First blog in another country

Hi ho to my readers! (both of you)
Though i've been in Italy for almost 2 weeks now it has been absolutely impossible to get to a computer and when I finally did I couldn't sign in. i felt really bad too, leaving the blog with such a depressing entry as my latest contribution to world media.
Things are much better now, my grandpa is out of hospital and, apprently, walking on sunshine now that Labor are in government. I was so excited when I heard that news but, just my luck, I heard it when I was half asleep, in another country and surrounded by Liberal voters (darn exchange programme arranging flights on Election Day) so celebration was limited to a short dance in a Malaysian toilet cubicle.

Now, a lot has happened since I've been here and I'm a lazy blogger so I'm going to copy and paste bits of my emails for the rest of the post:
(sorry for lack of punctuation, etc)

8 hour flight to KL in which i watched a couple of movies and old episodes of simpsons

spent 2 or 3 hours in the airport feeling really tired. sampled the malaysian burger king fries and found that they're no different but the packet is blue (talk about a shock to the system)

12 hour flight to rome. watched more movies and malcom in the middle eps. slept on my tray table for a few hours and woke up really stiff and sore. plane food was really good and they served juice every 10 minutes.

arrived in rome (now a day later) 5am local time. it was cold! we saw the trevi fountain and i threw in an aussie coin. wandered around for a while until we could go back to the hotel and sleep.
i was in bed sick for the next 2 days with some weird cold/flu/throwing up thing. but the others had a good time

took the train to venice and OMG THAT PLACE IS BEAUTIFUL! our hotel was lovely too. spent the next 2 and a half days walking around venice, taking photos and buying presents and stuff.

took another train to florence. there wasn't as much to do there and the hotel was not as nice. saw the Duomo (the view from the top was breathtaking, David and the Ponte Vecchio.

Then I arrived in Messina (by plane this time) and I've started school here

italian school, what i've noticed:
.you have the same class all day, you stay in the same seat in the same room with the same people and the teachers move to different rooms.
.no one has lockers, they carry their bags to the lesson
.there isn't very much writing, the teacher talks most of the lesson and students make notes. even in maths we didn't do any exercises, i think it's all for homework.
.the classroom is very bare, the front wall has a blackboard and a calendar and that's it
.the italians speak english much better than we speak italian, they even have textbooks in english. (but only for that subject, the others are in italian)
.everyone brings little tissue packets to school because there is no toilet paper in the toilets
.school finishes at 1 or 1.30 and, literally, as soon as they are out of the door the students start smoking (i asked and it's very normal, they don't get into trouble for it)

That's about it so far. I'll be more informative next time but at least this blog is cheerful.
Ciao.