Ice-skating!

Hey everyone!

I know I haven’t written anything lately, but it’s because I’ve been busy learning French and …. ICE-SKATING! I absolutely love it! On Saturday we went to the one in my little town for the first time mainly because we couldn’t find it and it had been closed the for summer months.

The first time we got there we were a bit too early so went driving for half and hour and then came back. At 13:30 it was time to go. We didn’t really know what to do, since the only time any of us had been ice-skating in France was in Disney Land’s outside ice-rink.

So anyway I went up to the woman behind the counter said “Patinoire?”. She replied “Oui, oui pour deux?”. Once we got our tickets we walked around to the doors, there was one of those twirling barriers that you walk though and it clicks, so like you would Venetia just walked into it… yeah, you actually had to click this button before so it would unlock. Venetia quickly clicked it and off she went. Once we were in we asked the two girls in there what to do, they pointed and we sort of got the jest.

After a while of unstable-ised walking we finally got used to them opened the swinging door and were met by the freezing temperature inside and the empty atmosphere. There was absolutely no-one there yet. This wasn’t a bad thing, it meant that we could skate and get our bearings before anyone else came out. I was actually extremely surprised! The last time I’d been on ice was nine months ago in Ireland, saying good bye to my friends. But I just got on the ice and went.

More people came and by the end of the day there were at least 40 :P. Big difference to the amount of people there would have been in Dun Donald Ice-Bowl. It was the ice-rink in Belfast. Like you’d get there and there’d be literally hundreds of people crowded the rink!

The best part was that at 15:40 there was a LOUD siren and the shutters began to come down over the large windows, then loud “electro” (rave) music began to play and the disco lights came on. Lots of fun! About 20-30 minutes later though, the shutters came up again and the lights switched back to normal. I was like Aww!

It’s okay half an hour or so later it happened again :-D. In Dun Donald it stayed with the lights and the rave music the whole time. We skated for four hours straight, I only fell once :-)! It wasn’t really like falling, Venetia was pushing me from behind then I skidded but quickly lifted myself up again :-P.

Once the session was over, we got off the ice, wobbling because of the numbness and because of how painful our muscles were! We changed back into our shoes, had some difficulty walking, and then went home. It was so nice to sit down! For three whole days I was in severe pain with my legs and arms. Guess I’m not used to doing so much exercise :-P. On the third day I thought it would be so much better but it was worse! I literally just flopped out of bed.

On Tuesday, I was much better and so my mom and I decided to go ice-skating! Wooo! We went to the place, but we were an hour early, so we went shopping, came back and then it was still closed! I looked at the large time-table again and realised I had been looking at the wrong day! The patinoire (ice-rink) was only open three days a week, Wednesday, Saturday and Sunday. Wednesday does seem like a pretty random day but in France, schools finish early and primary schools don’t even go on a Wednesday. So we reluctantly went home but decided that we’d come back the next day.

Yes, so yesterday we got there at 13:30, skated for three hours, went shopping and then picked my sister up from work. It was loads of fun, despite the fact that I fell three times. The first time I fell it was because I was trying to show my mom something :-P.

The other two times were near the end and were very painful! I hurt my knee, elbow and my side. I actually grazed my elbow and just sat where I fell and said “… Ow”. Really funny after the pain had gone away….

Last night I couldn’t even sleep on my side! I also fell on my hands, so that was very sore with them being numb from the cold already! Other than that I had an awesome day! My mom’s figure skates were sticking into her toe so we asked if we could change them and the guy said we could use the hockey skates if we wanted. We did! It was so much easier, for the first 10 minutes or so it felt very slippery but I got the hang of them.

I can even do the leg movements like a continuous figure eight, the snake, turn and skate on one foot and do a stop on my right heel whilst gliding on my left foot. So I’ve made up my mind about which ice-skates I want to get, just for recreational “go-around-the-rink” ice-skating. Hockey skates! :-P

Pity Venetia didn’t get to try them out but I’ll just ask if we can use them this Saturday again. Oh! We also found out how to use the lockers! It’s all electronical and the instructions were easy enough to follow except for one that I couldn’t understand. We just got the guy to come and show us :-). So now I know :-P.

