A special day at the University of Milan + the end of my fortnight!

We forgot one important rule in the jacket R-7... having fun!
I decided to take the jacket with me at the university, and that day I met a lot of people!



Matteo and me on the bus, reaching Milan! It was so early in the morning... You can see it from our tired faces! He had a lot of fun listening to the jacket's adventures, so he decided to take a picture with "us" :)



every special day in university starts with the typical breakfast Italians have at the bar: cappuccino and brioche! The real cappuccino in the one you can see in the picture, not the one that Starbucks sells! :)
(of course, that day I wore the CISV USA sweatshirt, too!)



I was late for a class, but walking in the corridor I met Clara, an old friend of mine, who was there to discuss her final thesis! This picture was taken just 5 minutes before she was called in the room for the discussion! (that's why I didn't have time to tell her about the jacket adventures...But I promised her I'll do it!) :)
(omg, my hair! My face! We are the beauty and the beast!)




It was a sunny day, so we decide to have lunch in the park beside the University! It's called "Parco della Guastalla" and they say it's the best park of Milan!
Here we are from the left: Chiara, me and Manuela!
To celebrate our first lunchtime at the park of the 2012, Chiara prepared for us some little muffins! You don't know what you missed :)

After all of this fun...

Unfortunately, there is also this rule in the jacket R7:
5. You must not keep the jacket more than a fortnight. (Two weeks!)

Luckily for the next one in the list, there is also this one!
1. You must wash the jacket.

Here you have the proofs I followed it! (and asking to my mom to take a picture, I noticed that she can't use a camera!)




Then I left it drying under the italian sun...! :)

And what about this rule?
3. You must put something in the pocket before you pass the jacket on.

I'll let Raquel say what she found in the right pocket! :)
(for your information: Glinka gave me a magnet from Australia!) :)

The jacket is now in Madrid...we'll hear about the adventures soon!!!!!

Thank you for your attention!
I miss all of the girls (and James!) from the camp! Thanks to all of you again!

Sara :)

Italian Volunteering

From the Jacket R-7:
7. You must do something of service while wearing the jacket.

CISV became an important part of my life, but I'm also a volunteer in local associations...even if sometimes it's hard, I always come back home happier than tired!



This is me with some friends at the Italian language school for foreigners called "Scuola di Pinocchio"! I've been a volunteer there since october 2011 and I'm a teacher in the most advanced class (they're kinda upper intermediate/intermediate level). Preparing the lessons takes a lot of time, sometimes it's difficult explaining - especially the grammar! - even if all of my students are good italian speakers!
Here we are after a class, that takes always place on thursday evening in a parish recreative centre, that hosts us, because our association doesn't have its own office.
From the left: Ester (she's a teacher in another class). Francesc from Albany, me, Matteo (called "Baglio"...he was the first president of our association, he's been teaching to strangers for ten years...he's helping me growing up as a teacher!), then we have Marja from Russia and Veronika from Romania!
Camilla (the last teacher of my class!), Nassi and Zack from Morocco, Ivan from Ukraine and Cheikh from Senegal were missing that day.



This photo needs to be explained! :)
Since november 2011 I'm a volunteer in an association called "Cielo e Terra" that works with the social services. Part of the work of Cielo e Terra is opening a dormitory for 9 men (but now they're only 7) every night from 8 pm to 8 am. It's always opened by volunteers that spend the night there.
This is the volunteer office, where we can find the dormitory's journal that every volunteer has to complete after the night, to tell to the coordinators and to the other volunteer what happened that they should know...and of course it's also our room! :)
I decided to show you the office (too much pink for me!) and not the other rooms or the guests because sometimes it's difficult dealing with them. They're not dangerous (of course!) but that night they had a quarrel, and I preferred not to disturb them when they were quiet again.
In few hours I'm going there again, tonight! :) I hope everything will be quiet!

From Milan to...Amsterdam! 10-12/03/2012

Here I am, again!
Finally I have some freetime to tell you the amazing adventures the jacket and I had!
As I wrote in the post below, the day after the jacket arrived, I moved to Amsterdam for few days to visit Heidi...we were so happy to spend together my first days with the jacket! :)

But, before I forget it, rules are important, too!

From the jacket R-7:
6. You must do one thing you've never done before while wearing the jacket.
With the jacket I did, for the first time: fly all alone, visit Amsterdam, visit a friend abroad! :)

Here I am just landed in Schipol :) (omg, look at my face...)



Me and Heidi in ther room! (You can't see it, but there are Christmas lights under the curtains)
We had a lot of fun that night...I prepared for us a tasty pasta (bought in Italy!) and then we had a skype talk with Molly! :) (if you don't remeber her, search her in the posts below!) :)

The jacket and I with the smaller and less known I AMsterdam!

