i didnt realise it had been that long since i updated this thing!!  i have been unable to access it for a while though because i didnt know the actual web address of the page and i couldnt access it my usual way.  anyway, lets get started on the details.

so last you heard id just finished my italian course.  well i had signed up to do the next one which would have been an extended course but it turned out that it was gonna cost me another EU400 so that didnt happen.  i did actually sign up for it thinking it was EU50 and then they charged me and everything and handed me the recipt for EU400 and i totally freaked out then had to go through all these other hassels trying to cancel out of the course and get a refund. .  well now 4 weeks later i think theyre finally getting on to it and im getting that money back.  i think i still loose out on a bit of money though with interest and exchange rates and stuff.

my friends here from the course are fantasic.  in the last few weeks most of them have gone home for a visit then their parents have been coming over so its all been a bit hectic and we are all starting to realise how much this place and these friends mean to us.  Everyone whose gone home has been just as excited to come back.  weve kinda developed our little groups now, a little bit more separated from the massive gorup that formed during the course, but we are all still interested in getting to know everyone.  we look at the photos from parties and stuff and its always like, whos that, i dont know them, and you realise just how few people you actually know.  my group consists mainly of the english, irish, german and one finish girl.  were pretty tight but im also good friends with most of the americans.  just lately there seems to be a whole group of brasilians who have come out of nowhere.  im friends with a few but there are a lot more than i first thought.  my next aim is to get to know the spanish and portugese and the other polish girls, i already know a few of the polish guys.

i usually spend my nights hanging out with them, if there isnt a party then its usually for dinner, quiet drinks or just a movie at someones house.  I cooked dinner for them a little while back (12.10) and now they all love me.  its great, i win them over with food and im also making a name for myself with cleaning the boys kitchen, everytime im at their house i clean their kitchen.  i feel bad for them, their kitchen looks really bad when its even a little bit messy and they dont know how to clean it properly, so when im there i do it for them.  i guess its only fair as we are over there so often.  anyway i cooked a couple of stir frys and a sticky date pudding and now theyre in love with me and the sticky date pudding.  we also had a picnic this sunday (29.10) and i cooked heaps and what we had left we took with us to the boys afterwards. 

i should probably stop cooking cos ive put on so much weight since i got here.  people say its not noticable but it is to me.  i just dont have the time to jazzercise anymore cos ive always gotta rush out  of the house after work to go to my friends and during the day it used to be too hot, now its just hard cos the lady downstairs says she doesnt like the thumping, so i just dont do it anymore, not good!

so ill give you a brief outline of what ive been up to lately - i have to keep a calender myself that i update every few days or else i forget.  there are a few times ive left it too long and i cant actually remember what ive been up to!

wk beginning 9.10 - got in trouble for the other nanny staying over.  it was one of the worst weeks since ive been here and i was about ready to up and leave.  started talking to other people about jobs and trying to figure out what to do with myself if i didnt stay in the job.  had a few quiet drinks with uni firends and they helped me decided that enough was enough.  started working from 12 noon on wednesdays cos their usually ironing lady is too busy to work at the moment so i now iron for 4hours on a wednesday before i pick up the kids (not happy about that!!!! but after getting in trouble i thought i should suck up as much as possible).  i found out on the wed night that the family were going away for 4 days so i had thurs, fri, sat, sun off.  fortunately i had plans to go visit federico in bologna so i decided i would leave friday morning. thursday i cooked that stir fry dinner for everyone and went out afterwards and that dj guy antonio started hitting on me again, but dont worry, i still too into  federico to worry about any other stupid guy.  went to bologna friday and stayed at federicos - he has 2 single beds so its ok!

