Vacanza!!!!

It is now officially winter vacation. :) For about the next three weeks, I do not have to go to school. That is pretty exciting. I can't believe that Christmas is already this next Friday. For the last day of school, my class, IV E, organized a huge party with III E and V E. Basically, almost every individual brought something to eat, drink, or eat with/on. For the first block, my class had to do a lessons of math. We weren't being quiet enough, so we had to sit through math that I don't understand at all. Then, for the next two blocks, we ate, and ate, and ate. There was so much food. I must say that Italians know how to throw a party at school. There were all different kinds of chips and bags of popcorn for the not-sweet foods. As for the sweet foods, there was pandoro (a cake thing from Verona-DELICIOUS), panettone (I still have yet to taste), two different types of biscotti (cookies), salumi di cioccolato (delicious), two different chocolate cakes, tiramisu (delicious), a cake made by a classmate of mine, bread with nutella (this loaf of bread was about as big as one and a half of me - I'm not even kidding!), a cake with little chocolate chunks, chocolate chunk muffins...I know that I am forgetting stuff. Basically, we were all eating for three hours. We celebrated the birthday of one of my teachers. He turned 50 on Tuesday and didn't want to celebrate it. We surprised him. :) After celebrating for three hours, we spent the last hour and a half at school cleaning the classroom, playing group games, and getting learning about the homework for Italian. Even after eating a good chunk of the morning, I wasn't full, so when I got home, I did manage to eat lunch. It wasn't big, so that was good. I spent a couple hours relaxing, and then at 5:30, I went to meet my classmates in front of the Duomo. In total, there ended up being me, Federica, Elisa, Rosaria, Rossella, Louisa, Alessandra, Francesca, and Alice. Alice moved to Spain earlier in the school year, so this was her last night in Messina. We all went shopping. I bought a new jacket, because it is kind of cold and I didn't have anything. I know...I realize that I am saying that it is kind of cold in December. :) That's what happens when you are living in Sicily. I also bought a new sweater. My friends gave me a new hat and a scarf as a Christmas present. It was really sweet of them. :) The rest of the day was me getting home, being alone for a while and just hanging out, then going to a pizzera for dinner. I must say that the pizza here is way better than any pizza that I have had in Oregon. How will I survive?! ;) Anyway, that was my last day of school. I'm not used to having huge parties like that on the last day of school, so it was really new and exciting.

Ciao! Rebecca