my first post eveerr!!

Hi! My name is Piper Pontrelli and I’ll be using this blog to tell you all about the adventures, mishaps, delight, and homesickness I will come across throughout my year in Italy. That is, if I get to go. You see, as perfect and amazing this sounds (or at least to me it does) there is one small catch.. well a pretty big catch actually. the cost. 
My parents have generously agreed to pay half of the cost and the rest I have to come up with. I have about $2,000 saved but I still need to make $6,000 in order to pay my part. I am doing jobs like baby-sitting and fundraisers, and I’ll get a summer job when that time comes around but that wont cover it all. At the top right corner of this page there is a Donate button which will allow you to donate any amount. If you could donate anything it would be extremely helpful and no amount is too small. I would greatly appreciate it if you could also forward my blog to anyone else who you think might be interested in helping me make my trip to Italy possible. 
So now that I’m done with the soliciting part of this entry, lets get back to blog stuff. When telling people you’re going to do something as crazy as packing up and moving to Italy for a year, they usually have a few questions lined up. One of the most common ones that should be one of the easiest as well is, “Why do you want to do this?” Simple enough right? Well I surprisingly still don’t have an answer for it. Maybe it’s the adventure, maybe it’s learning a new language, or maybe I’m just a loon and should be put in a crazy house. (: I’m not quite sure about that one yet. But I do know that I want to do this and I’m going to work as hard as I can to make it happen.  For years now i have dreamed of going off to Italy, and now I might finally be going. There‘s no way to explain how excited I am. :) 
My Grandpa came over from Italy on a boat when he was 7 and it's always been one of his many topics of choice to talk about, so I've been hearing stories about Italy for all my life. It’s funny at family get-togethers listening to him and his brother yelling “Mangia!” at the dinner table like they speak fluent Italian still while in reality that’s pretty much all they know how to say in that language. 
Next school year (my junior year) I am leaving in the end of August for Italy and will be there until June comes around again. It's taken a long time of pleading and bugging my parents to get them to let me go and now I'm super excited to finally get the O.k. Thank you so much for taking the time to read this! Also I'll write again when I get more information on more interesting things like my host family and city where i will be staying!!