Really looking forward to Saturday, Venetia’s going to teach me how to skate backwards and do a T stop :-). So I’ll tell you how that goes and I’ll also try and get some pictures or even recordings for you.

I think that I’ll leave it at that but if anyone has any ice-skating tips please e-mail them to me at kissmyfishy@gmail.com, and I’m still waiting on those photos :-P.

Hope to hear from you all soon!

- Bianca

Snakes On A Path... Get it?... Like the movie! Never mind :-P

Hey everyone!

It’s starting to feel lonely again with no pictures… on this page anyway. It also feels like I’m talking to myself… but it’s okay I have a tendency to do that quite often :-P.

Back on track though! Yes so going around England was loads of fun, and the Saturday before we were leaving my aunt (Natalie) was in a cycling contest for a charity more to the north of England. It was a 100 mile cycle and she did it :-)! Woo! So we got her a miniature cake saying Natalie, Worlds Best Cyclist. I’ll put a picture up of it :-P.

Someone found us a house and it looked okay in the pictures… So we packed everything up after being in England for a month, said our goodbyes, with a lot of tears, even from Jett. And off we went on a 17 hour drive! Well actually it was about two or three hours and then we arrived at the underground train. You park your car on it, stay in your car and half an hour later you’re in France.

I thought the underground train would be a lot more exciting… but it was just like sitting in your car that you’ve parked in a long, white room, with little windows on the sides that you couldn’t really see out of, but it got the job done anyway, it’s not as if they could have put a theme park or anything in there :-P.

Now it was the long 15 hour haul… for my mom anyway since she drove the whole the way, with a break only now and then for coffee. The first stop we made in France was at a little side-store that had a coffee bar inside and was still open. So we went inside and you’d never believe the odds! There were two guys there that were driving to Belgium… but they spoke English :-)! We chatted for a while, they said you might see us at our next stop (we didn’t :-P). And then off we went again. I couldn’t really sleep the whole time; a few times I dozed off but was interrupted by an elbow in my side or a leg in MY foot space!

It was slightly… okay very cramped in the back of the car… first there was Venetia, then Karen and then Gizmo taking up when my feet were supposed to go… and of course me. I always get the middle seat >:-. So I was extremely squashed :-P and it was very difficult to get to sleep because I didn’t have a door or anything to put my head against, so I got very grumpy when I was woken up after saying that I was going to sleep and not to bother me… Grrr!

It was alright though, when we finally arrived and met up with the owner of the house, my dad filled in the papers, she showed us around and then left. It was okay… at least this house’s kitchen was tiled, it had more than five rooms, a sofa and even a T.V. It also came with the stove, fridge and washing-machine. Big upgrade from our Sicilian house… or so I thought until there were more aliens, too many flies and dare I say it… MICE!

There were upsides to the house too though. A five minute walk from the house was the gorgeous lake that all of my fishing photos were taken at, an absolutely gianormous garden and even two pear trees… but they were very tall pear trees so I only ever managed to whack one off and after all of my effort when it finally tumbled down… I could hardly bite into it because it wasn’t ripe yet! So I let Gizmo have a go at tackling it then threw it away after the pear having several miniature puncture wounds from Gizmo’s vampire teeth :-P.

In that house we were also surrounded by fields, and just a few minutes walk was an animal sanctuary… which could explain the fly situation, seriously every day I was swatting at least 20 flies, but they just kept coming from nowhere! I had a pet spider there though, he sat in the lounge/dining room/kitchen in a little corner. Yes I know, huh :-S, it was a big room that housed all of the downstairs rooms in one :-P.

Anyway yes so the spider was so much fun to watch catching a fly and then quickly wrapping it up! I don’t know what happened but sadly one day (a few days before we were leaving for the new house), I came down stairs to find that my spider had shrunk! Instead of my big one it was this little tiny baby, he was pretty cute actually but meant that he couldn’t catch the flies any more!

Speaking of spiders! Woah! At that house there was an absolutely gianormous spider that lived above one of the bushes outside by the house. It was the identical colouring of the bumble bees that it ate! Venetia took a few pictures of him, so I’ll also put that picture up.
They were quite a few insects in that house actually… the most annoying… and scariest were the giant aliens that fell down by you when you went to close the window! I don’t know how many times I almost had a heart attack in that house! I did love the geckos and lizards that came into the house though, especially the baby ones!

