Hi everybody guys, I’m so sorry I’ve been a “bit” absent in the last few months, but my life has been incredibly full of events..I’m gonna share some of them with you, hoping you can forgive me :)

on the plane!

What I’m talking about it’s in particular my experience in Canada, where I’ve spent a month (actually, the most beautiful month of my entire life!) in Sault Ste. Marie, an amazingly nice and friendly city of 75,000 inhabitants just on the border with USA. To be precise, this city is made of two parts, the American and the Canadian one, linked together by a two-states bridge.

You can immagine that, when I applied to partecipate in an intercultural exchange, I was very scared and a bit anxious.. I was aware it could have been hard to live with other people I had never seen before (I had to be host by an unknown family), using a language that wasn’t mine, trying to create contact with different people, with little or big cultural differences.. So, after 10 endless hours of plane and after a night in Toronto with the other guys of the same programme as mine, here we are.. Finally I arrived at the airport where my host sister and my host parents were waiting for me with a sweet sweet poster :)

It was incredible, the place was incredible, being surrounded by so many lakes and trees was incredible, talking with my family and the Japanese girl who was being hosted with me was incredible..EVERYTHING WAS INCREDIBLE!

Rainbow cupcake :)

bonfire in the backyard!

And since then, time went by so fast I didn’t even notice it.. I did so many exciting things, I met the nicest people of my life, I saw the most gorgeous places ever, I felt happy like never before. My parents were just perfect, they treated me like a daughter and we shared so many amazing moments together:
we made rainbow cupcakes

I caught my first fish!

we had a lot of bonfires

with candies, hot marshmallows, peanut butter toast...

we went fishing

and ice skating

and camping under the stars!

I prepared some delicious Italian food specialities, which had been incredibly appreciated!

Me cooking peppers (with an Italian recipe)

With my friends we went to USA too, to Mackinaw Island in Michigan

Me at the Treetop Adventure

or to other weird places like the ‘Treetop Adventure’, a theme park in which you were able to test a scary but exciting zip line trough the trees of a lovely bush!

We also had a Japanese night (‘cause of my Japanese roommate) with good Japanese food!

Japanese sushi!

Mackinaw Island - Michigan

It was just like living in a film, doing so many things you had never done before, like in a surreal dimension where you were not the person who left from your country just a couple of weeks before but you really became part of a new world, with its weird characteristics, with its difficult language (which you got used to, but which still remains amazingly hard and incredibly tiring to understand), with a different and beautiful landascape.. My normal life back home felt like a dream (maybe a nightmare!) and I just wanted to remain in that fascinating world forever! I couldn’t even think ‘bout leaving without crying…

You can imagine how sad was the day of the departure waiting for our flight at the airport.. Everybody was crying, the make up flaking ‘cause of the tears.. That was, actually, the only bad moment of my experience abroad..

I’ve learned a lot, and I’m so thankful to my host parents and my Japanese sister. Leaving them was really, really hard.. but we’re still in touch, of course, and I’m sure we’ll always be! They called me just a week ago, and they say there’s already snow in Canada, with -5°C! I miss them so much, I miss Canada so much, with ice hokey, bonfires, maple syrup, salmon, cinnamon rolls, pancakes, deers and bears!

boat trip on the lake

Canadian breakfast

What am I going to do? I’m gonna return there, of course, ‘cause I just fell in love with that adorable and perfect for me place!

I scream!

This is not an usual post. I mean, this is a post I find difficult to write and to share, maybe ‘cause the most important feelings are just represented by words we desperately try to hide inside ourselves. Everybody has problems, serious or less, and for everyone, I bet, it’s horribly dreadful even thinking about say them at loud.. Confessing, admitting to be just human beings, with sins and mistakes, could be the first step to a possibile cure, to a happily way to fix the situation.

I know, maybe you aren’t understanding at all what I’m just talking ‘bout, but I hope you can try to understand the feelings that I’m conveying instead.

Could a bad moment became even worse? Apparently it could. And right when you are drowning in the smooth sea of your deep desolation, you might also find out that something it’s going to destroy you completely.
Losing a friend,

      changing your own mind,

               the ending of a friendship,

                     a situation that is never gonna be the same,

                             a mistake you can’t simply erase,

                                        a decision which is pressing on your breath,

                                            fear,

                                                 rage,

                                                     sadness..

See? Turning them into real words it’s possibile, and it’s also very useful. It gives you the chance to convert your unshaped emotion into defined, little and powerful words. It’s a first step, it’s the first reaction to a world every day more vacuous and silent. Give power to the word, don’t ever be afraid of using it!

I know, it’s a weird post, too cryptic..

I just hope it could give you the possibility to think about the communication problems of our society, about the million of unsaid speeches, too dangerous to be pronounced, too huge to be hidden..
There are a dozen million scary things to say.. Please, find the courage to pronounce them! Find a way to express what are you feeling right now! Try to share your negative or positive emotions, don’t ever remain stuck in a silence cage!

And you, you, who are listening, find the courage to help.

MAFIA!      RAPE!        BULIMIA!
   

 ANOREXIA!         SUICIDE!           

 VIOLENCE!         DEATH !            

       HOMOSEXUALITY!              
  
ADDICTION !         DEPRESSION!

"Stopping by woods on a snowy evening" by Robert Frost

Hi guys! Sorry but I've been really busy and so it has been difficult for me to find a moment to write on this blog.. However, I'm back! :) Today I'd like to talk about a poem that we studied at school, "Stopping by woods on a snowy evening" by Robert Frost..I hope you'll like it!
This  poem has a regular rhythm, with iambic tetrameter and a basilar rhyme scheme composed of four stanzas. Even though it seems to be an extremely simple structure, it is really important ‘cause it conveys to the reader the quiet, still and also hypnotizing, fascinating  and a bit scary atmosphere described by the author. In the poem, in fact, we can find plenty of contrast between elements that belong to nature (like the woods, the snow, the lake, the silence, the wind..) and other ones belonging to civilization (such as the village, the farmhouse, the harness bells, the horse, which is a natural element that has been turned into something useful by the human beings..).