And last but not the least...



This is the best picture we took together! The jacket, Heidi, me and...Darth Vader!
(Amanda, this is especially for you!) :)

I have to thank again Heidi for hosting me and for the days we spent together! I needed a short vacation from my daily schedule :)
Unfortunately, I had to come back home...

News From Italy!

Last month the jacket finally came to me...
Unespected, it came just the day before I left to Amsterdam, to meet my dear Heidi!
We had a great time together in Amsterdam, and I had great time at home too..
Now it's travelling to Madrid, to Raquel.. Actually it should have already come!

I had a lot of things to do, but I promise I'll post in these days all we (the jacket and I) did together under the Italian (and Dutch!) sun!

xoxo

Sara :)

Return to Detroit!

Hello from Michigan!

My two fun-filled weeks with The Jacket are over, and it has found its way to Evy! The Jacket came to me during a busy time, and it was nice to have a reminder of all of you during the craziness.

When it arrived from Molly, I found some delicious chocolates in the pockets--thank you Molly! The day it arrived, I was in the middle of a week teaching science camp. I got to teach kids (6-11 years old) about bouncy balls and atoms. It was so much fun! Since it's summer camp, we do a lot of fun, silly things during the week. Each day was a different dress-up theme, so it was a perfect week to bring The Jacket to work! I wore it on Friday, which was Crazy Hair Day and our last day of camp. I taught a few lessons wearing it, until it was too hot to wear! At the end of the day, we had parents in to show them all our cool science projects from the week. I didn't realize it, but I wore The Jacket during my presentation to everyone!

As a surprise for the kids, we had Darth Vader and two Stormtroopers come in at the end of the day, so it was a perfect opportunity to take a picture!

The next day, my nephew threw a party and I promised I'd go. So OF COURSE I wore our favorite jacket! My cute beer pong partner didn't seem impressed by my attire. How can this be?? He's obviously not the man for me. This is me with my family...my niece and nephew's sister Melissa, my niece Katie, me, Amy, and my nephew Joey.

A good friend was celebrating her birthday on August 9th. The Jacket and I baked her some delicious Guinness chocolate cupcakes!

Once they were frosted, we headed to her house. Wendy's house is amazing because not only is she awesome, but she has a zip line in her backyard. As soon as she heard about The Jacket, she said, "Oh, you have to come zip line with it!" She's a genius.

So here I am, up in their amazing pirate ship treehouse, while her husband Josh gets me all hooked up.

It was awesome.

One of my best friends is getting married this weekend, and her bachelorette party was the 13th. Naturally, I took The Jacket with me! We went to dinner near her house, and then the limo picked us up. Here I am before we met up with the others.

We went to the MGM Grand, one of the casinos in Detroit. We spent some time there drinking and dancing in one of the clubs. After a while, we learned that the bachelor party, happening at the same time, was super lame. It was only the groom and ONE of his friends--nobody planned his party! We like them, so we sent our limo to bring them to us. They bought us more drinks and that alone was a good reason to have them around. :)

And now, the part where I do something I've never done: after most of the people in our party agreed, we ended the night at a strip club. Due to the nature of the establishment, I was not allowed to take any pictures. For the safety and cleanliness of The Jacket and all future wearers, I kept it tucked safely in my purse. Jacket and I decided that naked women really aren't our thing--but we had a good laugh!

I got home at 4am, so I'd say the bachelorette party was a success!

On my final night with The Jacket, I took it to meet my friends at our favorite dive bar. My act of service in the jacket was to pay for the parking of some people. (And I bought fries for the table, but I'm not sure that counts. I definitely enjoyed them as well.) When I got home, I realized that I still had a bit of my staff gift from Stephanie, so it seemed like an appropriate goodbye. :)

Before washing and packing it up to send to Evy, I embroidered something on the inside. This is a rune symbol that means "safe journey"--it seemed fitting. :) Can't wait to see what everyone gets up to!

All my love!

xo amanda

Pictures

The Adventure Continues...PART II

Welcome back, my friends! Sincere apologies for not having it posted last night, but I celebrated a friends birthday. I didn't feel like the blog entry would have been exceptional if I wrote it at 1 in the morning. So let's jump right in and pick up where I left off.

On Tuesday I finally headed home to Troy, Ohio. My lovely hometown where I spent those glorious elementary, middle, and high school days. Check out our cute little town square(it also looks great at Christmas when they turn the fountain into a big Christmas tree. http://www.troyohio.gov/

Tuesday night the jacket and I went to a nice dinner with my parents and brother, Ben. Yeah, I pretty much brought the jacket everywhere, but I did have to take it off frequently because of the crazy heat wave that was going on in the US. The humidity was terrible! Wednesday was a rather relaxing day. It was still like pushing 100 degrees F and like 35 in Celcius i think? Sorry my conversion isn't the best, but it was hot!

