What were you grateful for this week?
The hospitality of my family and how warm their welcome to me was. 

What was the most difficult or challenging part of this week?
Getting over jet lag!!

Tell us about a “wow” moment you had this week. (A “wow” moment is when you went the extra mile to do something nice for your host family.)
When I took care of both my four year old and his best friends for two hours and their favorite game was keeping me as a ‘prisoner’, chained with two fake snakes. TWO HOURS

Tell us about your week!
I only got here on the Friday, so not a whole lot has happened! I arrived in Milan and struggled a bit finding [my host mom], but we both happened to just wander into each other while we were trying to find the other person, so we got lucky with that. I was really jet lagged so I went for a nap after meeting the other people that live in the house along with the youngest son (whose cheeks are TO DIE FOR), and what was meant to be a quick 1.5 hour nap turned into 5. 

 

I had dinner with both parents, which was nice because I got to know them in a relaxed situation without the kids hanging off of our every limb. I spent Saturday getting to know the two VERY different personalities of the boys. [The youngest son] is so young and easy, he is never not smiling. His favorite game to play with me is what I’ve come to call “open and close.” He has a box full of these little tiny animals, and he opens the box and we both say ‘open.’ He then pulls out maybe 10 or 15 of the animals and I tell him what they are and he repeats the names. Then we put them all back and say ‘close’ when he closes the box. He loves it, we spend at least 15 minutes doing it every time. 

 

[The other son’s] favorite game is pirates; that involves any kind of activity that includes a pirate hat and a sword. [His] English is fairly good, though he struggles with certain words, it’s actually inspiring how hard he tries to describe whatever it is that he’s trying to tell me. He won’t move on from the word until he’s successfully made me understand. [He] is harder because he has a temper (he’s a 4 year old boy, of course he does), and sometimes I can’t do what it takes to please him. But that’s okay; it’s interesting to see his personality and how strong it is. I enjoy the time that I get to spend with him and I can tell that he already cares for me by the way he wants me included in what he’s doing.
 

I started my Italian Study Course this morning and it was easier and harder than anticipated, all in one. I’m a week behind the rest of the people in the course which is very intimidating, but I think it’ll be okay. It was nice to have something structured; I think that routine will be really healthy for me. And learning Italian is going to be ridiculously challenging, but I’m not surrounded by a whole lot of English speaking people, so I’m hoping that at some point my brain will just magically SWITCH and BAM; fluent Italian.