Power issues, having some amazing encouragement in my faith, and getting back into the epic-ness that is Harry Potter

I have now been in Turin for just over 6 weeks - where does the time go – and a lot has happened since my last update. I have my post-it with everything I want to include in this entry and a cup of tea, so I shall get straight down to it.

Adapting to having no power

Let’s start with the bad news - I have had power issues - and I didn't have it for just over a week. Here is the story in its simplest form. As my roommate, Krizia, works pretty much all day every day, we only had unlimited electricity during the night-time entitled in our contract; but since I have been ill, have not been out till about 7 in the evening every day, and was lazy as far as lectures were concerned a few weeks ago, you can guess what I was doing – and I didn't fully understand at first when Krizia first told me about it. We have now had our contract changed so we can use it during the day-time too, but it meant that they had to turn our power off for a while whilst it got processed; and since it was the Easter holidays last week, they were too lazy to get it processed through until after that. It has been interesting, especially when your laptop battery dies and the sala is also shut for the holidays so you can’t re-charge it. So instead, I have been going on walks around the city, out with friends and reading some of the books on the bookcase (including finally finishing Oliver Twist in English and a couple of Italian manga books – that are actually cheaper here than in the UK!). I have also got a little bit more of my dissertation work done. It’s not much but it is at least a step in the right direction. Oh how I wish though, it could just be a 4,000 word fanfiction!! That would be so much better, not to mention more fun!!

The good news though is that I now have it back and so have a living laptop and have been able to make some real food again =D

Parco Valentino

One of these trips out of the house was with Alyssa to Parco Valentino. There are many parks in Turin, but Valentino is the biggest – it’s massive! There are parts of it that are really beautiful as well, especially seeing as Alyssa and I went on a sunny day. It is going to be awesome to go to in the summer, when we have picnics! At one point, Alyssa even said it reminded her of Middle Earth – and she’s not even that big of an LOTR fan (well, not like me at least)! There is also part of the park that is a medieval village, and this reminded me of Romeo and Juliet, or Shakespeare in Love or any of those kinds of costume dramas. We took lots and lots of pictures. After going to the park, we wandered up Vittorio Emmanuele II, one of the main streets in Turin and found a really nice fish restaurant for tea. The guys did try to offer us fish and chips, but

Me at the Medieval village 

you will be happy to know we flat-out refused (Alyssa was also offered paella at one point, but seeing as she was in Granada in Spain before she came here, she turned that down too). I chose what is essentially like a chicken kiev, but obviously fish, and it had tomato and mozzarella inside – it was amazing! I think we might have found a replacement for Ninkasi!

A few weeks ago, Krizia and I had a house party (not like Bangor-style though). It was on the same night that the new Pope was elected, so we had the television on as we were waiting for him to walk out of the balcony. I was happy that I had some Italians to tell me what the commentators were saying, as whilst I was trying my best, it was often far too quick for me to follow. I managed to meet some of Krizia’s friends from work, and she got to know a couple of people from my Italian class, and from my church. It went really well, and we are thinking of doing it again soon.

GBU International Meal

While we are on the subject of church, two weeks ago, I was told in the service about the GBU in Turin. It stands for Gruppi Biblici Universitari and it is essentially their version of the Christian Union for both Unito and the Politechnico. We were told that they were having their Missions Week that week, and seeing as Bangor has given me a bit of experience in that area, I decided to go and support them in at least some way. I only went to two of the events they held in the end, which were the International meal and the Music night. I brought Alyssa to the meal because as well as being a great opportunity to meet people and know more about Jesus, it was also another brilliant opportunity for us to practice our Italian. There was a talk that night that was all in Italian, and whilst it was spoken by an English person, I did manage to understand pretty much all of it – if that’s not a sign that my Italian’s improving, what is? I feel that since that week, I have been encouraged more and more in my faith than I have been for a while, and I have had more strength in it than I have had in a very long time as well – and I have re-learnt that God can work in strange ways sometimes; and this is thanks to 2 awesome people. One, the more important, is Jesus himself, but the other is someone who I now consider to be a great friend of mine. If that person is reading this, you know exactly who you are, and you know exactly what I am on about. Grazie mille per tutti che hai fatto per me =) 

GBU Music Night

My church has also had a special service for Palm Sunday, and at the end, we had an International Meal. I invited Krizia and we both really enjoyed ourselves. It was a great service, and at the end, there was an International lunch. You can guarantee that Christians will always have something special with food =P

Speaking of great friends, I was reunited for a short time last week with Toby, one of my great friends from Bangor, along with Letizia and Frederica who are Italian students that came to Bangor last year for their Erasmus. All three of them are living in Bologna now, which is one of the places I really want to go and visit. Spero che possiamo incontraci ancora ragazzi! I was only with them to have a coffee and walk-around Turin, but it was great to hear what they had been up to, especially Toby’s past semester in Lausanne in Switzerland.

My new bed-time reading ;)

Last but certainly not least, a blog entry from Turin would not be complete now without putting on my geek-hat and talking about the awesome-ness that is Harry Potter. The films have been shown on Italian TV recently, and when I first noticed it, and asked Krizia if she was ok with watching it, she told me she had never seen any of them… this was my reaction:

“…………………. Ok…… How have you managed that?! We need to do something about this FAST!!!!!!”

Thankfully, I have got all 8 films on my iTunes, which has been so much easier as the Italians have been stupid in the order that they been showing them. They showed the 7^th and then 8^th ones first, before going right back to the beginning! Thankfully, Krizia wasn't here when they showed the last one, but she still knew that Dobby dies before she saw The Chamber of Secrets. If you take out the fact that she saw the 7^th first, the last one we saw together was The Goblet of Fire, so she’s doing well ;) For all interested, we watch them in English, and when we can, with Italian sub-titles. Why you might ask? For the same reason that my friends in Lyon were adamant on seeing Skyfall in English – but even more so! Can you imagine anyone other than Daniel Radcliffe as Harry, or Michael Gambon (or Richard Harris, whichever you prefer) as Dumbledore; or the best example of this, in my opinion, Alan Rickman as Snape? I didn't think so. I have, in light of getting back into it, got The Prisoner of Azkaban (and a Bible too actually while I think about it) in Italian to read – hopefully my Italian lecturers in Bangor will be happy =)

I think I’m going to stop there before I become too geeky and make a complete fool of myself. The holidays are going to be over in a couple of days, and my lectures will start again soon. The holidays here are really short, no more than a week. It’s strange because I’m used to having holidays easily twice as long as that for Easter. In a few weeks, I am going to have a visit from my parents and my brother, which I am looking forward to. My Skype is awful in my house so I haven’t been able to keep in touch with them as I would want to, and I obviously cannot use it in the sala studio…

I know this has been a long one, so thanks for your patience.

Grazie mille per leggere e ciao =)

Charlotte