Oh my word they were the cutest! About as big as my baby finger, in length! I saw one in the kitchen then decided to go out on a hunt for them outside… can you tell how bored I was :-P? After just a few minutes I spotted one and tried to catch him, he wriggled away under the rocks though. The next week or so I actually caught one, kept him for an hour or so then let him go in the grass again. The one in the kitchen lived in a little hole in the wall and would come out onto the window sill every now and then to sun bathe. I tried to lure him out with bread… it didn’t work.

Even in the new house there used to be one baby lizard that would come out and sun bathe on the patio, since it’s gotten cold I haven’t seen him around lately…

There’s been loads of insects here, once there was even a preying-mantis! Now he was cool! We named him Barley because of the look of barley on his stomach. Woah, and there was also this giant caterpillar, he was huge and very pretty too :-P!

The things that weren’t so cool though were the amount of snakes… the first one was when my mom, Venetia and I were going walking, we were about 15 minutes into our usual routine when suddenly my mom started walking backwards and saying… a sentence over and over again… I don’t think I’ll type it out :-P. The snake was about as long as my leg but once we got closer, we noticed how flat it was… it had been run over or something so not much danger there. We carried on going.

A few days later my dad and I were sitting outside practising our French, I was looking at the book and my dad jumped up told me to go to the other side of the garden, so I stood up even though I didn’t know what was happening… then I saw that large, green snake making its way with a lifted head toward my dad. Gizmo also seemed to notice it at this stage… he just got up and began waddling over to it. My dad yelled at him and Gizmo came running to me. I ran to the house put Gizmo inside then went to find something heavy for my dad, since we still hadn’t had the internet in this house and also hadn’t been able to find out what snakes where poisonous. I found a large concrete type thing that was lying by the house, as I did this I heard a THWUMP and quickly grabbed it and carried it back to my dad. Saw the snake limp… not limp like walking weirdly… mainly because snakes slither. I mean that it was dead.

It was really sad, but my dad had to since it stood on its tail and was getting ready to strike. Later on we found out that green snakes aren’t poisonous here either, it’s just the small black ones that can kill. It’s also the big green ones that’ll act all dangerous but the little ones will run… well slither away.

One day I was brushing my hair, stood by the window and because it was hot I decided to have a good look around to see if I could spot a snake. What are the odds! This thing which I thought was a lizard’s head at first was coming over a rock and moving toward the house, I kept watching it for a second and then realised what it was once its whole body was visible and no legs were to be seen. It began slithering against the house, this is when I yelled for my mom and told her that there was a viper (the small, black, poisonous one) outside. My mom ran outside to see if she could kill it or catch it, but it was already making its way for the rocks and had gone. From then on I made sure that I watched Gizmo and didn’t let him go into the tall grass when he went outside… I also started to wear shoes when I went outside as well :-P.

Oh another snake incident was when we came to have a look at the new house. My mom and I walked by the house and you’d never guess what crossed the path right in front of us! Yes, that’s right another snake! It was only a green one though, but it was still big and began coming for us, we backed away quickly, so it kept slithering and lifted itself over the person’s fence next door… moving to this house I thought we were escaping the snakes!

No other snake stories though… also no fishing ones! It’s just become so cold! I’m hoping to hear from you all soon!

- Bianca

They speak English!

Hey Everyone!

So yesterday we arrived in England… well I wrote about it yesterday anyway :-P. Seeing my mom, Gizmo and Karen was great. But then there were MORE great things to come on the second day of being in England. My sleep wasn’t the best because I was staying at my grandmother’s (Karen) house… and her son and daughter-in-law live with her too… they have a cat. I absolutely love cats but there’s a tiny problem I have with them… I’m allergic :-O!

But never mind that because after four days of suffering, oh woe me :-P, no it wasn’t that bad, we moved into my cousins, uncle and aunt’s house which is literally across the road… okay around one road, down another, around one more and then there it was :-P.

Oh yes, the MORE to come on the second day was that I went to the super store with my mom and (:-O. You have no idea how happy I was to be understood and that I could understand people there! They speak English… I know, no duh you are in England but that’s not the point!

