Life in Jyvaskyla .

I stopped writing for a while. It's not because my life wasn't interesting enough. I didn't feel like sharing my life experiences, mainly because I spent the last two months organizing this life I'm living right now. My Erasmus life.

I left Italy last Monday, January the 4th. I was already packing through Christmas holiday and that is also why I haven't done posts regarding presents and other christmas related stuff. After December the 25th time passed by and few days after New Year's Eve I already was on a plane.
From Rome to Helsinky, 8 hours waiting, from Helsinky to Jyvaskyla. I arrived at my apartment at 2 a.m. and I was completely shocked by the weather. It was -26 (Celsius degree). The days after it also dropped to -33. Even my eyelashes became white, covered in ice. It was a real trauma, I even asked myself ''Why the hell did I choose to come here instead of Spain?".

However, I managed to survive and I'm still alive ! After this life-threatening experience I decided to start writing again, in order to let everybody know that I'm fine and Alive.
Just kidding ;) I boughed myself a good pair of woolen socks (for way too many euros, but that's another story).
Truth is that I found myself having a lot of spare time. My life is actually bounded by bus's time tables and the few hours of light they have here in Finland. Yes, I wrote light because sun is pretty rare to experience. I'm still trying to synchronize my biological clock with the local one. I need to admit that I appreciate their over-spiced food. They use ginger and cinnamon on everything ❤

I met many new people, surprisingly a lot of Italians. All students here in Erasmus with who I daily share many adventures, difficulties, experiences and discoveries. I'll slowly try to talk with each one of them, but after a week I obviously know my neighbors an flatmates only.

I already noticed that in my luggage I managed to take with me my clumsiness and  bad luck.
- I locked myself out of my own room on the 2nd day. The doors in the different apartments lock themself automatically both from the inside and the outside. I took my shower and discovered that the wind closed my bedroom. The maintenance guy came over after 2 hours I phoned him, opened the door and asked for 35 euro. 35 ! -.-
- I broke my iPhone's screen. I was just sitting on a chair, scarf on my knees and phone over the scarf. I moved a little bit forward and the scarf fell. The phone fell. It happened many other times but last Friday...the screen was composed of black and blue bars. I still don't know if it's all about the chrystals inside or if there's any damage on the internal mechanisms. I'm hoping for the best, which is the screen replacemente only. I don't want to buy a new phone, mostly because I know that mine was perfectly working !

I hope you enjoyed this update, hopefully more will come :) 

Have a nice week !

Fede

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@Update 3 - Albania, Easter, Erasmus and more

Good evening !

Well, I have to admit that I needed to check what was the last update I did on this blog. 

The end of March and April were pretty busy, and for what concern April and May...there's going to be a lot more. 

But let's follow the chronological order to make a sort of summary for this period.

From the 28th of March until the 4th of April I was in Albania. Being on my last year of scout it's highly recommend to take part in a ROSS, a Route of Observation of Strada (Walking) and Service.

Truth is that this translation is not that accurate, and neither this small summary will be. My experience in Albania was really strong and amazing, I'll probably dedicate a whole post about that week, and I'll write about all the things I've done and the amazing people I shared this travel with. 

When I came back, on the day before Easter, a long travel was waiting for me, 3 different trains from Bari to Assisi. When I was having a last breakfast with the group I reconnected internet after a week, and checking my email I discovered something extraordinary !  At the end of February I applied at my University to go in Erasmus. My choices were, in the following order of preference; Finland, Belgium or Austria. I can't describe how excited I was to discover that I was selected to be the only one who's going in...FINLAND ! Next February I'll leave and join the University of Jywaskyla, where I'll study for 5 months. At the moment I don't know that much, but as soon as I'll know more I'll involve the blog as much as I can, making it my ''Erasmus Diary''.

Back on the beginning of April, the 5th was Easter and I had the pleasure to have brunch and dinner with my whole family. The relatives from Venice decided not to join us because a family's friend is getting married in Assisi at the beginning of May, and they prefer to take only that trip to Assisi in this period. That evening I met all my friends in the central square and together we head to an invent know as ''The iPod Battle''. The different groups of the two parts that compete in the local medieval festival (the Calendimaggio) had the opportunity to take part at the battle sending to the group, who organised the event, a number of songs that wasn't going to be longer than 10 minutes. This means that we sent over 3 songs that globally played for 10 minutes, others used 4 shorter songs, or 2 longer ones. Although it was the first year, we ended up 2nd, winning nothing but GLORY !

