Scuola Contardo Ferrini

I went to this school when I was in Rome, Italy long time ago. I was 6 when I joined my friends at the elementary school; we were all in the 1^st grade.

I remember that I used to hate or felt really scared of the surroundings, as I was new to the Caucasian world, and all my friends were Italians, speaking Italian! It took me about two years to feel the sense of being an Italian kid and then I mastered the language so well, that I screwed up my Indonesian a lot at home nor when there are occasions with the Indonesian embassy people.

There were a lot of good times and lots of bad times all at the same time. I couldn’t recall all of it, and I’m not planning to mention it here one by one, it’s just way too embarrassing.

The school system in Italy is very interesting. The teachers and the 1^st grade students stick together until the 5^th grade and then by 6^th grade, kids are already in Junior High, and that’s when we say goodbye to our teachers and to each other. Imagine the family closeness we’ve had for the past 5 years together!! We had wars, fights, cries, laughter and loads of fun… All 19 of us. Of course, we’ve had some friends coming and going, but from 3^rd grade, we remained the same until the end.

Our Teachers were Olga Pelle and Domenico Costantini. Maestra taught us Language, Social, and anything that I recalled was fun. Then Maestro taught us different kinds of Math and I sometimes loathed the subject, especially when he’d ask us to take out the ‘quadernini’, which is the small book, coz then it meant we had to do some problem solving, and I hated that so … much! But other than that, the teachers were awesome, and I miss them a lot. I wonder where they are right now…

These are the names of my friends that left earlier than most of us:

-Grazia (left when we went to 2^nd grade)

-Sharon (left when we went to 3^rd grade)

-Carlo Maria Ricci (left somewhere in the 3^rd grade)

-Alessio Tamagnini (left when we were going to 3^rd grade)

-Alessandro Caramante (left when we went to 4^th grade)

This guy here joined us somewhere in between:

-Fabrizio Infortuna (twin-brother of Marco, joined us in the 3^rd grade)

And these guys are my friends from 1^st to 5^th grade:

-Francesca Benedetti

-Laura Santopietro

-Romina Romano

-Manuela Santolamazza

-Agnese Nothomb

-Giulia Gironi

-Giulia Minetti (we call her ‘Giulietta coz’ she’s the tiniest)

-Valentina Cucurnia

-Alessandro Speciale

-Daniele Luci

-Daniele D’Elia

-Marco Infortuna

-Gennaro Caramante

-Valerio Ercolino

-Alessio Santolamazza

-Alessia Vaccari

And my dearest friend of all, sweet boy that he was, and will never forget him, Michele Brasca, who died sometimes in his early 20’s and I was and still is, very deeply saddened by his sudden death.

I feel very lucky to have known each and every one of them. They might not remember me well now that it’s been like 12 year-ish (met them again when we were 15), but my memories will stay in my heart till I die.

If they are reading this blog, I just want to say “Ragazzi, siete sempre I miei carissimi amici miei, ti voglio bene e non ti scordero mai. Siamo sempre una grande famiglia.”