I had missed it so much… I just couldn’t stop smiling, it was when the guy at the till said the price and bid us a good day that I realised how much I had missed it… he seemed pretty confused at why I had a grin from ear to ear on but, I didn’t care, at least he spoke English! It is something that I still miss even living in France where there’s more English speakers here than Sicily but it was amazing. I never knew how easy I had it and I actually can’t remember any other “shopping experiences” (like talking to people at a store…) before I’d moved to a non-English speaking country. So it’s so true! You don’t know what you have until it’s gone.

Then again… I did miss the weather in Sicily too… I mean I really, really missed it…. And I had really, really appreciated it there as well :-P! It was absolutely freezing in Farringdon… but my two little cousins loved playing outside and so I had to bite the bullet and stick there with them, in the end I tempted them to come back inside with milkshake! Mmm milkshake, it fixes everything :-P.

Anyway on the forth day, this is now the seventh of May (Ha! I was a poet and I didn’t even know it… until I re-read the sentence anyway :-P) I saw the rest of the crew – Luke (16), Matthew (13… Matt was born on the same day as me! He’s only 12 hours older. He was 6am I was 6pm :-P), Darius (11), I know there’s an awful lot here ;-P, Daniel and Jett (who’s 4 and 3, aw how cute :-P)!

Just read over the Matthew thing, in case you don’t know our birthday’s the 1st of February… now you have no excuse to forget it and can’t not send me in a nice picture of you kissing a fish :-P. Pucker up!

On the 8th of May, it was my sister’s birthday! My aunt, Simone, baked a… actually two chocolate cakes for Venetia, you heard the list of names! One would’ve just been finished in an instant of it being brought out :-P. Oh yummy, those cakes were just… so yummy!

We took tonnes of pictures but most of them are of Venetia and I stuffing our faces with chocolate cake… or the one’s that were taken too early and we were trying to fix our hair! Quite a few random ones of a vase of flowers… I think these where taken by my one cousin when he got his hands on the camera :-P.

Most of the days that we were in England it was raining, so we didn’t really get up to much. I made sure I watched a good amount of English T.V. whilst I was there though :-P. In France it’s a very odd occasion that there’s English on the television. Except for the Nespresso, what else? ad, they don’t dub it :-P.

We stayed in England for a month, on the last Sunday Simone, David (my uncle), the boys, Karen, my parents, Venetia and I, wow quite a list there :-P, went to a few museums and galleries. In one of the museums there were little stuffed chickens, that was really sad but my little cousins didn’t seem to mind… I guess they’re boys :-P also fake dodo birds, dinosaur, giraffe, elephant and rhino skeletons and my favourite, the luminous crystal room! I was wearing converse so the laces looked so cool in the light. Of course we got pictures on my moms camera phone :-P.

Oh yeah before I forget! It’s winter now, no duh :-P, but that means that bees and wasps and looking for warm places to keep snuggled up. Yesterday my mom got stung by the wasp or a hornet on her leg twice and her hand at least four times! It was hiding in her trousers and then quickly flew away to the other side of the room once it had done the damage.

We didn’t know what to do so I put got the cream out, then my dad said to put vinegar on, the vinegar soothed the sting but today a few hours later it swelled up and today it’s still all swollen. Today I found out though that once you’re stung if you put a copper penny on it and hold the penny on the sting for 15 minutes it should take the sting away and it won’t even swell up!

Great to know, but a bit late now :-P. Well I’m going to leave it at that! Hope to hear from you all soon!

- Bianca

Leaving Sicily

Hey everyone!

Well yes, it was the night before we left we were all packed up and ready to go. It was really strange leaving that house. Now that I think about it I didn’t actually leave that much behind in Sicily. It was strange not doing anything with the refrigerator and the washing-machine. We just left them in the house for Giovanni to have.

I left a few "warm" (... not light) clothes, thinking that I wouldn't need them in south-west France… wow, I was wrong! That giant, jumper thing really could’ve come in handy today. It’s been absolutely FREEZING *shivers*! But it can’t get much worse because all of the French are already in giant jackets and jumpers… unless they just stay wrapped up in duvets next to a cosy fire in winter… and even if they do, I’m up for that :-D!

