Day 22: Crazy weather

We are getting into a routine now.

After breakfast Fede watches cartoons on television whilst I do an hour English homework with Bea in the kitchen. After that Bea stays home and does math work or cleans the house or practices the piano whilst me and Fede do to Elga's to tutor.

I tutor Alessandro and Francesco wholst Fede completes some Italian homework. He has already finished his English book. Today we did the body again. I drew another picture with arrows and they had to label all the parts. They did well on the major parts like leg and arm but struggled on things like thumb and hips. After that we did adjectives that are opposite. Eg light and dark, old and new and they had to give examples of these properties. 

When we got home I repeated the English exercises with Fede. He had to match up opposite adjectives and then write and sentence using them and draw pictures to match them. I think he quite enjoyed it. 

Then we had lunch eggs and salad. We chilled out a little after lunch, and thene and Bea went out to the shops with her friend Matilde and her sister Constanca. 

We went to Subdued a kind of younger hipster fashion shop, Zara and Abercrombie and Fitch before it decide to start raining and we had no jackets or umbrellas. 

I bought a necklace from subdued. 

Nice gift bag

M for me, Maria. 

They had a smaller one that was a black triangle with the star signs so I might go back and get a libra one!

Abercrombie was a nice shop, very big three floors. Worse lighting than Hollister and twice the price. You could also get your picture taken with a model on your way in. I thought it was a bit silly so I didn't get one Bea and Matilde did though. Although it's expensive I think I'll save up and treat myself to something from there before I leave. 

We got back from shopping wet and tired the rain became really heavy. Crazy weather as it was boiling hot only minutes earlier. It also started thundering quite badly! When you use the trams, buses and trains you stick your ticket in a machine and it gets dated and timed. 

The back gets stamped with a time. 

Date: 07/07/14 Time: 17.52

Matilde stayed for tea and hung out afterwards. I google hangouted my family which was fun. Louisa, Bea and Matilde had face pulling contests. 

Their adopted cat Rebecca likes me she kept rubbing against my leg and purring whilst I was on google hangouts. 

Ciao. 

Day 2: Milan

It was raining this morning, but not heavily, it was nice and refreshing.

After a jam on bread breakfast I went with the children - Bea and Fede - and their mother Alessandra to the dentist for their appointment. After that Alessandra went off to work and so I returned home with the children. 

We stayed for about half an hour then decided to go to the library which was not far away. It had a children's section and mature readers but also some English books. Unfortunately when we got there it was closed as something had gone wrong with the checking out system. So we went back home. 

Alessandra was coming back at about noon so we had a few hours and practiced some English. We used the letter tiles from their board game scarabeo, which is like scrabble, to make words in Italian to translate into English and vice versa. E.g 'orso' is 'bear' 'piatto' is 'dish'. It was fun trying to see who remembered the most! We also used the children's box of paints and crafts to label Italian objects they use in English e.g 'matita' is 'pencil'. 

For lunch we had pasta pomodoro - tomato pasta which was delicious. They drink a lot of sparkling water do the Italians, I don't like it so they got some natural water for me. They have incredible fruit. A funny variety of plum which are small like cherries and taste lovely. Also the watermelons are €0,39 per kilogram!! And the smallest you can buy is 10 kilogram they are humongous! England has extremely small extremely expensive watermelons. 

After lunch we took the tram into the centre of Milan. The tickets you buy from the tobacconist shop and it's €1,50 for a ticket valid for an hour and a half and you can use it on the buses or trams or subway. If you travel with a relative and are under 14 you don't have to pay! I like this system better than England's! 

We went to see the Duomo which is the big church/cathedral in the middle of Milan. It was so big and beautiful! They started building it in the 13th century and it took 50-60 years to complete. And they are always working on it because it is so big. It's made of white marble so they are always cleaning it, once they do one bit they move onto something else. 

They had a big statue of Napoleon Bonalarte opposite the Duomo also. 

We also went to see the Castello. Which was the home of the Sforza dukes. It's also huge and very old. And now a feature of art exhibits, there were giant plastic swallows all over the place. 

After that we went to a shop called 'Tiger' it's like a miniature Ikea. It is so random and sells so much stuff but I really liked it! It's also not too expensive. I wish they has that in England. 

We got the tram back after that. I was going to take the children home whilst Alessandra went to the supermarket but then her husband Stefano called to say that I had to go to the police station with him. 

In Italy when you move to the country if you stay over one month you have to declare yourself to the police. There are forms to be filled and signed. However they had already filled the forms and got the necessary documents but the police weren't happy with it. So I had to go to the station too so they knew who I was and that I matched my passport. Police stations in Italy are different, when you go in a booth to talk to the police the door stays open and people just walk in and out and chat to the officer whilst they are working. It's very strange. To get to the station the father took me on his motorbike. It was fun but very windy and a little tiring. Because of all the tram rails the bike vibrates a lot and so my legs turned to jelly. But it was fun I'd never been on one before and they can go very fast! 

For tea we had hamburgers and green beans which actually went quite nice together though it did remind me of when I went to France and they served pizza with green beans. They make really nice salad dressings! 

We went to the park. Alessandra bought us ice creams from a partisserie shop where they make it themselves. Proper ice cream cones that don't crumble and really nice proper Italia ice cream. I had mandarin and lemon I've never had a better one! At the park I met some of the children's friends. One of their friends mother asked if I would come and help her son with his English for an hour everyday and she would pay me. The family I'm with gave permission, so now I have another job! 

Buonanotte!