Lake Como

   December 29th, 2012
We are here in Lake Como, Northern Italy, a place surrounded by mountains and hills (very
cold this time of year). We layer up to stay warm and head down to a dock on the lake
and buy our tickets for a boat to the main-city, Como. On the first boat ride, the view was
phonomenal! We had a great view of the mountains close by around us and the snowy peaks
far away as well.

 Lots of pictures were taken until we reached our destination at Como.
We bought another boat ticket for a trip around another part of the lake to Ballagio
and waited for the boat to arrive (which took about an hour) by walking around in the city
to see what we could see. We took a picture of a great big church in the city and walked
around the market nearby until it was time to board the boat. In Ballagio, we bought the
tickets to get back to Como and to our starting-point, and then we set off on our adventure
around the city (the boat didn't come back until five hours later.
It was a quiet city with not very many people, very different from Napoli.
As is normal for us, we curiously found a staircase and ventured up and down and all around
 until we found a bench by a boat-launch and rested and had a snack. The ducks in the lake
swam closer curiously (obviously looking to see if we had any food to share with them)
so we tossed some crumbs and soon they were literally sitting on our shoes and trying to
eat out of our hands! After our rest, we set off back on our adventure and got slightly
lost in someone's neighborhood, but we soon found our way back to the boat dock and waited
the next hour until the boat came back and we sailed back to Como, and then back to Cernobbio,
where our hotel is. On our way back to the hotel (it was already dark at 8 pm by then) we picked
up some pizza to-go at a ristorante called Tom & Jerry and speed walked up the hill up to the hotel
so that the pizza wouldn't have enough time to get cold. The we all rested on the bed and ate the
pizza until it was all gone :)

  12-2-2012 Staying in Modena, Italy, north of Naples. This is a very cold and quiet city, much different from Naples. Everyone here
hates Naples and the people there, and everyone in Naples hates the north. Driving from one city to the other is like traveling to different
universes! The reason we are staying here is for the museums such as the car companies, Ferrari and Lamborghini, and the motorcycle
company Ducati. Unfortunatly, both the Lambo and Ducati museums were closed until January, so we decided just to visit the two
Ferrari museums nearby. We were greatly disappointed by the Lamborghini museum, as we had planned to visit it that day (we already
knew that the Ducati museum was closed), one of the employees laughed at us as he told us "E chiuso" (it's closed) and  walked away,
we decided that we might as well take pictures of the cars from outside of the window while we were there. But the Employee came back over
when we passed a red striped gate and shook his finger and told us to leave. Arriving at the Ferrari Building, there were fancy cars
everywhere! Who says machines can't be pretty?            

A Roman citizen ;)

  November 21st, today's adventure: Rome! It first started with a long, 3 hour car ride through the slow traffic early in the morning. Nothing like a pop tart and some cereal at 6 in the morning, followed by a long-lasting, cramped car-ride to start your day fresh! We met up with some friends from church that had just flown here recently and head off on our journey first to the Colosseum, and after that, we headed off to the Pantheon to see what was inside!

   The Pantheon inside and out!

   I think any one would know what this is! It's crazy thinking about how we actually got to see this in person after having seen it in so many history books and stuff.

 Those little things in that tree there are tropical birds.... a little out of place I would say (I circled them with Microsoft paint)  There were these dudes dressed up as Roman soldiers walking around and talking to the tourists, I managed to sneak a picture of him, but then he caught me and started talking to me and asked our family where we came from. We didn't get a picture of it, but he put a little crown of leaves on my head and called me the princess of the United States. ;)

                                      

Today we visited a place in Naples called Christmas Alley (yay!!). Of course, there

  were lot's of little shops that sold Christmas things like manger scenes, Santa clause key-chains, wreaths, decorations and ornaments, but also there were decorations and lights in the alley-ways like Christmas lights strung from building to building. Sadly we visited in the day time so we didn't get to see them lit, but they still lifted our spirits high ;). The prices were often very cheap, so we ended up doing quite a bit of shopping (mostly me). I got a few Christmas gifts for my best buddies at home in America ( which I just now figured out that I can't get them to them until after Christmas :/ ), but I also got a whole outfit and some Christmas lights for myself. These are just a few of the things we saw on our journey in Christmas Alley.----

 Lot's of Christmas decorations everywhere!

