February

This short little month is almost over!! Just a few days left and we start the longest month of the entire year! MARCH!! Although my mom's birthday and my host sister, Kristin's birthday are in this month, as well as many of my friends, this month is soooo long. There are five full weeks of school and my school's play is this month as well. We are doing Bye Bye Birdie and we have about three weeks left! If you didn't know I am stage manager and honestly, I am kind of ready for this play to be over. I don't really want it to be over because I like Masque and Mime (the drama club) and this is going to be my last spring musical with Masque and Mime in high school. FOREVER!! Which is really scary and sad when you think about it. :( But hey I'm moving on with my life in a good way and although I have made so many friends, I know we will stay in contact via email, facebook, skype and letters.

I have also been starting to look at colleges!! Fun and kind of scary. I know my family does not have a whole bunch of money to go to an extremely expensive college for four years so I am trying to look at some local or New York colleges. I also hope I can get scholarships due to my brains and the wonderful person I am :). On school which I am in love with (although it is not local lol) would be the University of Liverpool. Yes in Liverpool, England. I know your thinking, "Wow she's going to Italy and then she wants to go the college in England?" Yeah I know it will cost a lot of money but I will work hard and try for as many scholarships as I can. I think I am going to a community college for a year or two when I come back from Italy and then just transfer somewhere else. You see tuition and board at Liverpool is around $30,000 which is $10,000 less then most of the schools I was looking at. At Liverpool I would double major in History and Italian and Liverpool is one of the better schools in England and the city itself has lower living costs than most Britain cities. Another college that sparked my interest was the American University of Rome! There I would either do Italian studies or International Relations. Another one is Western New England College where I might major in either history or international studies. As you can tell, I really have no idea where I want to go or what I want to do. I want to do something with the Italian I will gain with my year abroad, just what is the problem.

School itself is going pretty well. My classes are getting really boring and I am tired of doing the work. I can not wait for spring to come and then summer!!!! I have around 162 days till September and I will be leaving some time in September. I have not received any thing from ASSE yet about my acceptance or host family. I did talk to my Friend about passing the word onto her family in Northern Italy about hosting me. It doesn't really matter where I get placed because I know I will love anywhere, but I think if I had to choose I would like to be placed in Northern Italy, ideally Milan. I am really excited about my exchange and I have been reading people's blogs, but they are going with another group, AFS and I have also been watching their video blogs. I have been trying to do the same thing with people who went with ASSE, but I can't really find anything because they are not as big as AFS I think and all my attempts have failed. On Facebook, however, I have been talking to this boy who is in Italy now and he has been a big help with my questions.

If anything really exciting happens in my life I will try to make a post and fill you in, but for now, life is going and I'm taking it one day at a time. Ciao ciao- Aly-Oh!