The Jacket and I got up in the morning, and drove straight to my friend, Susan's, house. Now Susan is wonderful! We met each other in Kindergarten and have been friends ever since. We spent the elementary school years playing American Girl Dolls http://www.americangirl.com/index.php for hours. Of course we have had our ups and downs over the years, but the older we get the more it seems like we have in common. As far as my friends go, I think we have actually grown closer since we have been in college, well at least in our way of thinking about the world. I really can't say that for all of my high school friends. She is someone really special to me, so I'm happy the jacket got to meet her. My high school friend, Andrea also came. She is always a blast, and we have been friends for a long time as well. All three of us played soccer together for years. We spent the whole afternoon relaxing in Susan's neighbor's pool it was the only thing that we could do outside with the heat.

I'm not going to bore you with the details of the next few days because it basically consisted of working a lot and shopping to get things for my apartment. Susan, Andrea, and I did have a fun sleepover at Susan's house for old times sake, which brought back a lot of fun memories.

Fast forward to Monday and it was probably the most important day of the whole two weeks. Right before we left for camp I won two free tickets to Kings Island (a big amusement park in Cincinnati, Ohio) I gave them to my dad for Father's Day and told him we would go when I got back from camp. Now my father and I love to ride roller coasters, but everyone else in my family is pretty lame and won't ride anything. We used to go to Kings Island all the time when all my siblings were at home. I used to get to take Susan every year : ) My dad and I had one great day together. We rode almost all the roller coasters, we got super wet on a few water rides. We spent the afternoon in the wave pool. We also did something we had talked about doing ever since I was a little kid. At Kings Island you can take these Old Time photos where you dress up as like a cowboy or a flapper. There are a ton of choices! We dressed up as if we were criminals who just robbed a bank. The pictures are hilarious and I hope to upload those tonight when I go home. It was a great day for my dad and me! I think I'm going to make it an annual thing now. It is something we should do every summer.

Wednesday was another exciting day. I consider this my day of service even though it wasn't really hard, and I would have done it for my brother anyway. I will do something my exciting next time! Promise! My brother's friend turned 18 on July 24th, and he really wanted to go to the Death Cab for Cutie concert in Columbus, Ohio. His mother said it was fine as long as an adult went with them, so my brother asked me before camp if I would take him and his friends. I like Death Cab as well, so I agreed to do it. It turned out to be a nice bonding time for Ben and me. The jacket and I drove my brother and his friends the hour to Columbus. We all went out to dinner and a cool pizza place before and then say Frightened Rabbit open for Death Cab. http://frightenedrabbit.com/ Death Cab was an awesome performance. It was hilarious because the lead singer for Death Cab is seriously 0bsessive compulsive. The equipment had gotten messed up where they were at in Canada before, and he was going crazy. During the one song he ripped out the cord to his guitar threw it toward the drummer then threw his guitar behind stage. It was entertaining to watch. It was one fun night with my bro.

Thursday the jacket and I spent the day catching up with old friends and saying good bye to my first boss. I had worked at Skyline Chili http://www.skylinechili.com/ since I was 16 and my birthday was my final day of work there ever. It was weird because I'd worked there for so long. My boss is a wonderful guy. He seriously awesome and I'm not sure any boss will ever live up to him, but it was one great job for five years. I also met up with my CISV summer camp leader : ) He is also amazing! He has always been there when I needed something and always a great person to talk to. To be honest, he's kind of like my brother. He teaches at my high school and is in charge of a million clubs there. I worked with him on Student Government and a million other things in high school. We always catch up any time I'm home. He's been a great reference so far when it comes to teaching as well. I've already called him up a few times to ask questions.

So Friday should have been exciting because it was my bday, but that turned out not to be the case. I feel like any birthday have 21 just becomes less and less exciting. I also felt like I turned 22 and the world told me, "Hey Molly, you're a real person. Don't celebrate your birthday, pack your bags and hit the road for the REAL WORLD!" Friday was a crazy day. I ended up mailing the jacket on that day as well because I don't know where the post office is where I'm living. I figured by the time I figured it out I would have kept the jacket over my amount of time. I didn't want to start it off behind schedule, especially since Evy has some awesome things she can do with it in South Africa. I wish I would have had more time with the jacket. I'm not sure exactly how we saw the blogs going, but I tried to keep it personal and entertaining at the same time. Hope you guys enjoy, and I can't wait to hear what everyone else gets to do in the jacket!

Lots of love,
Molly