;)

 A mini Obama statue! We should have bought it just for fun ;)

An awesome city market scene hand-made in a shop that's full of them!

 There are also stores where you can buy supplies to create your own little scene, this was my favorite. A mini cello (that's probably playable) that looks so real!

 They also sold mini, fancy cases for the instruments.

 This was the largest scene we have seen so far! It is a little taller than my full extended arm (not including the table holding it up) and as long as our big white couches at the house! wow! It has also VERY intricate designs and details you wouldn't believe.

 One of the beautiful scenes of an old, snowy house, this is one of my favorites.

 This the collection of statues that were featured outside of the shop, if you look very closely at it, you will see lots of famous people in famous poses and trademarks.

is

 Sorry, we're OPEN! What does it mean???
This was a sign that I spotted in a shoe
store on our way back to the train station.

This is the other side of the sign, the one pointing in our direction. The store was wide open for visitors, but the sign says it's closed, but that we should come in... we weren't quite sure what to do.

There were tons of little statues of famous people at a store we found, including Steve Jobs with a giant Ipad in his hands ;)

 

                                           If you think Washington weather is unpredictible, wait until you hear about Naples! It's cloudy and raining in the morning when you wake up, then a few minutes later, the sun's shining brightly through the clouds. Then it stays that way for a while.
                                 My mother had planned on going to the Capodimante museum, unless, of course it was raining (all the Italian parks, shops and others close when it rains). The museum was quite far away so we just  walked right out our gate and waited right there at bus stop. We took two buses as far as we could to get to the museum, but we still were quite a ways away. So of course, we walked. What do we do every day? Walk, and walk, and walk, and walk. I've gotten quite used to it now, and it is becoming easier and easier every day. Especially because we venture up so many stairs. Speaking of stairs, we went up at least 500 of them today!! (steps, not staircases.).
                      We took a bus to a park (which looked pleasant at first but there were way too many homeless people) than walked up the street a little ways and turned up a hill and- guess what? we found more stairs! Another one of those- OOh! lets see where this goes... so we walked up the stairs, they were absolutly covered in trash and there were empty syringes every where, yuck! We wanted to get up and out of that place as soon as possible!
  When we arrived at the gate of the museum and entered, a man at the gate told us something of which we couldn't quite understand, but thought to hear that museum was closed. Great. Just to be sure, we walked through the park to the museum only to find- it was closed. So, we found our way to a stone bench near an overgrown fountain and sat down to eat lunch. We fed the pigeons, ate our lunch, ventured a little, and finally it was time to leave.
   We walked down a road until we found ourselves back in the city, then we walked around the streets and found a big pet store-- Yay! Of course, we just had to go in! The store was loud with all of the birds making noises at once. The first thing I saw when we entered the door, was a large cockatoo in a cage. Then we saw two huge birds on a perch which they were chained too, One was a macaw, very intimidating an mean (he tried to bite our fingers off) the other was another white cockatoo who had about the same temperament as our African Grey at home (he would let you pick him up, but he might bite you a little still).
    My mom thought it might be fun to hold him for a picture, so she reached out her hand to the bird, and he stepped onto her finger, but when the picture was over and it was time to go look at the other animals, he didn't want to leave her finger. So she struggled with getting the bird back on the perch without him biting her.
    Meanwhile, I decided to look around some more. There were some budgies, and many parrots in cages up against a wall, they looked very hostile and untamed, so my guess was that they were caught streight from the wild.  Before, I had watched a video about them catching African Greys in the wild and shipping them to Europe and other countries while half of them die on the way. This saddens me still :( I think that birds should just be bred in captivity, besides, birds streight from the wild are usually much too old to train very much.                                                     
                                            After we had finished looking around at the pet store (they were closing at the time so they kicked everyone out), we started walking toward a bus stop as it began pouring down rain. Soon it came down so hard, that we were desperatetly trying to find a bus stop with some cover. I think we would have been dryer if we stood behind the shelter in the rain because every time a car came by on the road, we were completly drenched by the puddles that splashed on us, so instead of  holding the umbrella over our heads, we held it in front of us to shield us from the splashes. Sometimes, though, we held it a little too low and our faces were drenched in the dirty street water. We all weren't too happy about that. We had waited there, cold and wet at that bus stop, for a very long 30 minutes until the bus finally arrived.  We were very happy to be sitting in a nice, warm seat where we couldn't be soaked with the black water constantly. After we stopped at yet another bus stop and waited for an even longer 30 minutes, we decide it would be a good idea to buy an umbrella from one of people on the street, so we bought a nice, big, light blue umbrella for 5 euro. Race and I switched shifts every now and then standing at the edge of the sidewalk and watching for the bus while the others stood under cover of a building. When the bus finally arrived, we got on and went back the house and decided that the rest of the evening would be a lazy, hot cocoa day. :)  (we brought the camera only to find that the battery was still charging at home :/ )

