Friends - part 1

Hello,

It has been over a month since my last post here and during this semester I have been an awful blogger. I haven’t written down anything of what has been happening apart from a few things relating to theatre, because I have a separate blog for that. But the rest of my life in London has remained unrecorded during these months and I don’t want to lose it all because I have been lazy. So here I am, trying to pick up my series of summative posts again. I’m going to update my previous post about university soon, to add what has happened in the second half of term, but today I want to talk about my friends in England. There are people that were already there last term, others that are new, others with whom my relationship changed over time. I'm going to split the topic in two posts to keep them a bit shorter, since I'm putting a lot of pictures in.

Old...

Isabela – Obviously, she is always here in the list, because she remains my best friend in England and the person with whom I spent most of my time, since we are flat mates. This term we have had a few moments of disagreement and there’s been some tensions (as Melanie called them), but we always solved all the problems rather quickly. Together we took a singing course and had so much fun there for 8 weeks, then we obviously spend laid-back time at home, or visit Maria Stella at her flat or hang out all the three of us. there has been a lot less one-to-one time for us this semester, but it’s mainly my fault admittedly, because I was very busy with theatre, which didn’t happen last term. 

Burgers night before a singing lesson

 

Maria Stella – my other best friend in England, despite tensions that we’ve had and took some time to resolve. Most of it was due to the fact that I started having another group of friends outside uni and going out with them, and seeing Wicked very often. She felt like I was pushing her and Isabela away (Isabela felt that too, but we solved it sooner because it’s easier to talk with her), which I wasn’t doing but I understood why she might feel that way. Together we had our Monday nights watching Once Upon a Time, or we just spent hours in mine or her room just talking, mainly about love interests since she has been very interested in someone for months and he is constantly on her mind.

My birthday

"First step" girls :) Me, Maria Stella and Isabela

 

Fancy dress party

Tiger Tiger

My birthday

Photobooth at my birthday

Tommaso – we had already become friends and “brothers” last semester, but this term was completely different. We started having a lot more meals together,  spending a lot more time with each other and talking at another level. I am very happy and proud to say that before I left for Italy for the Easter holiday he had started feeling comfortable enough to openly talk about his relationship – which he had been avoiding for months despite all of us knowing. We also have a lot of laughs every time, just talking about uni and our friends, or discussing Italy.

In Isabela's room (I think this photo is from last term, though)

Melanie is a bit of a hot topic, because I haven’t figured out what sort of relationship we have. I can’t really call her my friend for real, because we don’t spend enough time together and we don’t have a bond of trust or anything like that. We have done a few things with each other, though: she came with me to Wicked one night, we celebrated her birthday and had a little flat party where she was very talkative. But things don’t always turn out the way we want them and, for every step forward that we took, there was always one backwards. She made me angry quite a few times, with her disappearing without saying anything or with cancelling on most of what we planned (e.g. our last flat dinner, which is the time that I got the maddest). 

Flat party

At Melanie's 20th birthday party (with also Jameelah and a friend of hers)

Josh – I saw him a lot more this term than I did in the past, but we haven’t become friends to be honest. Yes, we’ve had a few conversations, but he barely considers me and same goes for me in his direction.

Josh, Maria Stella and Isabela

Andrea – she remained the Biology friend with whom I spent most of my time, being together in all the classes and at tutorial. Aside from lessons, we often saw each other to do some work, which always turned into random chatting sessions with us laughing most of the time. But we were also very productive :) In addition to that, I went with her, Laurana and Isabela to watch Alice New Musical in late March and we also had a lovely walk along the Thames and lunch there because it was such a beautiful day!

After Alice New Musical with Laurana, Andrea & Isabela

Laurana – If last term she was the one I used to spend the least time with, this semester we made up for it :) She lives on campus, so it’s kind of easy to meet up outside of lessons and we organised for her to come over to my flat once or twice, especially since we decided that she will be moving out with me, Isabela and Maria Stella next year! I am really happy about that :) At the end of term the two of us went together on the Ecology fieldtrip (whereas Andrea and Coral went to the later one). Even though we were not in the same group for the daily work, we shared a room and were together on the coach, so we spent lots of time doing things we hadn’t done before and I loved it!