bologna is definately a nice place, very different to any other italian city ive been to so far.  its known as the red brick city and i can see why.  it got all the old cathederals n stuff but theyre all made out of red brick, its weird, pretty but weird.  we went over to his friends house a couple times for dinner and he took me out to dinner one night.  saturday he had to do a course in watzu - like shiatsu but in water.  hes had to start leaning about it for his work, aparently they use it with the downs syndrome kids to help them learn about their senses.  so while he was doing that i was shopping and eating mcdonalds.  there were some really good  markets and a nice range of shops so i bought a few things.  sunday we had a lazy day and watched the motorbike race with valentino rossi.

wk beginning 16.10- came home monday.  went to the boys house and helped one of our american friends justin film a video for his girlfriends bday back in california.  it was really sweet cos he made us have a party for her, with cake and everything, and then the boys did a song for her.  very sweet. wednesday federico was going back home to ziano and so seeing as trento is on the way he stopped over for the night.  it was really weird cos hes never seen me with my friends before, its always been around his friends and while they talk italian i just sit there all quiet and try to pretend im paying attentention and trying to understand.  this time it was around my friends and i hadnt seen most of them in almost a week, which over here feels like ages (seeing as we see each other usually every day) so we met them out at a bar and there was lots of girly screaming - oh my gosh i havent seen you in ages- kinda stuff.  i got up dancing with my friends but italians seem to have a thing agains dancing, they just dont do it, so he sat at the side by himself for a while, the poor thing, i felt so bad.  allof my friends relly like him though, even clio whos trying to do the protective friend thing and be suspicious of his intentions but no she likes him. 

i did find out a bit about the ex - they were together for 1 1.2 yrs and broke up at the end of greece cos theyd been having problems and both decided it would be better just to be friends.  there was also problems with distance as she lives in treviso (near venice) however when i checked on the map i found out trento is actually futher, so who knows what hes thinking at the moment. 

he left the next day just before i started work, but after trying potato wedges with sweet chilli sauce and sour cream, which he quite liked.  later in the week my friends and i had a bit of a party and spent the next day pigging out of disgusting greasy food followed by chocolate and ice cream and turkish goods (turkish delight and some toher stuff) as our turkish friend, melike, had her sister visiting.

the next day we went ice skating.  im pleased to say that i can now skate backwards!!!!!  woohoo.  im quite proud of that.  the rental skates at the ice rink were awful and i got horrible blisters from them so now we are gonna look at buying our own second hand but we had fun.  most of the others had been skating before but did pretty well, they fell over heaps, even viripi from finland who learnt how to skate at school like we learn how to swin at school had problems with the skates and fell over. 

wk beginning 23.10 - clio left to go back to ireland for the week so there was a big hole in our little group.  on tuesday federico visited on his way back from ziano to bologna.  i found out on monday night that the halloween party on tuesday night was supose to be costumed so i had to get him to help me come up with a costume so that was a bit of a laugh.  didnt do too much else during the week, coffee with a few friends, quiet drinks on friday night with the others.  was told on friday that i had to work on saturday, that they needed me sometime between 9.30-10.  i showed up at 10 kinda wondering if maybe i was holding them up, that maybe elisabetta had to go out and me not showing up till 10 was putting her out a bit, how stupid it was to think that!!!  i made the beds then she realised there was more ironing to do so i spend 2.5 hrs of my saturday iron the kids clothes - yeah they needed me real bad!  i spend saturday arvo cooking then went out with my friends again that night and ran into an italian guy id met a while ago.  hes ales (angelinas boyfriend) cousin so we had a good laugh about ale who has just moved to australia to be with angelina.  hes never been out of italy before, never lived outside of trento and now hes living in sydney!  so his cousin and i chated for a while.

sunday we had another picnic.  i got a couple of ppl over to my place to help get stuff up to the park and we arrived about 40mins late but no one else was there so it was ok.  we got hungry pretty quickly and seeing as everyone else was late we thought it would be ok to start tucking into the food. it wasnt until we had almost polished off the potato salad that one of the boys pointed out that the others werent actually late cos daylight savings was over and the clock actually went back an hour so we had arrived at the park at 1.30 not 2.30 like we had thought!!!  it was such a nice day that we all sat around sunbaking, very unusual at this time of year here.  and even though there werent as many people as last time it was still a lot of fun.