                            

                        The  past week, the weather has been very stormy and cold.  There has been  very high wind, flashing lightning And rumbling rolls of thunder in the sky.  We hav’nt been able to walk around much because of the  weather, so all we have been doing is  sitting around the house and enjoying the weather and doing our schoolwork. The first day it started raining, most of my family wanted it to clear up and be sunny again, but To me it felt like a little piece of home that we brought with us ;)

October 25th, 2012 Yesterday we took a bus back down to Naples and explored an old catholic church and an art museum. The journey there and back were the most exciting however. We were walking on the sidewalk when we saw, on the outer edge of the wide sidewalk, a pretty rooster pecking at a tomato. Now that's a first! I didn't even know they knew what a live chicken was here in the city! Nearby, there was a very small petstore with massive amounts of pet cages, food, excesories, etc tightly jammed near the doorway and inside the store. There wasn't much of a variety of pets in the store, but they did have a few here and there. In the front of the store, there were little tiny yellow and black turtles swimming around in a tank. They were so cute! I think it would be awesome to own at least 1 or 2 of these at least while we are living here, and if we cant take them back home, we can just set them free in the big pond behind the museum Ceramica Di Martina where lots of other turtles live! Anyways, further back into the pet store, there were little fluffy kittens and mice and rats and..... wait for it...... CHIPMUNKS! Yes, chipmunks! how awesome is that? Most of them were sleeping in their cage, but one of them would climb up a wall of the cage, do a backflip, and land on the other wall. It was so cool!

  the other wall. It was so cool! After we got to the church, we went inside to see the super tall, fancy decorated ceilings and lots of beautiful paintings. At the very back of the church, there was an alter on a huge stage with a covering of white and a vase of roses in front of it. Down the middle of the building, there were the seats, and on each both sides of those, were many large pillars holding the building up. There were little side rooms with pictures of Mary and Jesus and Nativity scenes with gold frames and decorations around them. Here and there there were candles fake and real that you could light up to signify that you were praying for someone. Donation boxes were by the alters and candles all over the place.

After having visited the church, we were on our way to the art museum! The museum started with a room with all sides, ceiling, floor and walls painted (actually the floor was tiled in colorfull decorations). The walls depicted creepy spider people in wierd positions and some other un-recognisable, colorfull shapes. My least favorite type of art.... :p It was really innapropiate too.... :P. anyways, the next room in the museum was the same. Upstairs, however, it was completely different. It was more of a modern-style type of art. The first room, was a giant anchor sitting infront of some bars. The next room made a wierd ecoey, humming noise when you entered. all around the walls were mirrors with light reflecting off of them. On the bars that held the mirrors out, were metal skulls without the mandable. The next room, had a piece of foggy glass on the wall with a jelly dude's face smushed up against it from the other side... It's kind of hard to explain but it's a good thing we took pictures! The next room had a huge black board with some form of math written all over it. This was Race's favorite. Then, we came into a room with a big black rectangle in the floor that turned out to be a hole in the floor, how crazy!