Elena – we’ve lost her, completely and utterly lost her. As in, she hasn’t come to see us even once since the Christmas holidays! I have seen her around a few times and a quick, casual conversations with her, but it was plain small talk so I can definitely say Elena is a lost friend now. It’s a shame, I really liked her, but what can I do about it?!

Coral – here we start getting into a complicated ground again... until half-term she was always with our group and then she slowly started drifting away, towards her tutorial group (minus Laurana, because she stayed with us). Lately I have seen her very rarely and heard from her even less... To be fair, everyone is free to do as they wish, and I wouldn’t have blamed her for finding new friends to spend time with if (yes, there’s an if) she hadn’t been the one criticising Elena the most for how she has left us. And now she is the one who ditched us without a second thought!

Back when Coral used to still stay with me, Laurana and Andrea

Emily (Isabela’s best friend) – I’m putting her in the “old friends” because I met her at the beginning of the uni year and we got on well from the very beginning. But this term I saw her more often, because she visited us at uni a couple of times, we went out with her to a Brazilian club twice and caught up with her before a singing lesson once. So there were a lot more interactions and I really like her! She is lots of fun to be with, very open and energetic :) Just last week she stayed over for a couple of days and we had a fun night playing with henna and giving one another henna tattoos!

Brazilian Club with Emily, Isabela and Maria Stella

Brazilian club

My henna tattoo: "COMET"

Christmas holiday in Italy - part 2

Here is the second part of the post about my Christmas holiday in Italy! I’m very late and it’s only a summary of all that happened, but I finally managed to finish it and post it :)

Other friends

Over the three weeks I spent in Italy, I also saw plenty of other friends! I met up with the girls from my high school (Chiara, Denisa, Chiara, Sara and Marisa) a couple of times and one day we even went back to our school to say hello to our old teachers. It was soooo funny, because the janitor didn’t want to let us in saying we would disturb lessons... but come on, it was the last day before their Christmas the holidays AND the teachers were all happy to receive us!!! We spent the whole morning at school, six hours as if we were having lessons, and we visited all our old teachers. It was so funny how the janitor was mad at us, whereas the teachers would just interrupt the lessons and spent a looong time talking to us :) We chatted about uni, we remembered a few things from the past years in school and just had a laugh every now and then. Ti was lovely, because even though I don’t miss high school, I miss my teachers – most of them were such nice people and I enjoyed going back to say hello. Also, I got to spend a full “school-day” with my friends and that was pretty cool as well!

With the girls from school I also had a pizza night after Christmas, which turned into a Christmas celebration with presents of sorts, and then I caught up with two of them a couple more times before I left. Once I had lunch with Chiara (ex-desk mate) and afternoon tea (without tea) with Denisa and then I met both of them two days before leaving for a last “goodbye” :D

Lunch with Chiara

Walking around town!

And then also with Denisa!

I also spent some time with my friend Giulia, as I went to visit her at her place, we spent the afternoon together chatting, listening to music and catching up on the last months. Then we went out to dinner to the shopping centre we usually go to when I at her place and it was sooooo good to be back together, enjoy some time and doing the usual stuff as if nothing had changed! She also gave me a couple of gadgets she had bought for me at a Comic-Con (two Sailor action figures) and my Christmas present: a beautiful doll of Mulan!