So anyway we were all packed with the things we actually needed. Now going back we only had 3 suitcases… I wanted to bring the swing that we’d got in Sicily… it was such a cool swing; see what I mean about not being so great with leaving things behind! But in the end the swing was still swinging silently on its own, hanging from the tree that I had tied it to :-(.

Yeah, we only had three suitcases because my mom was in England and therefore wasn’t flying with us. The flight we’d taken was only one suitcase per person… my mom had to leave most of her things behind (my dad was packing :-P)… but it was mainly just her jumpers and shoes.

The lemons in Sicily were absolutely enormous (just remembered how much I miss them)! If you make a fist with your hand that’s the size they were! Okay, if you make a fist with my hand :-P… The first day in England I walked into Karen’s dining room where my sister and my aunt (Natalie) were.

There was this… thing on the table. It was like a Sicilian lemon… but a million times smaller. I burst into fits of laughter and asked “What is that thing?!”… yes that was a lemon, Natalie seemed pretty confused, but Venetia joined in with my fits of giggles and then explained to Natalie. We’d only been away from the U.K. for two months, but really… this is what I used to think was a lemon! Ha! You’d get at least a quarter of a tall glass filled with lemon juice from one! Four would make a whole jug of lemon juice… here you’d have to use like twenty! Pathetic :-P!

Right, yes back to Sicily. Sorry keep getting side-tracked! On the last night in Sicily, we drank an abnormal amount of milkshake (since we had a lot of milk in the fridge… and coincidently a lot of chocolate powder) and played jack-change-it to pass the time. We got to bed pretty early, then I was woken up at… okay I can’t remember the exact time, but it was much earlier than early for me. It was around about two am-ish… maybe four.

Once we were all ready we packed up the car and off we went. I was cramped in the back with suitcases sticking into my sides and a heavy carry-on-case on my lap. After an hour of being stuck like this we arrived at the airport, had a nice long stretch and then brought our bags inside.

So you’re wondering what we did with the car? Well even if you’re not I’m going to tell you anyway :-P. Do you remember that guy I told you about I think it was eight blogs ago, the one that we met in the small electrical shop on the first day of being in Sicily, where we wanted to buy a SIM card from? He had moved to Sicily 11 years ago from Scotland and was teaching in Palermo University. Yeah, him! Well let’s just say Robert. Well Robert’s son had just turned 18 and Robert had wanted to buy a car for him. My dad had found this out when he’d phoned him to ask if he wanted our car. What are the odds, eh?

So Robert met us up in the airport, had coffee (what else?... Sicilians drink far too much coffee... but being in Sicily it’s difficult not to get hooked on the strong stuff with a coffee bar on every single street… I even did) with his wife and my dad, signed the papers then drove off in the car. Now it was just a waiting game for the check-in and then the flight to finally see my mom, who I hadn’t seen for almost a month now and then there was also Gizmo!!!

We had our last Sicilian coffee and breakfast then went off to check-in. Not again! Our bags were the correct weight combined but not separately… it was like so what’s the difference… apparently there is a difference :-P. So we spread out the weights into the different bags, and then finally checked in… I had to leave my binoculars behind, which I’d been traipsing around with me since Ireland :-P.

After an hour of waiting in the waiting area, the woman announced that it was “All Aboard Time” okay she didn’t actually say this but it was something in Italian and then everyone started moving quickly towards the doors… so this was sort of a gesture that we could start lining up to show our passports and tickets.

If you every go to Sicily be warned! Most Sicilians do not like waiting in a queue, so either stand your ground or move to the back before you get trampled on… or ultimately squashed between people.

We buckled ourselves in and with a smooth start (and no ear popping) we were off. My mom told us to look out for an ice lake shaped like a bears head somewhere to the north of Italy or south of France during the flight, but it was too cloudy… or it could have just been when I was busy concentrating on my coca cola and I didn’t notice it :-P.

The flight was actually a lot of fun. There were a few teenagers more to the front that got down their electric guitars and started playing (not plugged in of course). Later on I turned my MP3 player up really loud, over the voices of the cabin, then I heard this ATCHOO! Turned to Venetia knowing it would’ve been her and said “I heard that even OVER my loud music!”… we burst into fits of giggles.