  After we had finished visiting that museum, we walked around in the allyways to see what we could see. There were hundreds of stores lined up everywhere, and some were just homeless people trying to see what they could sell. In many of the allyways, there were people creating these amazing houses and scenes with tree bark, moss, cloth, anything they could find and glueing them together to make a great, big scene. Some of them even had little lights built in and little waterfalls and streams running real water! They were the coolest thing... thank God for cameras!

                                October 23, 2012      Today we went exploring the roads of Posillipo (where our house is currently) and found a large park not too far from our house. We had already been to the park before with our tour guide (he was our house searcher as well) but we wanted explore the rest of the park too. there was a nice, sunny area where the pavement came to a cliff (of course it had walls and fences) with an amazing view of the water below and an island not far off. The sight reminded of an old game that my brother and I used to play called Sid Meyer's Pirates. what the game was about was finding crew at nearby havens and taking down ships in the sea and gathering loot from them, you could also go look for and take down the well-known pirates and find their buried treasure. Anyways, so at the park, my favorite part was chasing all the lizards that were sunning on the warm walls near the cliff. They are really fast and super hard to catch! But finally, I caught a pretty good sized lizard and took a picture (top). After that I felt pretty accomplished and tried to catch some more, I grabbed at a big lizard that was fleeing over the edge of the wall but it ejected its tail before I could grab the rest of him, so I was stuck with a little tip of a tail flopping around and squirming. I saw my mom walking over and quickly stuck the tail into a little crack in the wall so part of it could still be seen flopping around. When my mom finally came over, I told her that a lizard was trying to fit into the hole in the wall, mom was amused until I pulled out the tail and set it on the wall. She was really freaked out!

                                          The other day we went to a museum at a park in Naples. I can't quite remember what it was called, but the museum really wasn't all that amazing. It had some old china and chinese art and stuff, and some pots and glasses, but it didnt have much to read about or anything really cool enough to write about. But the park was another story. It wasn't so much antique stuff and old ruins, it had lots of trees and lots of nature all around. There were so many trails to explore there, but unfortunatly, almost all of them were closed off iwith orange tape. Infront of the museum was a huge open field to have a picnic or just sit around, behind the museum, there was a big fountain with little yellow and black turtles and bright orange fish. There must have been about 30 turtles in there, big and small, and lots of the visiters were feeding them their sandwitches or bread or something. It was entertaining to watch the fish and turtles grab at the food floating in the water, the turtles like to bite the big pieces and tear the rest off with their front legs :).

                                                        October 16, 2012. Today my brother, mom and I went to visit a science museum near our house in Posillipo. We wanted to take a bus ride down the narrow road with no sidewalk, but when the bus came down to the bus stop where we were, it just kept on going and didn't stop. So we had to walk the skinny road down the hill to the museum called Citta Della Scienza (I think I spelled it right....). This year the theme of the museum was astronomy (the theme changes every year), so when you walk in, you feel like you are in a spaceship most of the time. They even had rooms that had red-dirt floors that looked like the grounds of mars. The museum had lots of hands-on experiments and exhibits including my favorites, three giant big tubes of liquid, each had a different viscosity (each were a different thickness basically). There were big handlebars on each, when you pushed the handlebar down and pulled it back up, it would create bubbles in the tubes that naturally floated up to the top, but each tube's bubbles travelled at a different speed. For example, the red tube (each tube was a different color) was the thickest, and the bubbles travelled very very slowly. In the blue tube (the thinnest viscosity) the bubbles traveled much faster, but not as fast as regular h2o. My 2nd favorite exhibit was the rocket ship. This was a little plastic rocket ship in a plastic tube above water. When you press the go-button, there were two bubbling, silver cylinders at the bottom of the tube underwater. What those cylinders would do was split the molecules into hydrogen and oxygen (like splitting h2o into h2 and O) and use it to blast the rocket ship up to the ceiling. Last but not least of my favorite exhibits was the huge tube of blue dyed water. When you pressed the 'go' button, the water at the top would start to spin, and soon it created a giant whirlpool. The rest of the museum was very interesting too, my mom got to do the thing where you hold on to a bar that generates static electricity and makes your hair stand up-that was really funny :). Another thing that I remembered best from the museum was these screens everywhere that showed these evil-looking cartoon jack-in-the-boxes that had really wide eyes and a really big mouth. These things were idle most of the time, but whenever you stepped infront of them, they would come alive and talk to you and ask you questions in a really high-pitched, robotic voice. It was soooo freaky!! I'm pretty sure there was a real person looking through a camera and talking to you, because it asked intelligent questions and replied to you like a normal person (despite the creepy voice). Despite the scariness of this thing, i found it entertaining. :D

