Ciao!

Ciao everyone! I am back online and writing my blog posts once again. Last time I posted, I was sitting in a New York City airport, waiting to board my flight to Rochester, to one of my best friends from the Bolshoi Ballet Academy.  Now, I have just a few things to let you know before going into sharing what I've been up to since last posting. First off, I want you to know that I will be posting the videos from last summer until the present time. I am currently working on finishing them up and then I will post them to my YouTube. Sorry it's taking so long! Secondly, I know I have said this before, but I really am going to try to be more active on here in the future. I will also be broadening the topics that I write about in the future, so stay tuned for that! For now though, I will be sharing about what I've been up to...and that pretty much has been traveling.

To pick up from where I last left off, I did eventually make it to Rochester, New York. I spent two weeks at my friend, Lauren's, house, during which we explored the nearby areas, found some great vegan food, and went to Canada for the night. We saw Niagara Falls, I met some of her friends, we spent time choosing the final pictures to get from my shoot with Rachel Neville, and we did lots of shopping. She was preparing for a dance she had been asked out to, so we spent lots of fun time trying on dresses and shawls, and then trying to tie in the whole look with the perfect shoes and jewelry. It was lots of fun, so naturally I was sad to leave and head back to NYC for my last two weeks in the state (I lived in New York for a total of 2 months). Unlike my first month in the city, where I was living in my own apartment on 89th street, which is relatively quiet, I was to be living in a hotel right in Times Square. My first week was just me, still going to Steps to take class and doing my own school work. In my last week, one of my best friends, Jeannette, from California came out to stay with me. We had tons of fun exploring the city, taking lots of cute picture, and getting lots of salad from Tender Greens. She is also the one who first got me into fasting, which is something that I absolutely loved and will pick up once I am back home.

Before I tell you where exactly I am coming home from, I'll quickly skim through May and June. In May, not too long after returning from New York, I went to meet up with two friends and my mom in Chicago. My mom left halfway through the trip, as she was coming from a work meeting, and I stayed a few more days. Both friends, Lauren and Ashley, had not seen each other since leaving Russia, so it was the first time all three of us were together since then. After coming back to California after this fun week, I left just a few days later to Hawaii with Jon and his family. We spent a little over a week there, and I had a blast. We were located right by the water in a cute little neighborhood that had a really good restaurant by the pool that we went to many, many times. We explored different parts of the island, had lots of great food, and I went zip lining for the first time! I got back in June, and mostly worked on Rover (which I started in May), took final exams, went to a friend's birthday party, went to another old friend's eagle rank badge ceremony, went to Bowers museum with Jon and his mom, got LOTS of plants with my friend, Sophie, went to a Baroque music show with my mom and grandparents, and then I left for my family reunion.

The Forney family reunion is always a lot of fun. With most of the family staying in the house my grandparents rent out for us, there is constantly stuff going on. Jon and I were quite often hanging with the many little cousins of mine, who were very amused with Tons magic tricks. There was lots of games played, pool time, earthquakes, and filming for...you guessed it, Dunezilla 3. It was a lot of fun, and I am so glad that Jon was able to meet quite a lot, but not all, of the family.

The rest of the month was spent hanging with friends, having my first driving lesson, doing yoga on a yacht with my yogi fam, dying my hair completely purple, and packing for Italy- which is where I am currently writing from. In my next blog post I will give you more details, but here is a short little explanation as to why I am here.

I had originally been looking at a volunteering project in Romania, but the program I was looking into stopped this specific project. That is when my mom found Performing Arts Abroad. After going through different application processes, I was accepted for an internship. For the past 3 and a half weeks, I have been working at Chille de la Balanza, which is a local theatre in Florence. In my first three weeks, I also took a beginners Italian language course at the Florence University of the Arts. I passed that class with an A, but definitely do not test my Italian language skills! :P While it is nice to have more free time before work now that I do not have class in the morning, it is sad that my roommates also left once the FUA term ended. I became friends quickly with the two girls who lived with the same host family, and for this reason we are all still staying in contact and plan on hopefully seeing each other in September back in the States. I will tell you more details about the program so far in future posts.

Thanks for reading!

                     
 

 

 
 
 
 

XOXO,
Louisa