I SHOULD CALL FOR A CELEBRATION! i found my ydsp cert, and am seriously HAPPY! (: hahaha. sighhh, tomorrow it's back to the hectic singaporean life. :( CRAPPY CRAPPY CRAPPY. ah well. now that i'm in a slightly better mood than just now cause i like found my cert, i shall try and blog about italy. so this is going to be really long and more for my own reference so yeah if you don't wanna read you can like skip the entire thing.

alright, at changi, we were given scrapbook which we had to work on which i haven't because i brought my own sketchbook. anyway, we were supposed to say our goodbyes and all, and i was standing with my brother, when this guy i've never seen before walks up to the both of us and goes "hey kaiyu". i was like wth. hahaha, this guy turned out to be jonathan tan (jt) a small boy who later became one of my 5/6 travel companions. (:

yeah, so we checked in, and for the first time in my life i wasn't holding on to an SQ boarding pass. yeah, and then after we went in, the teachers told us that we had to split up into groups of 5 and these are the people we had to stick with, and they wanted mix of boys and girls, and all the different years. which at that point felt TERRIBLE because i so did not want to do that. but saw ben standing with jt and leroy, and although it didn't seem great, it was the best there was so sylvie and i asked if we could be part of their group and they said okay, so it was decided that i was stuck with them for the trip. we seriously barely knew each other (sylvie and i didn't know that leroy and jt EXISTED), and ben was just some guy in art history, but i must say our group started out not knowing one another, but we managed to stick together really well, and became quite a close group. so yeah, we proceeded to the gate and this is a photo i took with the parrot whilst waiting for the gate to open:

we were just sitting around, ben and i started talking about school and stuff, and sylvie was on the phone most of the time. uh, then when we finally got in, sylvie and i miraculously managed to swap seats till we were sitting next to each other, but we didn't have headsets, which was actually i good thing, cause then we slept. and BA doesn't have the play on demand thing so it wasn't that fun to watch stuff anyway. and look at what happened to my hair when we got to heathrow: mr yang said it was lke wire. like it was gravity defying. hmm, my hair has been problematic since i was in sc. sigh. hahaha. (: and at heathrow, we had like an hour plus, and considering our group barely knew each other, it was kinda awkward, so i asked ben to give us a lesson on using an SLR (single lens reflex). and i think he teach until damn pek chek cause i didn't know ANYTHING. but it's really quite fun to play with:

I BET I LOOK PRO. hahaha, pro my foot man. hmm, so yeah, we were playing with the camera for awhile. and i forgot whether we took a bus before or after we played with the camera although i think it's before. we had to take a bus from one terminal to another. and then we took a smaller plane from heathrow to milan. and remember how i wanted to watch the pursuit of happyness, haha, it was showing on the plane, and when i got there, i saw this:
The pursuit of happyness poster in italian. hah. (: anyway, the first day in milan, we visited the sforza castle! it was huge, and i think that from this trip i learnt that when visiting places like europe, you must be able to imagine how things actually happened, and how it was built so long ago, and managed to survive till today, then everything will seem amazing. it's not the obvious big and beautiful like the mountains in switzerland, but slightly more subtle, and requires background knowledge, or else everything will just be super boring. yeah, so the sforza castle was like wth-ish, cause that was where leonardo lived for awhile, and it's just cool mans.
and then, what did we do arh, oh yes, then we went to this shopping/art place, where there was the first prada shop, and high class macs:
yeah, and milan in general was bad for sylvie cause she had to resist GREAT temptations. haha, guys and brands. enough to totally distract sylvie. anyway, yeah, and i think that's about it for milan. and there will be fewer and fewer photos, cause as i got to know ah pek and ben better, everything was to be koped from the SLR. (: yes.

and then there was this hooha, like whether or not we were going to go hungry cause we couldn't get some fax and the restaurant was like closing, but i had war rations that my parents made me bring so i was safe. but anyway, so yeah, we checked in for the night, and then uhm, i realised that i had cup noodles but no utensils and i forgot to take from the plane. but yeah, so we didn't eat any the first night (we were too full anyway). the next day, we were off to venice! haha, and i think that was where we had our first encounter with 1euro toilet fees. And this was when we were waiting for the boat and saw japanese students, and their imba camera.
and then at venice we had our super expensive lunch, photos:
and uhm, we chose not to go on the gondola, not sure about ther rest, but for me, whether or not i enjoy something more often than not depends on the company i have, and let's just say based on that i decided to go for the lunch instead of the ride. i'll save the gondola ride for my husband. (: haha, although i still don't really want to get married. oh yeah, and it was also at this expensive place that ah pek ordered one pizza for himself! this is just a random shot of venice:

hah, and this is a lingerie shop and why did i take a photo of it? cause hahaha, mr yang calls it the intimissimitaiji shop. HAH. what the hell man, but yeah, we saw another one in florence i think.

(from left: leroy, me, slyvie, ah pek, ben)

and florence is really nice, but there's like lotsa information and lotsa statues, but in the ufizi gallery they thought that my stapler was a knife and didn't say anything about my compass. interesting.

yeah, and looking at lotsa pieces (exam pieces) from the art history textbook was quite magical. like i've been studying this and now i finally get to see it. and then after all the galleries, on the way back to the hotel, there was this place where you get this amazing view of Florence:

the pro-er pictures are in the SLR, and we look like we're photo-shoped into the photo. and uhm, here's one without sylvie and i: yeah, and other pictures are on the other memory cards and in the SLR, so i'll blog more about them when i get my SD card back and when i kope them from the SLR. and might i add, i really enjoyed the trip and the little things like instant noodle sessions that made it that much more enjoyable. oh, and lots of us have a new favourite song: karma chameleon. hahaha, SO OLD, but it's so fun. alfonso the bus driver about to get lung cancer from smoking so much played it on the bus.

and now if someone were to put an SLR in my hands, i still don't know how it works, but i won't be totally lost! haha, so technically i learnt a new skill right?

yeah, that's about it for italy for now, chinese o levels is like 2 days away? and i haven't studied. AHA. oh wells, and the newspaper says scgs is an elite school. how odd. i think we're not THAT elite. ah, well i don't know.

CIAO!