Slowly realizing time flies.

I left Minnesota 3 months ago today.

I'm here for 9 months.

For those of you who can't add, that means I'm already 1/3 done with this time abroad.

I remember when I was little, I just wanted to grow up, to be tall like my parents, to date, to be on my own.

And here I am. I'm grown. I'm not as tall as either of my parents, but I probably never will be. Two of my younger sisters are already taller than me, so I'm the small one I guess. I've dated. And now I'm living over 4000 miles away from everything I've known my whole life.

Alright, enough of this sentimental stuff, on to the real talk. 

 Yesterday's sun

Larisa and me

This evening is a pleasant 50°F. There's absolutely no wind, and as I walked outside down the steps tonight, I thought about how lucky I am. This winter I'm not going to have to walk outside in the 25 below zero weather on my way to school with wet icicles hanging from my wet hair!

I'm switching houses in 10 days. Since I am switching houses in 10 days, maybe I should tell you why. I know I've referred to it in previous posts, but I think the only people who know exactly why is those who have asked me or who my mother has told.

I'm changing families, not because of problems my family and I have had. The Bianco family only signed up to have my for 4.5 months. Maybe some of you are asking why I'm moving now then since I just said earlier in the post that it's 3 months today. Probably not that many people actually noticed that though. I'm moving now because the Bianco family wants me for the last month that I'm in Italy too. Because they want to spend time with me right before I have to leave.

I've gone through happy/sad days about this move. Sometimes I'm happy because I'll get to experience a different way of Italian family culture. Yesterday was a sad day for me though. My sister Silvia is having a Christmas play thing for her school the day after I move out. She's been excited about this for a long time. We didn't realize the days until yesterday. While we were sitting here worried, my host mom walked in the room. Silvia explained our problem, and she smiled a sad smile at me, then said "don't worry, we'll pick you up for the performance. She then went on to say that I could still come over when I wanted. Then she ended it with a big hug. This is the first actual, legit hug that I've gotten from my host mom. It meant so much. From what I've seen, Italians don't hug as much as Americans do. That's one of the things that I've missed sometimes. As you can maybe imagine, that hug meant the world to me.