28 February 2005 14th June 2005 Parma Dear Kathleen, Hello! How are you? ( or I'm fine, and you?I hope that you fell like me) My first name is Laura and my surname is Schiavo. I'm thirteen years old and I'm a student. I live in a beautiful large house with my parents on the outskirts of Parma, a pretty Italian city in Emilia-Romagna between Piacenza e Reggio-Emilia. I'm an only child. . Dad is called Angelo and he's forty-four years old. He's the director of a pharmacological firm in Firenze and that's why he's never at home: his work ties him down every day. Mum's name is Luana and she's…oh, I can't say her age because she could kill me….never say the age of a woman…that is what is being said! A few years ago, she worked at the Power of attorney; then she has stopped to work on medicals grounds and now she's an housewife. I'm quite a bit plump.. or at least I'm like this in my opinion ,but my friends say that I'm really thin (Where I don't know)! I'm dark-haired, fair-skinner and I've got brown eyes as Whitesnow. I'm very ambitious, jealous, lovely, sweet, kind, daydremer, nice and… a big, big, big swot! My house has four floors, including the basement recreation room and the garage- cellar. Outside ,there's a green garden covered by hedges and flowers ( naturally in the spring!). On the first floor of the house, there are a kitchen ( furnished with blue furniture: my parents have a really strange taste!), a bathroom and a dining-room; then, upstairs they follow my room, that of Mum and Dad and another loo. At the end, there's a big attic with the guest room. When I'm growing I'm going to move there and I'm going to prepare a little loft for me. How I'm dreaming that moment! I go to “Don Cavalli Junior High School” in the centre of Parma. It's not too far from my home, but every morning I must put up with a trip which always goes on twenty or twenty-five minutes and it fells to be everlasting! Apart from that, I'm lucky because I can sleep again a little more! In Italy, we start Junior school when we're 11 or 12 years old. We could leave the school on sixteen years old until last year but now, with the new Moratti's reform, the Minister of Education, we must remain on the desks beyond eighteen years old. We go to school from Monday to Saturday. In our Institute lessons starts at eight o'clock and finishes at half past one. During the morning we normally have a break at five to eleven and we return again to study ten minutes later. We have a lot of subjects in a week: Italian, Maths, English, French, Art, Music, Religion, Technique, Science, Gym… the subjects which I prefer are Italian and Art of course: Oh, I love painting and drawing and I like very much reading and writing in the same mode ( or alike ) but I think it's right to privilege this last passion. I'm going to secondary school with an emphasis on humanities. The most prestigious in Parma is Romagnosi School. I have already enrolled mysel Continua »