The day after, also known as ''little Easter'', it's a day in which you spend a day at the seaside eating sea food, or in another city that you've never visited before...it's a day you use to visit some places around and have a nice relaxing day. I went in Orvient, a lovely city in Umbria. I uploaded, literally,a couple of pics on Flickr !

This period (since last week) in my city we are preparing our medieval festival, the Calendimaggio. THIS is the official website of the event, if you're interested check it out. My part is  working to win again, obviously. As a citizen of Assisi, since when I was 3 months I took part at this festival. Yeah, my mum made a cute little medieval dress for me, and I took part at the ''show''. I really like this time of the year, it's probably the only one in which I enjoy spending some time in my city, which usually is pretty boring and empty, not of tourists but I'm talking about events. 

I wish I could write more about this period, but instead of constantly updating this blog, I prefer enjoy these months and after try and summarize what happened. To remember them because I had the chance to properly live these moments...it's the best thing. Have a nice weekend everyone :)

Fede

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Turning 20 !

Good evening everyone !

After (almost) a month from my birthday I decided to write down a proper blog post on how I spent the 17th of February and what I've received as presents.

On Monday 16th I had an important exam. It went really well, so the following day was going to be really relaxing and perfect anyway! 

When I woke up I decided to take a bath, thing that I rarely do. For this special occasion I decided to use for the first time ever...a bath bomb. 

I've never really use one of them before and, in fact, I was so excited when I received one for Christmas. This one is called ''Granny takes a dip'', and it turns your water in dark pink, almost burgundy in my opinion. It smells delicious, a mix of ginger, pepper and lemon (as it says on the description of the product).

Than I decided to treat myself...again. Although I'm terrible when it comes to cook, I tried to make myself some pancakes, and they turned out pretty good. I honestly don't think that the recipe  I used was the original one, in fact I found it on GialloZafferano.com, an Italian cook website. If you have any suggestion, please comment below and let me know. 

The rest of the day I was busy doing different things, it was Tuesday after all.
I properly decided to celebrate my birthday on Thursday the 19th, inviting over in my country house few friends. It was a really pleasant evening ! I was wearing a simple plain blue dress (although in the pictures it seems purple), with long sleeves and that turned out to be a little bit too short for me, after taking it to the seamstress.

In order: Andrea, Giacomo, Federico, Davide, Gioele, Mario, Andrea, Giulio, AnnaMarta, Ilaria, Sara, Sofia, Valentina, Giorgia, Lucrezia, Chiara, Lorenza, Elia e Guido.

As I previously wrote, I'd like to show you the presents I received. I'm not doing this to show you what I've got and brag about these things, I'm only trying to give you some ideas if you'll want to make a gift to someone.
I have no idea about the prices because, as I sad, they were presents. I also apologize for the multiple location used to shoot the pictures, I took them in different days, whenever and wherever I could, so that's why.

Stockings and socks from Calzedonia. 

I'm obsessed with Adidas' classical model. I've been buying a pair of this since when I was 8, and luckily this year they released that old model I love, and I was so happy to finally find my number ! - Adidas Stan Smith

Bracelets from DonnaPiù

Plain basic grey and black tshirt - Fortini Sport 

Henri Cartier-Bresson - Clémént Chéroux (Contrasto Editore) - Grazie Leo :)

Lighters with letters on - Diddi was the surname I used to introduce myself when I was a child, because it seems like Federica was quite a long word for me to pronounce !

Hope you enjoyed this blog post, I wish you all an amazing week end! 

Fede

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The National Route 2014 .

HeyHey

So, since when I was 8 years old I've been a scout. Not a ''boy scout'' as we're called worldwide, but just a scout. I started because my parents were both scouts when they were younger, they both went in the group we have in Assisi and so did I when it came my time. After me my brother and all my 5 cousins started this journey.