                October 15th 2012;  Recently, my family and I moved into a temporary home in Posillipo, not too far from Naples. The house is a one-story, quite large house with two bedrooms and two bathrooms. The kitchen, living room and dining room are all the same room and are nice and open. The giant door in this room also adds to the open feeling in the house. It is a large glass sliding door about the size of a garage door that leads to the small backyard. My family and I have been enjoying our time in this house and would much rather stay here than stay in a hotel for the rest of the trip. It's just nice to have a place of your own that you don't have to share with anybody (not that we shared rooms in the hotel). Being me, I already started making decorations for Christmas. :D Using what I have, I make origami Christmas trees, paper snowflakes and paper chains, but as soon as I tried putting them up, my brother told me he would tear them down as soon as I did so I decided to secretly put them up downstairs in the laundry room ;). (I still don't consider this house to be 2 stories since the laundry room is so small and the rest of the downstairs is a parking garage) Sorry I didn't get to post a very good picture of the giant door, that last one is the best that my mom took. That there is a picture of the opening from the backyard to the dining room.

                                          A few days ago, Me and my family took a weekend-long trip to Belgium to watch a dirt-bike race called Motocross of Nations, well, at least my brother and my dad did. Mean while, my mom and I walked around and explored the town. It was really not all that warm there, in fact it was cold enough that my cheeks turned red, travelling from Naples to Eindhoven (Eindhoven airport) was like transferring to a completely different world. The air was crisp, there was hardly any people, it was peaceful, and had lots of trees and farmland. Whereas Naples is very crowded, hot, smoky and hazy in the city, crammed, noisy and very in-your-face. The hotel in Belgium was very grand and fancy, we got two rooms, one for my brother and I to share, and one for my Mom and Dad. both rooms were fairly large with a balcony  (all we could see is a dog park......). the bathrooms were huge with two sinks, large mirrors and a remote control shower, that's right, remote control. Pretty darn amazing. Anyways, we got up in the morning and went down to have breakfast, they served cereal, omelets, toast, eggs, bacon, ham, and cheese. And then there was the fantastic milk! The must milk there own cows or something because it isn't processed in anyway, this delicious milk is full on, fresh, pasture-fed whole milk.     
                                  As my Mom and I strolled around town, we spotted a restaurant that had a big sign that said: "Chocolat" (that's actually how the Belgians spell it) so we decided to go in and check it out. After we ate, we were a little disappointed that the waffle and pancake we ate wasn't actually chocolate, but Mom had some amazing hot cocoa. It was light brown liquid in a cute little tea-cup that you stir with a plastic spoon with chocolate melted at the bottom you can mix it in. We enjoyed our lunch very much, especially the waffles. they were fluffy, but not light, they were loaded with sugar and butter with fruit on the side of the plate.
                                   After we finished looking around in the mall that the restaurant was in, we walked down the street and found a store that sold Belgium chocolates, so we decided to go inside and look. The store had lots of samples all over so we could try the different ones, we ended up buying some of them (although they were kind of expensive). We didn't get to taste the best kinds of Belgium chocolates, but we were contented.
                        