The speaking voice chooses to stop there not to do anything, just to watch the woods filling up with snow. He’s on a little horse, which in fact is more similar to a human being because the writer says it can think and do other human actions. The life is far from the smooth scenery described, it’s in the village, away from the protagonist.

We can guess that, in the poet’s mentality, snow, cold and desolation are a symbol of death, which seems to be for the author something positive, warm,  not so scary or negative as we are used to thinking. As a matter of fact, it can be considered also something attractive and charming for someone who wants to indulge in the course of events, not having troubles and responsabilities anymore, just letting himself rest, absorbed by the idea of deep, lovely and dark loneliness.

However, in the last part of the composition, the protagonist changes his point of view and reminds himself the promises that he has to keep and the things he has to do, choosing to return to face real life. I think the aim of the writer can be to make us realize the fact that it is normal to have bad moments with obstacles which seem too huge too and which sometimes can also make us wish not to suffer anymore, but we can notice that what can save us is the sense of responsibility, the awareness of having duties towards the others but especially towards ourselves, remembering that we mustn’t waste our sometimes full of pain, but anyway short, time.

"The doll", a gender issue

Today’s topic is an other short story I read at school, “The doll” by Jean Rhis, which deals with a child who act in a different way from the other women of her age. As a matter of fact, the story begins with two presents arrived from the Irish granny of the protagonist, which are two beautiful dolls, one fair and the other one dark. As soon as the little girl saw the dark one, she realized that she wanted her like she had never wanted anything before. Unfortunately her little sister made a quick move towards the object of the desire. She tried to explain she saw the dark doll first, but her mother immediately rushed to her sister rescue, reminding her that she was the elder one and she should have been pleased to make her little sister happy, also because nobody would have loved her if she had  been so selfish. The girl was so angry she ran away in the garden and decided to smash the poor fair doll’s face, even though she didn’t really know why. Her mother was so uneasy that she asked the help of her husband, a figure that we can guess was not so present in her daughter’s life. He looked disappointed and he scolded her for her bad gesture, and he also threatened her not to let her go to her great aunt Jane, a person we can guess was very important to the protagonist. However he recommended her not to worry her mother once again and decided not to give her a punishment. Only when she was in her great aunt’s arms she felt guilty about what she had done and she wept.

Perhaps we can interprete the implicit moral of this short story as a description of the behaviors that people expected from women in the historical period of the author. In fact, the little girl of the story has a way of act that isn’t as compliant as that of the other women in her family, apart from great aunt Jane, the only one that really knows her, ‘cause she is rebel, headstrong, she has her own ideas, she wants to makes his own decisions and she fights for what she wants, not fitting in. In the text we also read that there was an other aunt that didn’t like the child just because she hated sewing, a task considered proper for girls at that time, and this is an other example of the nonconformism to the society rules of that age.

Also nowadays there are still differences between the behave and the way of be that society consider appropriate for male and female gender, for instance in sports, clothes and even feelings: boys are pushed since their childhood by their families to be strong, aggressive, powerfull and competitive,in order to achieve positions of power and prestige, for example in the world of work. On the contrary, girls are encouraged to dedicate themselves to more delicated sport, such as dancing, just ‘cause they appear weak and fragile.

I think is time to mix this behaviours, also swapping the roles model that we consider inappropriate for us!

Do you agree with me? Let me know your ideas! :)

"The weapon" by Frederic Brown

Hi! How are you? :)

Today I’d like to talk about “The weapon” by Frederic Brown, a short story we studied at school in our English classes. It deals with Dr. James Graham, who is the key scientist of a project, which consists in the developing of an ultimate weapon. One evening a stranger, Mr. Niemand, visits him. While Niemand starts talking about the potential danger of the ambitious project, the scientist’s mentally arrested son comes in, so his father introduces the boy to Niemand, who seems to like him. The discussion between the two man continues until Niemand ask for a drink. While Graham is in the kitchen, Niemand gives Harry, the boy, a gift. Only when Niemand is gone, the scientist discovers what the gift really is: a loaded revolver, which makes him wonder that only a madman would give a weapon like that to a retarded child.. So we can think that Niemand had tried to make Graham realized how his weapon could be dangerous for the entire population, which is not ready to use it well, even though he doesn’t feel responsible for what people may do with what he’s giving to them.

I think that we can interpret the moral of this short story as a kind of comparison with actual conflicts between science or progress and moral or ethics. I’m thinking, for instance, about the discussion on nuclear power, which is an important case of the development of science which can also become a danger for the environment safety and the human being’s health. As a matter of fact, in history we can find a lot of cases of ecological disasters such as what happened in Fukushima last year or in Chernobyl in 80’s, or what has been caused in Hiroshima and Nagasaki by the explosion of the atomic bomb, which is an other example of misuse of scientific power.

So, in my opinion, this text aims at explain that we really have to pay attention to scientific discoveries and, above all, we have to learn to use knowledge in a proper, responsible and positive way.

What do you think about this issue? Are you in favour or against nuclear plants? Tell me :)

Let's cook!

Hi guys! Today, as soon as I woke up, I prepared some delicious pancakes for me and my family for breakfast :) I also added some maple syrup, and here's the result:


They were absolutely gorgeous! :)
And what about you? Do you like cooking? Let me know and feel free to add comment or photos if you want :)

Here is the new song by Coldplay :) I posted it on my blog 'cause I think it's very sweet.. I can't wait for the Coldplay italian tour! :D