Later on we landed, stood around like everyone else waiting for the bags to come through. When they did we grabbed them. Adjusted them so that they’d stop slipping off the trolley and off we went to see my mom! As we came around the corner I couldn’t see her no matter how many times Venetia said, “There she is, no Bianca over there! That way!” Then I spotter her… right in front of everyone else, ran up to her and gave her a gianormous hug… or rather she gave me the gianormous hug… I was left powerless :-P.

We went over to the car and drove south for a good hour or so, stopping at a fast food place on the way. Since I’d only been once in Sicily and was craving milkshake… you’d think I would’ve had enough on the last night in Sicily for me to never want any more for a lifetime :-P… I hadn’t.

We finally arrived in a nice little village, then went to Karen’s house, I could hear Gizmo barking before the car had even stopped. I jumped out and Gizmo was already out to greet me. I had missed him so much!

Gizmo wants to play now and the sun’s starting to shine again. So going to leave it at that and will be back soon :-P. Hope to hear from you all.

- Bianca

Leaving Sicily... okay actually I never quite got around to it this time...

Hey everyone!

Trying to think of where we were last :-P… oh right yeah! Okay well once my mom left for England, a week or two later my dad got a job offer. I’m pretty sure I’ve told you this before but I’ll just refresh your memories… and mine :-P!

In our Sicilian house since we were in what they called the country side and too far away from any phone lines so we didn’t even have a telephone or the internet in that house! Giovanni promised it would be within the first week… then domani, domani, domani (tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow). Per sempre domani (always tomorrow)!

The telephone guys came, looked and said “Yes, too far away for a telephone line”. We’ll need to put more in. The next time they came, they measured the distance, then after 15 minutes of being at the house went for a two hour lunch break!

They never came again, so the whole time in Sicily we didn’t have internet or telephone. Except for when we went to an internet café or telephone place. So anyway to get on with my original story, my dad received the job offer in a tiny, ramshackle-like telephone booth place since it was the closest to our house… and generally like most of the telephone places in Mazara del Vallo.

And of course in case you haven’t noticed or read in previous posts it was in south-west France :-). My dad accepted, and then my mom booked us tickets out of Sicily for the forth of May. You see my mom had to be in Sicily or we had to be in England before the eighth of May because it would have been my sister’s 18th birthday.

I was barely able to bring myself to stay in that house for the last three weeks. It was so boring!

We did have a little bit of fun though, even tough we were stuck in the middle of a family fight between Jovanna, Giovanni’s fiancé, also given a random name made up by, yours truly… me! Okay, okay I got it off an Italian girls name site :-P… and it’s just the girl version of Giovanni… I know I’m so unoriginal… and Jovanna’s brother-in-law. They wanted the house for summer… don’t ask me why they’d want that house, but whatever their reason was, they wanted it.

I’m using the word “they” because it was Jovanna’s brother-in-law’s father as well as the brother-in-law. Those two were really sly things. First off they made Jovanna’s mother pay them to fix up the house for us… which they did NOT do such a great job of… in my opinion. Is there actually a point to painting the outside of the house… and then just leaving the kitchen floor tile-less because they’d done “their work” :-P. Secondly they planted a snake in our garden! Yes it was them… I reckon so anyway.

They came to paint the walls on the patio one day and went into the garden to get the wheelbarrow, but when they left they just stood around waiting for my dad to come up and they left the wheelbarrow outside the garden instead of putting it back.

That day, my dad and Giovanni were sitting in the garden. My dad spotted a giant green snake slithering across the ground, calmly told Giovanni… Giovanni jumped up looked around then ran to my dad’s side… I hope you know the descriptive word for Giovanni that I’m thinking because I’d really rather not write it out :-P.

My dad asked him if he should kill it, if it was poisonous. Giovanni said yes. So my dad got the spade…. And you can imagine what happened next I’m sure.

Later that day Giovanni said that the last time he saw a snake was at a barbeque seven years ago… and THEN told my dad that green snakes aren’t poisonous… this from the guy that ran to my dad when he saw the snake and told my dad to kill it!

