Sensational Umbria by Steve McCurry .

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Thursday afternoon I went in Perugia, one of the biggest cities of my region. As last year, the famous photographer Steve McCurry (that you may not know but you surely know this work of him, appeared on National Geographic) is doing an expositions of his works there, and this year the theme was my region itself. Known as ''Sensational Umbria'', the photos collection is composed by pictures of local landscapes, medieval and traditional festival and events, monuments etc. . McCurry was around in the main months when the cities have their main traditional festivals and events, and he was here to catch almost all of them. 

I found all his works magnificent. I can honestly say he's my favourite photographer, mainly because he can perfectly compose a picture that looks normal at the same time, and he is also able to use the colors in the best way.

These are some pictures I got to take at the entrance of the exposition, that was divided in two buildings, Palazzo della Penna and the ex Fatebenefratelli. I found this last building having the best pictures, mainly because they were exposed in the nicest way ever. Dark room and panel on the floor with the pictures on them. Loved it ! 

These are the pictures I took out of the Ex Fatebenefratelli, the view was lovely!

These are the stairs inside Palazzo della Penna. It is quite an old building but the inside is modern as you can see. When we entered, there was a conference about the reading public of the city, I didn't quite get what was the main theme of the speech of the lady, because we were heading downstairs to the 2nd part of the Steve McCurry's exposition and also because this reading club organised a photograpy exposition as well. All those lovely pictures of the city contained people or a single person reading in the corner,at the center, everywhere basically.

The quality of the pictures is not the highest because, as you can imagine, I wasn't allowed to take pictures inside. I had time to collect some quotes before going inside the expositions, and you car hear them in the promo video that the photographer himself made.

I hope you like this blog post, I wish goodluck to everyone who's starting or restarting school tomorrow morning. Have a nice week :)

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The National Route 2014 .

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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 !

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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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Motivation Monday #1

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I run into this video few minutes ago. It was made by one of the YouTubers I follow, he's not my favorite one but I like how you he can make both prank videos but also those that help you reflect about life. I'm talking about Sam Pepper and one of the last videos he uploaded on his channel ''60 seconds that will change how you think'', with the participation of the Logan brothers, from Vine.

This is one of those videos that lots of people may label as fake and average when it comes to give people an example of gratitude etc. Still...I don't care if it was all organised, if everything was previously decided and than filmed, I just like the message that it is supposed to transmit to the Internet. 

It made me think a lot. I'm not really sure of what I'll do if someone would come over me in a restaurant asking for food, I can't even say for sure that I will act as the guys in the video now that I've watched it. I know that I like the message, that I think it's important to help people reflecting, with fake or real videos the effects should be the same.

It will literally take away 60 seconds of your day, check this video out and reflect

''We make a living by what we get...but we make a life by what we give''

Have a nice week :)

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Long distance relationship .

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I recently found out about a  TV show on MTV that tells stories of people that, at a certain point of their relationship, have to be divided because one of them has to leave. So they spend the last weeks together and than the one that has to leave for some months goes away in a black car. At that point, we know if they kept the relationship alive, despite the distance, or if they decided to give up. I'm sorry if you don't understand what show this is, it's just that I watch it on TV here in Italy and we have the bad habit to change every movie/show's title, translating it as awkwardly as possible; so I don't know what the real name of the show is. 

This program, in some way, reminded me that I wrote about the fact that I had a distance relationship but that I've never really wrote about it in a proper way. I'm not going to talk about my private life, I'm just going to tell you how did it feel for me to be in this kind of relation and, maybe, I will help some of you, who knows?

Basically, first thing to say is that this relationship was the most important and the longest one I've ever had in my life. I didn't have many relationship, to be honest, but this one could have been the best over thousand relationships. This guy and I were together for two years and our story ended on September 2013. 

We met thanks to school ! On the 2nd year of high school (2011) my class had this exchange with a dutch school. Yes, we're the same age but he's Dutch and I'm Italian and the only way we had to communicate was talking in English. I have to admit that right now I feel pretty confident writing in a language that is not my official one, but at the time...I couldn't tell the difference between ''why'' and ''because'' ! Ok no, this is too much...I couldn't understand everything and when it came to talking I was always really nervous because my vocabulary was really poor. Despite this massive barrier we managed to start talking, getting to know each other and after the exchange I decided to go back in The Netherlands with other three friends of mine during summer holiday. We had ten lovely days there, and this guy and I decided that we wanted to try to have a proper relationship, although 1169.36 kms that were going to divide us for the biggest part of the time. 

We kept having our relationship only seeing each other during Christmas, Easter and summer holidays. Even if it was for four days, those four days were going to make the difference, after 4 months away from each other. 

Although it is now over, I need to admit that this was one of the most important experience of my life. I made huge efforts to keep this relationship working, I trusted him, although I couldn't always check if he was loyal etc. ,and I keep believing that my trust was properly given. We both grow with each other's realities that were different. In his country they always use bikes, they eat lots of foreign dishes, their cities are clean and the houses are small but tall. When he came in my city he was surprised that I didn't need car or bikes to meet my friends, but that I just needed a couple of minute walking to see them in the square, he was happy he could eat all that pasta and he liked the fact that my house was not that tall but pretty large. 

