Planning is hard.

Hey Girls!
      I am terribly sorry for not keeping up the blog. It's been over a month since I last wrote and for during these last two weeks I've been telling myself that I have to tell you my new news. Effy and Cindy wrote me a couple of days ago, asking me what I was up to, and so I finally convinced myself today was the day to update the blog. There have been many reasons keeping me pretty busy such as the SAT course I finally finished today (hurrah!), my volunteer job at the library, having my family come down to L.A. (Wyatt, Eliah and Jamie, their dad, and consequently my uncle, and his girlfriend Kate), college searching and one more important a difficult reason to write about.
    Like I just mentioned, today I finally finished my SAT course and I am so glad it's finally over. It really was helpful but I'm happy I'm done with it. Now all I need to do is take it other two times when I get back to Italy, do well on them, fill out tons of applications (that include the results) and send them out to the colleges I'm applying to and hope to get it. And talking about colleges, this is exciting news, today I found out how hard and how long it takes to plan a trip. Maybe you're wondering what trip I'm talking about, right? Well, my mom and I decided to go and visit three schools I really like that aren't too far away from my family here in California. Two are in Washington State and one in Colorado. I don't know if during my trip I will have access to internet, but I think I will be able to find a Starbucks and write you. Just in case I won't be able to keep in contact, here is my College Tour Plan:

MONDAY 16th:

I leave from LAX at 12.30 am and arrive in Seattle at 3.00 pm. We will probably go directly to our hotel, dump our things in our room and wander around the neighborhood, maybe eat out... Basically just walk around and do what we want for the rest of the day.

TUESDAY 17th

Tuesday my mom and I have the whole day to ourselves to visit Seattle and I can't wait. I've always imagined Seattle as a city full of life and lights and fun things to see and I hope it will live up to my expectations.

WEDNESDAY 18th

On wednesday my we will take a train from Seattle to Tacoma. Here we will visit a really sweet university called Puget Sound (UPS), take a tour and sit in on an information session, and eat in the old Tacoma. The photo you see above is Tacoma with it's volcano covered with snow behind it. Isn't it gorgeous? Underneath is a part of Puget Sound's campus!

THURSDAY 19th

A bit before noon we will rent a car and drive for about five hours to get to Walla Walla, Washington. We will probably arrive for dinner time, eat, and go to the hotel.

FIRDAY 20th

Whitman College is in Walla Walla that, as you can see, in a bit farther away from the city, but not too far. The college is really beautiful from what I've seen but unfortunately I haven't found the pics I had looked at on the website so here is the best one I found after five minutes of looking for the damn thing. Sorry it's not great, but I'll have better ones when I really go there.

SATURDAY 21st

On saturday we will drive to the Pasco airport (close to Walla Walla) and fly from there to Denver, which is about an hour away from Colorado Springs where we will be staying. 

Because there are no tours on the weekend we will just walk around and explore Colorado Springs which is supposed to be extremely beautiful. I can't wait to see Colorado! When we arrive on Saturday I think that we will just settle in the hotel and walk around, have dinner and back to the hotel.

SUNDAY 22d

We don't really have a plan for sunday. I think that we will just visit Colorado Springs because neither me or my mom have ever been to Colorado and we're really excited to see what all the fuss is about.

MONDAY 23d

On monday we will go and see the last of the three colleges called Colorado College (original, right? ahah). I really like the teaching program they have there, but I won't go on and on and tell you about it right now.

TUESDAY 24th

Tuesday is our last day on our college tour. We leave around noon from the Colorado Springs airport, land at the Salt Lake city and stay there for about an hour.

We then take a second plane from Salt Lake city back to LAX (the Los Angeles airport).

THE END!!!

Okay girls. I've had enough updating for today. I'll tell you more when I'm traveling (that is if I can find time to stop at a Starbucks)!

I hope to hear from you all! Please tell me what's up with you and your vacations! Go ahead and write me here or on facebook!

xoxo,

         - Becky.

KIIS FM

Heyya girls! How are you? I hope to hear from you soon, but in the mean while I am going to give you a little taste of what has been playing on the LA radio stations!!! Enjoy!