A few days later Jovanna’s brother-in-law… I can’t even remember his real name… so let’s say Alfonso. So Alfonso came around with his wife. My dad said in Italian “I found your snake!” he said “Mio serpente?!” (my snake) “Yes, your snake”, was my dad’s reply. So now Alfonso didn’t know if it was just a foreigner to the Italian language with the incorrect words… or of course that we knew it was him who placed it there :-P. Mind boggling!

After he got over the confusing-ness of my dad’s comment he asked what colour it was. And then proved that it must have been them because his wife and he said “Oooh green, it is very, very poisonous! Brown is okay but GREEN!”… So who to believe now… hmmm.

My dad told Giovanni about them saying this and he said… yes… but no it was not green it was brown! Since it was clearly green :-P. We went down to the farmer by us and asked him. Green is not poisonous. We decided to believe him :-P.

So now you can see that we had good enough reasons to leave Sicily. Even though it was gorgeous… some of the people that we met weren’t. So I guess if we had had a better experience and had found a nice house, we would never have left and I wouldn’t be writing this… lucky I had that experience then, eh? :-P

(South-west Sicily, Bageria)

Tomorrow I’ll write about leaving Sicily :-P. See you all then. Hope to hear from you soon (spirits still high :-P).

- Bianca

There's an ALIEN in my tea-cup!

Hey everyone!

Before I start remember that you have to start reading from the next page and work your way backwards :-P…

In Sicily at Giovanni’s place we didn’t really do much. For three days there, there were bad thunder and lightning storms, but it was really cool to watch because you could see the ocean from the room my parents were in.

Since we still didn’t have a car, Giovanni found one for us and brought my parents to go see it… when they came back I was utterly shocked at what they had bought… it was one of those little, white fiat-unos… it did the job though and was very handy for our great escape of Sicily :-P!

Giovanni also said that he’d help find us a house… what he found is not quite what I’d call a house…

We stayed at his bed and breakfast for three weeks, our pastimes usually long, late barbeques. After we got the car though we did go out and about seeing places a lot. Giovanni’s fiancé’s mother was fixing up a “house” for rent and we just happened to be in need of a house. So Giovanni, like any sales person would put two and two together and brought us around to this so-called “house”…

We went around it… this took a very short time :-P as to how small it was. Apparently it was furnished, which consisted of 4 beds, the bathroom, a dining table… and a stove. WOW, great going with the furnishing :-P.

It had five rooms (in total, yes in total, not just the bedrooms). Three bedrooms, the bathroom and the kitchen/dining room which she promised she’d tile and never got around to it. It did have a good sized garden though and a grape vineyard 2 minutes walk from the house. The garden was full of orange and lemon trees and even prickly pear cacti… the rest of the garden though was absolutely overgrown… everywhere.

We took the house since it was the only thing we could find, I know it was a stupid decision but awk well too late now :-P.

We were in soon enough (the picture dates tell me that it was 16th of April, and we’d only taken these at least a week of being in the house) and had settled down. My mom decided to fly back to England to her mom and Gizmo since Karen (my mom's mom) was taking so long in packing to get herself over to Sicily with us.

My mom kissed us goodbye, she got on the plane and off she went. The next three weeks droned on and on and on for the three of us. We were sick of sitting in the house, or playing jack-change-it (a card game, the rules continuously increased as we got more bored... in the end it was hard to keep up :-P).

To understand Giovanni you’d have to have known him… he was like a snake with a smile. He’d become your friend and rip you off at the same time in fact one of his favourite phrases to use on us was “my friend”… it’s very frustrated to think that we fell for him. Then again the more that I think about I don’t think he realised. Some Sicilians (mainly Giovanni :-P) are the type like I help you, now you must help me… or in Giovanni’s case it was more like I help you… now you must pay me :-P.

The first few days in the house were… there’s actually no real word to describe it. I just sat here for 5 minutes trying to think of one and… none! Well… in the third day or so I was about to go run a bath for myself and ended up running to my parents room yelling “There’s an ALIEN in the bath!!!”… it was not funny at the time :-P.

It was seriously an alien-like creature. It was light amber-brown, had a long-spindly body with… literally millions of LONG legs and antennas. I know you’re thinking oh that’s just a centipede… that was NOT a centipede!

