we could be together again, was so overwhelming and I had a rough night.
I slept in till noon the next day before going in to meet Alex, Luke, Maura, Katie, the girl who's name I can't remember, and a student from Spain -with a name I'll never be able to pronounce correctly- for lunch. It was nice to have made some friends. After lunch, Alex and I went back into town to get some more things we had forgotten the day before. Unfortunately for us, we picked the worst time ever to go. Not only was it Sunday and a lot of stores were closed, but between the afternoon hours of 2 and 4, just about everything is closed (and that goes for every day, not just Sundays). So we meandered about learning ways around. On the way we passed a cinema that's playing Paranormal Activity. Since I already know the plot and that would make understanding the Italian dubbing easier, and since I never got to experience it in a theater, I am debating on going to see it some time this week. Later, we found a closer grocery store and waited for it to open at 5pm before giving up and leaving around 515 after having killed time and waiting in the cold for over an hour. On our way back to the center, we kept discovering new stores (like ANOTHER grocery store that's about a minute's walk from the bus stop; not 20 minutes like the one we had gone to the day before, or 15 like the one we waited for to open all day) even though they were closed. This pretty much consisted of our entire day. Even though we really learned our way around and got some extreme exercise on all the hills, we only accomplished being outside in the cold for about 4 hours and bought nothing.
There was one exception to all this though, and that is hot chocolate. About halfway through our day, with Alex sick and both of us freezing, we went into a cafe named Romana and ordered hot chocolates. To put it briefly: OMG ITALY HAS THE BEST HOT CHOCOLATE EVER AND IT PUTS OURS TO SHAME. You know when you make pudding on the stove top and you have to stir it till it thickens? Well, only stir it until its cooked about halfway. That is their hot chocolate- thick yet liquid, rich and not watery. HEAVEN. And it tastes like pudding too!!!
Romana also had a beautiful gelato selection that made my mouth water, but with the freezing temperature, I had to resist my temptation. I look forward to trying their Nutella gelato in the spring :)
Yesterday I had also managed to reach both my family and Andy on skype. Despite the several-second delay on skype due to distance, speaking with my parents was very helpful with my homesickness. We were able to speak for an hour and by the end of it, the delay didn't bother me anymore. At the end of the day, I was exhausted and was glad that I was able to reach Andy and make our skype time sooner so I could go to bed earlier. Talking to him was wonderful since it had been a while since we last spoke. I loved being able to catch up, and he made me feel a lot better about everything that was getting me down since arriving. This goes without saying that being able to see him on the computer made everything even better :) Skype is wonderful.
Today (Monday) Alex and I finished all of our shopping (I finally have a hair dryer!!) and picked up our Tesserino (student cards). It was quite the process and we were sent up and down stairs to several different people before getting it done. We then had to take our cards next door to a machine where we could put money on it. The machine was very simple and you only had to press 3 buttons. We paused briefly to see how much money we each had on us to put on the card and we spoke in English to each other. This was apparently gave the lady who was watching us from behind the counter the impression that we were incapable because she started telling us we had to press "continua" ("continue"). We were both like, "uh, duh" (obviously to ourselves) and told her that we knew, but she wouldn't stop so she came over and did it for us. Her lack of faith in our ability to understand 3 simple buttons (of which 'continua' is a COGNATE of 'continue' in English) made us start to second guess ourselves when we were going to do it right all along. It was very frustrating.
Afterwards, we went to the closer grocery store (it's location is so wonderful now that we know it exists!) and I got a box of toilet paper (yay! I can stop using tissues!), more tissues (since mine vastly depleted in the substitution of toilet paper), and water. All together it was only 5.03 euro! This made me happy since all I had on me was a 5 euro bill. I still have over $40 that needs to be exchanged, not to mention a significant portion of the remainder of euros that I had on me went to my student card to pay for meals.
We came back to campus for lunch, where I had my first successful ordering of my meal- no problems! Not to mention a quick swipe of my new student card meant no confrontation with the cashier and attempting to explain my situation. It was fantastic. Alex mentioned having learned who we were to speak to about getting our internet access names and passwords but that we had to go back in town and we only had till 2pm (it was already 1). So we had a quick lunch and met at the bus stop.
On my way up the stairs I ran into Frederica as she was checking in the student who was studying abroad through New Paltz, Laura. Since I was in a hurry, I could only talk breifly, but invited Laura to dinner with us at 730.
Our trip back to the center was very fast. When we got our internet access I learned that mine is somehow different since I'm considered faculty (I'm a teaching assistant for English), though I have yet to discover how it is different yet. We were done in about 5 minutes and managed to catch the bus after it had only gone around once, allowing us to use the same bus ticket since it was within the hour (yay! I saved a euro!).
When I got back, I tried the Italian way of things- with a 2-hour afternoon nap (part of the reason the stores are closed between 2 and 4; Why don't we do this in the states?). When I got up, I skyped with my parents. Now the sun has set and I'm ready for dinner! YAY FOOD!!!
All in all, everything is getting better as I go. Just give everything time time time!
Hopefully my next post won't be as long if I manage to update sooner- wish me luck!
CIAO :)