1) O.M.G. - Travie Mccoy / Bruno Mars
2) Billionaire - Travie Mccoy / Bruno Mars
3) California Gurls - Katy Perry Feat. Snoop Dogg
4) Cooler then Me - Mike Posner
5) Bulletproof - La Roux
6) Airplanes - B.o.b. / Haley Williams
7) Break your Heart - Taio Cruz / Ludacris
8) Magic - B.o.b. / Rivers Cuomo
9) Dynamite - Taio Cruz
10) Gettin' Over You - David Guetta / Fergie / Lmfao / Chris Willis
11) Your Love is my Drug - Kesha
12) Hey Daddy - Usher
13) I like it - Enrique Iglesias/lionel Ritchie/ Pitbull
14) My first kiss - 3OH!3 ft. Kesha
15) Impossible - Shontelle
16) Hey, Soul Sister - Train
17) Waka Waka - Shakira

I think you've got enough, right? Sorry I didn't include the links, but they didn't work for some reason when i posted them... Ok, I'm going to go and take a swim!
xoxo,
- Becky.

Wine Country

Hey girls, I hope you're all doing well and having a fun summer! :)
At the moment I'm on the little white porch at my uncle's house in Sonoma, California. It's his new house. It's relatively little, brown with white windows, fence and garage door and a dark red door. It's cute, and comfy, and homy, and reminds me of the north of California with it's particular smell of the salty beach air that clings to the wood, that only I can smell. But instead of seagulls, I hear little birds chirping away, and instead of the ocean I hear cars driving by, and instead of kids playing with buckets and sand, I hear kids talking as they wait for their parents to pick them up from summer school. Thank God we're not one of them, right? :)
We arrived here yesterday afternoon after over eight hours of driving from Los Angeles, and as soon as we got to my uncle's house I already noticed how different a life people live here in the little town of Sonoma compared to Turin.
1) Less people walking around town, mostly because it's so little that in my opinion there isn't much to see or not many nice stores to shop in.
2) At night, unless there is some sort of event like Farmer's Market that takes place in the center of town once a week, you don't see many kids out and about. Particularly, you don't see many teenagers drinking and smoking whatever they can get their hands on like they do in Italy.

I guess what really kept me in the house today, watching season 6 on Grey's Anatomy is that here in Sonoma, if you have no friends like I do because I don't live here, there isn't much to do. Of course I have my cousins here, but the problem is that although I love them, I can't really hang out with them. Eliah is fifteen years old, and so is my sister Ivy. Consequently, they obviously hang out together and go out with Eliah's friends from school. Then there is Jamie and Wyatt. They're twins, but they also are also younger then me, and are the same age as my brother Byan. That leaves me in stuck in the middle, and bored.
Later this evening got better when my uncle, his girlfriend, my older cousin Tucker and grandparents came to dinner. We all sat outside and had dinner, and talked... It felt already a bit more like my previous summers, when we would sit all together and eat, talk, drink and laugh.
Tomorrow I'm going to my uncle's restaurant in Sebastopol, a little town a bit outside Sonoma. In case I hadn't told you girl, my uncle is opening a new restaurant on the same street they're living on, but there is still a lot of work to be done before he can open it.
I have to log off because I'm going to "Top That" in a couple of minutes (a frozen yogurt place on they're same street". Hope you read this soon and tell me about your summer so far!
xoxo,
- Becky.

