pictures!

Sunset behind the restaurant where we had pizza one night during orientation camp... best pizza i have ever eaten. mozzarella di bufala. yum!!!

brian, me, alastair, anna and danielle. our last night together in santa maria.

jenn and i enjoying some wine in a juice box before dinner.

beautiful view from my room.... lightening storm over assisi one night.... 

my group at orientation camp.... the simpsons.

one of the harbors near FCO..... beautiful sunset.

I think this was looking down from Spello...

all of the tutors in Spello. such a fun group! :) 

first real camp

Wow, so it has been a while since i have sent a blog, yeah? well.... it is because i didnt want to pay to use the internet to blog, so i have been waiting until i got to a family to use their internet. i am sitting in my bedroom here at my family's house.... just figured out today that they have wireless. ha.

i guess to catch you up.... we did our 4 day orientation camp in santa maria degli angeli. it was so fun.... they kids were great and turns out they were VERY well behaved. i made the mistake of telling the 12 and over kids that my name was bob one day, so for the rest of camp they called me bob instead of sammy. oh well. it was funny times. i miss those kids already and it has only been 3 days, AHH!!!! haha.

Nate drove us up here to Roma Frascati. I was hoping to work with Jenn and either Brian or Alastair for camp, but I am with Anna and Danielle. They are both awesome and very good with the kids so it all worked out. :) I am teaching the oldest class here in Frascati. Tomorrow my plan is to work on verbs- past tense, yeah?

My host family here is super nice. They all speak some English so it is pretty easy to carry a conversation with them. It is mom and dad, Angela and Enzo, Eduardo 18 and Beatrice 11. Beatrice (pronounced Bee-ah-tr-isha) goes to English Camp and is in my class. She is very sweet, and just a little sassy! When I got here saturday they picked me up from camp and we came home. I unpacked and did a little laundry then we walked around Frascate a bit. They actually live in Monte Comparti which is about 7 km from the school where camp is held. Their house is beautiful, and overlooks Roma. Sunday afternoon we went in to Roma to watch Bea's roller skating competition... Basically it was like olympic ice skating, only on roller skates instead. I met Angela's mother and she was very nice. She doesn't speak any English, but was very pleasant.

Camp started today and went okay. It is very different from orientation camp because the kids are at different levels of English. Also, this camp is the first one in this town so none of the kids are familiar with the structure. The nuns are very helpful and so sweet. I think that by wednesday or thursday the kids will settle down some and we will be able to hit the ground running.

I find it entertaining how my speech has changed in just one week. I now talk much slower and with more ums and uhs, even when talking to Americans.... I also talk in sentence fragments and very simple sentences. I can only imagine what it will be like in August when I return to Oregon. Haha!!

Oh, my host family loves the Simpsons, so when I told them that the creator is from Springfield OR they were very excited. Ha.

Better get going on lesson plans.... Will try to upload a few pictures. :)

It is taking too long to upload pictures right now.... Maybe tomorrow??? :)

Love and hugs from Italy!

CIAO!!!

to Roma Frascati!

just blog to let you know i am headed to roma frascati tomorrow.... will blog and post pictures later. time is almost up at internet cafe! haha. miss everyone, loving it here.

first camp half over

Sooooooo much to report... um, camp is going well. love the little kids here. they are so sweet and very eager to learn! um, today one little 8 year old maybe taught us a dance. it was super cute. will post pictures on here maybe tomorrow.... i will have to bring my laptop down to the internet store. um, we have had some delicious dinners and lunch too for that matter..... homemade lasagna, pasta, pasta, pasta, pasta. its the best. also have been watching lots of futbol-- soccer... quite entertaining.... um, having gelato twice a day is pretty normal as well. so much for losing weight this summer. hahahahahahahaha. getting ready to send some postcards... if i dont have you address please email it to me at samanthacarlon at gmail.com.... i hope everyone is having a great summer!! home in less than 2 months.... will post a more detailed blog in a few days..... leave santa maria on saturday for my first full camp.... dont know which tutors will go with me, but there are three camps at the same time so at two camps there will be three tutors and at the third there will be four. i am getting excited... dont really know what else to tell you.... will review my journal and blog again tomorrow or friday. ciao!!

day 3 in Italy!

Our motel is just across the street from the Assisi train station, but Assisi is actually the city up on the hill. We are in Saint maria or something... I am still not sure. Ha. AAnwyay it is beautiful here. Very hot, but I am surviving. Drinking lots of water. Bottled water is very expensive so I am glad that I brought my Nalgene... not sure if Italian water is safe to drink, but until I start feeling sick I will take that risk.

you will have to excuse my lack of capitalization and misspellings. it is very strange to type on these keyboards!

there is a ginormous church here. it is a church inside a church. a long long time ago saint francis would walk down to the small church and pray. eventually so many people were following him and sleeping in the forest that they decided to build an even larger church around the old one. we are going to go into it this evening or tomorrow morning. you cant wear shorts or shirts that show your shoulders or dresses... no pictures inside either. so we will come back later with longer pants and t shirts on.

We met two of the other tutors last night. Had pizza and walked around with them. They are both very nice guys!! One from UK and the other is from kind of all over he said. Nate and Ashleigh are super nice and they found us in town last night and we had a drink and got to know each other. sounds like it is going to be a very busy and fun summer. i am really looking forward to working with them.

i dont have much else to report... oh. yes i do. so there is a mc donalds here in this smaller village. crazy!! and the drive through is called a mcdrive. haha. apparently its way better than american mcdonalds but we didnt go there yet.

drivers in rome are so ridiculous. i have pictures to show how they park.... basically they will park anywhere and they weave around each other like its no big deal.... i dont get it. i was concerned that all of italy drove like that, but the drivers around here are much more like drivers at home. i was really surprised to see that they have fords and chevys and stuff here... like i saw a ford focus. but you can definitely tell that it is an european car because it looks more square than an american ford focus. very interesting. haha.

well my time is about up on this computer. will blog again in a few days hopefully.

love from italy!
ciao!!

i guess that is about all i know for now.

Day 1

WOW! What a day... First, Kim's luggage was lost. Then, it took us forever to find a hotel to stay in.... Turns out it was 110 euros, kind of a lot, but we decided that we weren't finding much else. So we throw our bags there and change clothes then walked around Rome a little bit. We saw the VAtican city, but didn't take the tour. Back to the hotel, after some delicious pizza downtown. CAlled the airport and Kim's luggage had showed up. We talked and decided that rather than spending so much to go in and out of the city we would try to get a partial refund on our room and find something closer to the train station. Italians don't give refunds. Stupid. Found another motel out by the airport for a lot of money again. Headed to Assisi today. Thank goodness they already have a room booked for us. Its our last day of really being on our own. Yay! It will be nice to be around some people who can help us out a little bit. We don't have a ton of internet access over  here. I will try to blog daily, or at least weekly, but I make no promises. :) Ciao!!

PDX

It is currently 5 AM and we have been ready to go for 30 minutes now.... We are sitting at our gate watching the minutes tick away. Well not really. We're both busy on our computers. :)

As it turns out, 30 pounds feels a TON heavier than I thought.... Not even all those summers of fighting fire has prepped me for packing my backpack around Europe this summer. Ha. I will survive. :)

I have this little netbook. So I will be in contact this summer. Don't know how much time I will have to post blogs and send emails, but I will find time. :)

less than 48 hours!!!!!!!!!!!!

Bags are packed.


Homework is ALMOST done. 


Leave in the morning for Italy!!!! :) :) :) :)