so now i dont really know how to explain whats going on between federico and myself.  its not totally official that we are together, we still introduce each other as friends and we dont msg everyday but im going to bologna again this weekend to see him and as luck would have it 2 other nannies who were here in trento before will be there also - cindy, who was the girl in sardinia with me and cassie, who was here right at the beginning who left after a month.  back to federico, i guess we are just playing by ear and seeing what happens.  i aparently am going to be cooking for him and the other friends who cooked us dinner last time so hopefully itll work out just as good as it did with my uni friends!  no i dont have any photos of him yet, im still waiting to get my camera back from being fixed but as soon as i do im pretty sure ill fill up what room i have left on my memory cards and will send that back asap. 

yeah, my camera broke a few weeks ago, the on/off button snapped off an although it looked small and simple to fix its not, so they had to send it to milan to be fixed.  if i was able to go to milan myself it would have only taken a few days, but seeing as there was no chance of that (the place isnt open weekends and its actually past where the trains go) i have to wait a month.  im so frustrated right now cos if feels like its been forever and im missing out on so many photo opportunities and i feel totally limited in where i can go cos i dont want to go somewhere significant and miss out on photos.

i know there hasnt been too much complaining about work at the moment but dont be fooled.  things didnt get too much better after that last incident when i got in trouble.  i did calm down a bit cos elisabetta started being nice to me again but i still hate it, i really dont like my kids, and now with this extra ironing, ive had enough.  not that i dont ejoy the ironing, i would actually prefer to iron than to look after the kids but its not in my contract and its over and above what i should be doing, the only thing is that i cant say that to them cos theyd just bring up the fact that ive only worked 2 saturdays since i got here and ive never had to babysit before.  the last straw was on saturday when i asked for 3 weeks off over christmas to go to ireland with clio and spend christmas with her family.  elisabetta told me that would be impossible and i can have only from the 24.12 to  the 7.1 off, ah . . . i dont think so.  im gonna see if i can stress the importance of me having the whole 3 weeks off a little more but if nothing eventuates ill just quit.  i really need a break form these people and i definately dont want to spend that week leading up to chrismas with the stupid little brats!

i figure if i do get it off id only come back for another 5 week then go to carnivale in vencie and then just travel or hang out with my friends at their places.  im gonna have to look at these things a bit more i think.  all i know is that although when im at work its not all that bad but i spend every minute im not at work dreading going back there. 

so thats the big update for now.

»7:37 PM    »Write comment     »Send entry    

Author: italianbella    in: My travelblog

Modified on October 30, 2006 at 7:38 PM

ok so this is only going to be quick cos ive got too much stuff going through my head at the moment to tell you whats been going on for the last two weeks.

things for me are at both extremes at the moment - really really good and really really bad.

the really really good stuff is that i have the best group of friends here that anyone could ever want when theyre away from home, we have so much fun and spend every evening together just hanging out!  i feel more settled here now than i have felt before and i really dont want to leave.

also i saw federico yesterday for a few hours when he was on his way from his home in themountains going to his uni in bologna and things are going really good there - aparently the girlfriend is no longer in the picture (although i do have to ask him what the story is there) and well, i think i might be going to see him in bologna this weekend.

on the bad side, there has been some pretty dramatic stuff happening with one of the other nannies (one that doesnt live in the apartment) and anyway some bad stories have spread about here which are complete lies and all the mothers are being really nasty about it.  my work mum hasnt mentioned anything to me about it but i think shes taking it out on me in other ways and i seriously though i was going to be fired on friday.  as it is i am absolutely terrified to go to work today cos i have no idea what is going to happen.

so thats basically it - you can see now how there are two extremes.  i think what makes it worse though is that i have always though that if things at work got really bad i could just up and leave and find a new city, a new family but now ive finally gotten settled here i dont want to leave trento at all!

i have to go call people at home now cos i just need to talk it all out i think