Two Sides of a Quarter

Hello, my name is Rebecca Regoli
- No, that introduction is too banal and used too much.
- Ciao, my name is Rebecca Regoli -
Well, it's slightly more original, but still boring and stiff.
Ok, how about I just skip the beginning and get straight to the point: my name is Rebecca Regoli and I'm a "Two Sider". No, no. Not a two-sided-lying-bitch. I'm a "Two Sider", as in a am one of many that are two sides of a quarter and not just one, but lets rewind and go back to the beginning first.
"What's up with the title of the blog?", one of you may ask.
Well, at the beginning I created this blog with the goal of having people reading what I had to say, but especially to have you readers post pics, and poems, and short stories, and personal experiences or what ever. I wanted to hear other peoples voices, but then I realized that if people wanted to share their stories they would simply create their own blog and write. The thought stopped me from posting anything new, until a couple of days ago I came up with the idea that I could use this blog as a sort of summer journal. Not the kind that begins with, "Dear Diary". I'm talking about something more on the lines of me telling my friends what's up with me and what I am doing during the summer, without us using ten thousand emails. I'm not sure if I explained myself very clearly... Ok, lets put it this way... Blog = all the emails I would send my friends during the summer put together. I think you got it now :)
Before I start to tell my friends and you readers about where I am and what I'm doing, I think I should briefly tell you who I am.
My name is Rebecca - you may have gotten that at the beginning of the post - and I'm 17 years and six months today. As I've written and explained numerous times in my life before today, my mom is american and my dad is italian. I was born in Turin, Italy, and I've lived there my whole life. My mom, being american and all, spoke to me in english since a was a little kid, and thanks to both my parents I can consider myself two sides of a quarter. I'm a two sider for many reasons, the most obvious ones are that I'm bilingual and that I've known two different cultures and life styles my whole life. I guess that a two sider could be describes as anyone who knows differently and has deeply experienced the world outside their country.
My friends are epitomes of the different cases of two siders. I shall change their names for privacy, but all that I'll talk about is true because I'm a two sider, not a two sided lying bitch (ok, ok, I'll admit that it wasn't funny, but I got my point across).
Macie is one of my best friends. She's 1.60 meters tall (5 feet, 6 inches), she has short, slightly red hair, green eyes and a beautiful smile. She has a very sweet and usually calm character - I say usually because if you dare try to bite her she might smack you in the face, hard - and loves to shop :) From my very short and bad description of her she may sound very two dimensional , but you couldn't be more wrong. She's 100% italian, but since last summer she perfectly understands where I'm coming from when the U.S. topic pops up in conversations. Last summer, she went to Cantonment, Florida as an exchange student until February. I really missed her, but at the same time I realized how big of an opportunity it was for both of us. On one side of the word, Macie was improving her english, going to school there, getting to know a new reality, included into a new family and made new friends in warm Florida; on the other side of the world I was living where a second Ice Age, but at the same time I got two know new people and created tighter bonds with people I already knew.
One of these people is Savannah. She's very similar to me in some ways, but also very different from me in other ways. Savannah is tall, skinny and blonde with huge brown eyes and a big smile always plastered on her face. She's also bilingual and is half german and half italian. This often allows us to understand each other well, because both of us has family living far away, both of us speak two languages fluently and both of us understand how tuff it can be to live in one italy and, at times, want to live in closer to our family. Unlike Macie and me, Savannah is almost 19 years old. We often go out on the weekend and go to pubs in the centre of town with friends, have fun and laugh a lot, especially when Savannah starts to laugh and closes one eye that makes us laugh even more.
Effie is another good friend of mine. She's another kind of two sider because although she's italian, she speaks english really well and has been going to school in New Castle, England, for the past three years. When she speaks english she has a real cute english accent that always makes me smile. She's about as tall as Macie, blonde with brown-gold eyes and she too has a very cute smile and a funny laugh. She pays the guitar and she loves to sing Artic Monkeys songs, a english group she loves and she's rubbed them off on me making me really enjoy listening to them.
Effie, Savannah and Macie are all in my class and on fridays we usually go to a coffee shop next to my house on fridays before school to get a coffee and eat a roll, play UNO or study together before walking to school.
We're all very different from each other bur in one way or another we're all two siders and we call each other the Bezzies, which is how they say best friends in New Castle.
We have another good friend whose name is Cindy. She doesn't go to school with us but has been good friends with Effie for several years and her mom used to be my preschool teacher. She's shorter then Savannah and me and is a brunette with curly hair and brown eyes. She's very friendly and speaks good english. In my opinion she's a very different kind of two sider, but still is one thanks to her exposure to the english culture because her mom has been exposed to it due to her job and has shared her knowledge with her daughter.
One last good friend of mine is Emma. She's very tall, a brunette with a short hair, brown eyes and a big cheeks when she smiles. She's extremely friendly and social and we've been good friends for about four years and we often think alike and say very similar things. She too is a too is a two sider and speaks fluent english and italian like I do. Her parents are both italian, but she's had english speaking babysitters her whole life and has learned to speak it extremely well.

(from the left: savannah, me, george, maria and macie)


(on the left is Emma and on the right is me)


(from the left: Savannah, Cindy, Effie).


(from the left: Me, Savannah, Cindy).

Like I've told you before I will be writing my friends to tell them about my summer and hopefully they will be telling me about theirs, but you're warmly welcome to share your opinions and personal summer experiences.
Have a good summer!

xoxo,
- Becky.