 I spent 4 years with the ''Lupetti'' that is the first group in which you play, do several activities and slowly get involved in the mentality that is required to be a scout. You learn to share things, to help the others and when you finally think that you understand how this all system works, than you change group.

In fact, on the 2nd year of middle school, I started the ''Reparto'' that is another group that lasts for 4 years, that I left on my 2nd year of high school. Basically this is where the stereotype of the average scout is created. You walk a lot, you sell calendars and other things for charity (not biscuits, sorry!), you sleep in tents and you cook and eat on structures that you build with woods and ropes. Also in this case, when you know everything it's time to move on.

And here I am, at the end of my 3rd year of ''clan'', the last group in which you learn how to be yourself in society, to help the others out. 

I started this long journey, that can be defined as a lifestyle as well, back in 2003 I believe, and this year I had the opportunity to be part of one of the most amazing scout experience you can live: the National Route.

The ''vacation'' of 10 days you do when you're in the Clan, is called route, mainly because you walk, change location almost every night and you carry on your shoulder everything you need (the essential). It's a period that you spend with your group...but this year was different.

In 1975 there was the first National Route; all the Clans (or at least, the biggest part of them) that existed at the time in Italy, all went together in Route. In 1986 the same thing happened. And finally...after almost 30 years, in 2014 we had the opportunity to live this event on a National level.

We were 35.000 scouts, we were divided in 460 groups composed by guys from different Clans. Every group was composed by 70 to 60 people. From the 1st to the 5th of August, the different groups walked in different parts of Italy, on the 6th everyone traveled to San Rossore, a park near Pisa, and there we met, all 35.000 !

My group was the Route 190. My Clan hosted the others, this means that we walked and did our activities in the territory close to Assisi (where I live). The Clans that we hosted where from Alba, Cava dei Tirreni, Pescara and Gorizia. This last one is a city located on the bound between Slovenia and Italy, so they all speak fluently both Italian and Slovenian. We were in 67 and I miss every single person.

On the 6th all the buses left from a city close to Assisi, so we went there, traveled for 4h or so and finally arrived in the night in Pisa! And when we met all the other 35.000...well...let's say this picture doesn't give you the smallest idea of what it was!

I want to thank everyone! It was an amazing experience...and it makes me emotional to think that I was so lucky to be one of those people, one of those that had the opportunity to be part of such an amazing event!

Probably this blog post wasn't as interesting as you expected, it was different from what I normally write about. The quality of the pictures is not high, none of us had a DSLR camera ofc, and these are all photos taken by friends of mine. Hope you liked this post in any case, maybe you learned something new, who knows? If you're a little bit more interested in the event now, you can google and look for information and videos on YouTube about the event. There are lots of them, and they'll give you the idea of what it was better than all the words I wrote to describe it. Have a nice week everyone :)

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Back from Gallipoli !

HeyHey

How are you guys doing? I hope everything's fine and that you're all enjoying summer as much as you can ! As I probably wrote on my last blog post, I say probably because I haven't been around for more than a week and I can't remember, I was on vacation in the south of Italy for 10 days with some friends.

We had a small but cute apartment in Baia Verde, the beach-party side of Gallipoli, an amazing city!
We had the average vacation you can expect from 7 people that are finally done with high school and exams! We partied almost every night, we went in discos, we danced on the beach...we had a great life!

Saying this I'm basically confessing that I didn't had my camera with me the whole time, I took picture with my iPhone and the ones I took with my Canon, that I'm going to post here, are from the ancient part of Gallipoli, the center of the city that is absolutely stunning and that we visited with calm during the last two days.
If you want to check the ''party picture'', I'll leave my friends' instagram accounts and mine below.

The kind of apartment where we stayed during the week

This little boy spent a couple of days at our place, and we called it Prajo (as the disco ''Praja'' where we often went)

Al little bit devastated and without make up

A typical dessert in Gallipoli, the Spumone

Typical bread, called Puccia. Inside you could add everything (I went for tomato, mozzarella, tuna and potatoes salad) 

What about your vacations this year? Would you ever consider Gallipoli as a place where to spend your holidays? :)

My friends' Instagram accounts: Chiara * Anna Marta * Sofia * Giorgia * Giulio * Guido

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