Another friend that I saw, whom I hadn’t seen since a few days before I left for London, is Carla – she is from Milan and I met her down in Australia, we’ve been great friends ever since. She came over to Turin to spend New Year’s Eve with me and then she stayed also the next two days, when we went skiing at mountain together. it was so much fun and also very different from our usual meetings haha The last time I had spent a few days with her was at the seaside over the summer: pretty big difference, huh?! :P

In addition, I met some of my friends a mountain, though we are not very close and we really spent little time together. We only had a few basic chats, and that was it! However, at mountain I spent more time than I have in ages with my childhood friends Ludovica and Carlotta and I enjoyed it so much! We go on holiday together during the summer, but it had been ages since we had spent some time together spontaneously and not necessarily with our parents around! Also, I went for lunch with Ludovica in Turin once, which we had never done :) It was lovely, we got to chat about uni and our lives and catch up casually.

Carlotta and I at mountain!

Finally, I also went back to the bookshop where I had my work experience in 2013, where I am friends with all the women in the staff, and spent over an hour chatting to all of them, catching up and discussing books as usual :D I bought a new book, too, the latest one from Licia Troisi!

 

Christmas

I spent Christmas Eve’s dinner at my mum’s sister’s house. There were also my maternal grandparents, my two cousins (Umberto and Vittorio) and Umberto’s fiancée, Emilia, who is lovely! Dinners there are always fun because we joke all the time, we laugh at random things and we simply enjoy pending such a special time all together! we had a wonderful dinner, because my grandmother, auntie and mum joined efforts and we ended up with several entrées (I loved the “paté di prosciutto”!), plin, cotechino and mashed potatoes... what more?! :P Afterwards we waited for Vittorio’s girlfriend to join us and we opened our presents, which in my case were money to put aside for the “Once Upon a Time” convention I am going to in June.

Me and my mum

Lots of love

Mum, grandma and Emilia (cousin's fiancée)

With my grandparents!

Sisters :)

Vittorio, Umberto, me, Emilia and Benny

Dad in the kitchen!

 

We arrived back home at around 12.30am, and mum, dad, my sister Benny and I opened the presents we had made to each other. I received a lovely hat with a puffy pon pon a top, warm and soft gloves (totally in love with them!) and a pair of leggings :)

For lunch on Christmas Day we went to my paternal grandparents’ instead, where there was also my dad’s sister and my grandma’s sister :) Another lovely meal, even though the food wasn’t as good because the best cooks are in my mum’s family! As presents I received an illustrated book (“Fiabe Immortali” by Paolo Barbieri) that I had specifically asked for and more money for the convention :) Yep, now hotel, train and food are definitely covered!

New Year’s Eve

Carla arrived in Turin in the afternoon, we prepared a couple of entrées to bring to Giorgia’s house and we went there at around 7.30pm. At first it was just the three of us (Carla and Giorgia had met a few times before because of me), as we had planned for it to be, and we chatted until the rest of the guests arrived. So three boys, friends of Giorgie, joined us for dinner and it was fantastic! I think it was the best New Year’s Eve I’ve ever had :D We had dinner, with me having something “special” (rice) because they ate polenta which I don’t like, while laughing soooo much the whole time that I almost had tears in my eyes LOL At some stage somebody made a comment about not liking musicals and Giorgia and I decided it was exactly the right moment to “randomly” make a “Phantom of the Opera” song play from my phone. It was hilarious!!

After dinner we went into the living room and played “Taboo” until a few minutes before midnight – it was girls against boys and we were soooo awfully beating the boys haha We had the advantage of having shared a lot of experiences and therefore having lots of things to refer to in order to guess words without using the forbidden ones. 

When the countdown started we went in front of the tv to keep up with the official one and we toasted to the New Year, with the first person I’ve seen in 2015 being my best friend – I loved it! After a few minutes of wishing “Happy New Year” to each other and friends/families on the phone, we went back to playing... and we never stopped playing board games until about 4.30am! We played a few different ones and ti was such an amazing night :)

Returning to England

When the last couple of days in Italy arrived, I wasn’t really ready to leave home again. Yes, I love my life here in London, but I’d also grown accustomed to being with my family once again. I felt very melancholic at the idea of leaving and was very upset about it... packing was pretty sad and I even ended up crying a bit before the flight!