I'm still in love with The Netherlands and I'm seriously thinking about planning my future there, as an Italian teacher (if I'll ever be able to find that job in that country). 

What I'm trying to say in this blog post is that nothing should scares you, every barrier can be destroyed if you strongly believe in what you're doing. Today I read this on twitter:

''If something is meant to be, than it will find his way''

In my situation, it was meant to be although age, distance, language and other obstacles. 

And I'm glad that I, at least, tried to make it work in a beautiful way until when it was possible.

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How to be grounded .

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What's a blog for? Why did I start this page? Because I wanted a ''place'' where to write down my thoughts. No one of you readers knows me, and if you do...you won't come up in the street saying ''hey! I got an advice for you to solve out your problems'', so i'm okay with writing about myself in a random way. Let's do this!

Tonight something happened; my parents discovered that I've been skipping school on purpose (without them knowing about this) some times during the school year. I'm grounded for the first time in my life. My parents are one of those couples that always agree on everything, and that's really annoying. Basically, I don't know for what reason, maybe just because Karma does exist and it's against me, they decided to check out the electronic register for the first time this year. And guess what? they found out about my 'unauthorized days out school. So here I am, waiting for my finals to start on the 18th of June, and until that day my only friends will be my books; I'll have to spend Saturday nights at home, no car available for me (yes, I did take my drive license recently and no, I won't be able to live the amazing experience of driving alone any time soon) and the work I got as photographer, for the final exhibition of the gymnastic association I used to train with, it's basically gone, because I'm grounded also for those days. 

I'm hoping for the best at the moment, maybe the fact I'll be forced to study will have some results and I'll be able to finish high school in a good way, with a good marks on the final exam. But I think that after this tremendous year, it's a really rare possibility. 

Another thing I wanted to shortly write about are the movies I saw recently. In my list we have ''The Help'', ''Adam'', ''Finding Neverland'' and ''Rain Man''. If you haven't seen them, go download them, they're amazing. I really enjoyed watching them. 

Tomorrow I'll have the play I've been working on with the rest of the group in my acting class at school. We're gonna put on stage ''Così è, se vi pare'' by Pirandello (Italian writer/play writer...that I adore!). Hopefully it will come out in a really nice way. We tried all together with our dresses for the play and let me tell you that this afternoon we were so incredibly perfect! Cross your fingers for me please !

That's it for this week. As I said, it was really random. I'd like to restart making nice nice blog post with pictures etc. but I'm not in the mode and I don't have time. Most of all, I need a place where to write so, here it's FedeRS for me.

 Have a nice week/weekend :)

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Drive license and books - Update #1

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This is a really quick update. And when I say quick, this time i'm not going to write the usual 50.000 words blog post. 

Sorry I haven't been writing much, I've been very busy with school and summer is so close that I may start crying thinking that until the 10th of July (or something like this) I'll be able with my final exams.

Lately I've been enjoying reading, a lot! In particular, I finally decided, thanks to a friend of mine that kindly borrowed me this book, to start reading one of those books that you've heard about many many times but that you've never seriously consider as something to read. And I'm talking about John Green's ''The fault in our stars''. I'm reading it in English, and it's so amazing how easily I understand. At first I was a little worried because I usually have difficulties in reading in English when it comes to a proper book, instead of a short test or something else for school. I'm pretty sure I'm going to write a review, or at least something that will pretty much look like one of those long comments about a certain book. 

Another important event...oh yeah, yesterday I took my drive license! I finally did it and I'm so proud that I made it at the first attempt. When it came to the theory part, I failed the first time because I studied by myself and it was the period in which it was not clear what kind of test I was going to do. With this I mean to say that here in Italy there were a certain kind of testes for the drive license that had to be replaced with new ones, the Europeans, with new things to study. When I had the theory test, it should have been the first time with the new testes but they kept moving the exact date, and at the end I studied for both, so this meant I was not fully ready for both of them. And I failed (with 5 errors, maximum to get it done is 4...ugghhh!!). The second time, with the new testes, went perfectly, as yesterday's practical exam. The only thing I'm a little bit upset is that the ''minister of transport'' (or however I can translate it) printed my drive license with a mistake. It was written that I need glass when I drive; this isn't exactly wrong because I have glasses but I'm not blind without them, I only miss few degrees. So yeah, they broke it in front of me, while I was holding the marking pen to finally sign that plastic card that was going to lead me to freedom...kinda dramatic in this way, but that's basically what happened. In one week my card will arrive and I'll be authorized to drive on my own, but untill that day it's like I didn't have my examination yet. All my plans for the weekend are ruined; they were not great because I'll just work as photographer for a couple of birthday parties but still, I feel the taste of loss in my mouth! (If this is an expression I can translate).

So really this is it, I'll post as soon as I can, a picture of me driving...or at least a fake one in the car :) 

Have a nice weekend xxx

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