                                      23rd of September was our family's trip to Pompeii. It was very hot, but not too crowded, we road the bus from the Garibaldi train station straight to the Pompeii tourist spot. We got our tickets (which are good for a year so we can come back later) and went inside. There were pomegranate trees everywhere so we took one as a snack and ate it on the way. Pompeii ended up being a lot bigger than we thought it would be, but we explored as much as we could until our feet ached. The city was made up of many complex roads and houses, painted walls, drainage systems and even a spigot with drinkable water that still flowed through it. The Pompeians would often exercise, then chill out in a nice pool or hot tub. They made perfumes and incense that they would massage onto people's skin as a luxury. The rich Pompeians in the city would eat all day, throw up, and eat more to show how rich they were. They lived in large, sometimes two story houses with beautiful art and paint on the dining room walls, a fountain in the middle of the home with a whole in the ceiling right above it (my guess is that it was used to let light in the house, and just in case it rained, the rain would fall right into the fountain). The Pompeians city was beautiful itself, but the people that lived there were quite a disgusting people. I won't discuss all of the things that the Pompeians did, I'll leave the research to you. I was unable to find a web address all about the Pompeians customs, but to tell you the truth, I'm kind of glad. The thing that I miss that I was really looking forward to was the casts of the people trying to escape the city in the time of the eruption. Sadly, this area of the city was closed. Back in the time of the eruption, the people tried to flee from the ash and lava. Some escaped and made it to Herculaneum, where the eventually died of the poisonous gasses.

                                             

                                   Two days ago (9/20/2012) I went swimming in the Bay of Naples, it wasn't as cold as I thought it would be, but most people would rather swim in a heated, clean pool. I had been wanting to swim there ever since we got here, I saw the clearness of the water near the boats at the bay and I immediately  made it my goal to go and explore. when I got there, I instantly found a fish flopping around on the side of the pavement. It had a broad body with pink scales and a split tail. instinctively, I placed it back in the water and it swam away. when I stepped into the water, I tried to find a good footing among the rocks, but they were all quite slimy. I was in the water before I knew it, but all the salt in the water helped me float leisurely. Soon I was exploring underwater looking for sea-life. I ran into a few schools of fish every now and then, but suddenly I found myself in front of a huge, yellow jellyfish (first picture above). It kind of looked like a fried egg yoke to me, very strange kind of ocean-life. Instantly I took a quick picture and video of it and bolted out of the bay as fast as I could, afraid that it might be venomous. After that I hung around the bay and played around with the crabs on the rocks. As entertaining as it was for me, the crabs didn't seem so happy about it. Most of them ran away under the cracks of the rocks, but one crab that was hiding in a small hole in the wall (a wall separating the boat bay from the rest of the water) was a bit braver than the others. I stuck a feather in his "cave" and he grabbed it and tried to take it away from me. Amused, I kept up with this for quite a while. after that, I found a big hole in the pavement where some little striped shrimp and gray fish were swimming around.        

    The city of Naples is a beautiful, historical city in all the old buildings, the culture, the nature that grows here. But otherwise, the city is full of trash and home-less people, the Mafia, many stray dogs and lots of grafiti. Despite all of that, it is really a gorgeous city to visit. In my opinion, i enjoy the stray dogs that roam Naples, they are actually quite well-fed since all of the resteraunts have quite a bit leftovers to throw away (most of the time the resteraunts dont let you take home the food). they are also suprisingly well-behaved and loving, they are quite dirty from living in the streets but they love attention and will follow you around if you give them it. I decided (depending on where we live) i would try and "adopt" a dog from the streets, i would give it food and play with it in the yard, then i would let it go to do what it wanted.

                 One of the houses we could live in is 6 story castle-built house in the mountains of Caserta. the vilage where the house is located, is basically what someone would picture when they think of Italy. Narrow roads with tall walls surrounding, very quiet and tranquil, beautiful trees and gardens and the classic brick roads.