We found tonnes in that Sicilian house, so since I found the first one it has adopted the name of “alien” so from now on don’t be alarmed if I refer to something like, “there was an alien in the tea-cup!” … this did happen once. My sister almost had a heat attack when she was making tea :-P… now that was funny!

Actually one night in our room (we were sharing one in that house) there was an alien on the wall and a gecko on the other. Venetia refused to sleep unless I got at least the gecko out. So I got my jewellery box, dumped everything on my bed, made the gecko come down of the wall. By about a few inches of the ground the poor thing fainted and fell to the floor. I was so devastated and just wanted to leave it alone. Venetia on the other hand kept moaning and wouldn’t go to sleep >:-(! So I ushered the gecko into the box and put the lid on top. Now Venetia wanted me to put the gecko outside. No way that I was going out there at this time of night! So I let it loose in the kitchen :-P.

Of course Venetia was not happy about this but I was too tired. I climbed into bed and was almost asleep when I was disturbed by a crazy creature… known as, yes that’s right, Venetia. Apparently now I had to get the alien out. I got up dragged Venetia’s bed with her still on it to my side of the room and tried to go to sleep again. Nope this wasn’t good enough :-P. I said that I’d get the alien down but she’d have to put it in a box.

I put Venetia’s bed back, got the broom and swept the alien off the wall, then climbed back into bed…now the alien had gone under the wall… after Venetia doing what she needed to do, even though I said if she did it I’d never talk to her again, we went to sleep. The next morning I was talking again >.<.

As I'm sure you can see I talk far too much :-P. So I’m going to leave it at that and get back on track with it tomorrow.

Still hoping to hear from you all soon :-P!

- Bianca

Pretty much random stuff!

Hey there!

Well yesterday I said about Halloween and the French calling before they came, so my impression was that they had to know you to trick or treat. Last night I found out that trick or treating here is like anywhere :-P. Except they all just go in big groups with a few parents. They were all so CUTE! It was like a horde of … deadly things :-P. None of them rang the bell… they might have been too small to reach… there were miniature ghosts, werewolves, bright, orange pumpkins and even twin witches! :-P. So that was nice :-).

Well now that Halloween is over it’s time to look forward to CHRISTMAS! Woo! The only thing that’s worrying me is my grandmother. She’s in Ireland at the moment and was supposed to be sending us our Christmas decorations from my cousins’ house. She still hasn’t and keeps putting it off >.<.

It’s not too difficult, one of my cousins just has to go up get the decorations down from their attic, measure the boxes and send them… we’ve had them since we arrived in Ireland, so it’s ten years of memories.

There’s even a clay Christmas tree and bright florescent pink present decoration that I made in school when I was seven! Oh and these little gift boxes made out of old Christmas cards. I just wanted to get a hold of one to see how I made it :-P. They’re really cute, we made little sweet things at school to put inside… of course the sweet thing was long gone before the box arrived home :-P.

I’m really looking forward to Christmas, but this is the first year that my sister’s been working. She’s applied for Christmas week off so I really hope she gets it :-P.

Back to now though.

I made Gizmo a devil headband thing for Halloween but forgot to put it on him when the trick or treat-ers came >.<, oh well. I’ll get a picture of him for all of you guys to see :-P! Back to Sicily now! (I just can’t seem to make up my mind :-P)

Well we stayed with Giovanni for three weeks. His bed and breakfast was a 5 minute walk from the ocean… on his website it said from a beach. But in Sicily you can hardly ever find any beaches that are clean enough or… well generally beach-y enough… by beach-y I mean sandy. Usually it’s just all rocks.

We did find a few gorgeous beaches though, on one we had a picnic and watched a guy go fishing for octopus! That was so cool, he actually caught one as well! He was just snorkelling around and was holding a cage. I didn’t see any spear so I get the impression that he just grabbed it... didn’t get too close to see what colour it was though.

I was just reading some stories about people going fishing and I found quite an interesting one. A man was going fishing for catfish in the Ohio River near Louisville but instead of catching the catfish that he wanted, he caught a six foot octopus!

Well I’m going to leave it at that. Hope to hear from you all soon!

- Bianca