One week down!

Hello everyone! First let me start by a quick vent/apology. I have no control over the design of this blog. I cannot move anything around, and apparently I can't change a lot of the settings, I can't indent paragraphs, and there is no good way to upload photos without making the entire think look like a mess! As a journalism major, this is driving me insane. Everything on the blog looks terrible design-wise, but there is nothing I can do.

Ok, onto Italian things. I thought I would share about my classes here because the structure is very different from anything I've ever experienced. I attend Babilonia, which is a language institute. We have students from all over the world who come to study Italian very intensively, usually only for a few weeks. In fact, Clay (the other Auburn student) and I are the only ones here for such a long time. The classes are small. This week, there have been about 20 students at the school, but a group of 11 students from George Mason University leave tomorrow, as will a few other students, so there will only be 6 of us next week.

I am studying language, so I do four hours of Italian language every day (as does everyone else). Later in the semester, Clay and I will begin a culture class (which technically began at our arrival, but we will receive formal lectures later). We spend two hours a day on grammar and another two hours on conversation. The grammar portion of the day is more formalized. We do homework (only one worksheet a day), and they are stricter about pronounciation and sentence structure. During the conversation portion, it is more informal, with the goal being to simply speak in Italian and improve our vocabulary. I enjoy the conversation portion more. Right now, most of the grammar concepts are review for me as I was placed in the beginner class (I've already taken one semester back home of Italian).

At the end of every week, you change teachers and classes. If you progressed enough, you move up, if not, you stay where you are. The good thing about changing teachers is you get to meet all the teachers, and if you decide you don't like one, you're only stuck with them for a week (although Clay and I are here for so long, we will have all of them probably several times). This week I had Anita and Simona, who were both very very nice, and class was fun.
We usually have class from 9:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. with a 20 minute break between classes. However, if there are less than three students in a class, you don't go for the whole four hours. If there are two students, you do three hours, and if there is only one student, you only do two hours. This week there were three students in my class, and there will three next week as well, so I will go the full four hours.

The classes are taught all in Italian. When I don't understand something or don't know the meaning of a word, I have to ask in Italian, and then the teacher will see if another student understands. If another knows what is going on, or the definition of the word, whatever the case may be, he/she must try to explain it in Italian. This can be incredibly funny/frustrating at my level when I don't know much vocabulary to help explain anything! But it's a good way to get better at it.

I hope that explains the classes and the school a little bit. One interesting thing is that we are some of the youngest students. All the other students are older. They came here on their vacations from their jobs to learn Italian. I told my mom that she could have come over and learned with me! (There is in fact an American family of three here right now, but they leave tomorrow as well).

I have officially finished my first week here, which feels good. I know that time will go faster the longer I'm here, although this week did seem to take awhile, and there were moments when I wondered what on earth I was doing here.
I think I've decided to end each week by retelling any funny misunderstandings I had with the language (hopefully I have some each week, but I'm sure I will). I have three for this week:

1. At a restaurant on Wednesday, I was ready to ask for the bill (you have to ask here or else they just assume you want to hang out for another two hours like the Italians do). I was very proud of myself because I knew the verbs and the sentence structure. So when the waiter walked by I asked if we could have "il contorno." He looked at me as if I was crazy before he caught on, and he said "il conto?". Hmm. Si, Si. Il conto. The difference? Il contorno is a side dish, and il conto is a bill. I had just asked for a side dish at the end of our meal.

2. In class earlier this week we were reading a sentence that had the phrase "un bagno in piscina." I knew all the words - bagno is bath and piscina is pool. But that made no sense to me. Why would you take a bath in a pool? So I asked Simona, who confirmed that the sentence in fact meant To take a bath in a pool. I looked dumbfounded, and kept repeating the phrase. Finally, I did some motions for a bath, like scrubbing myself, and Simona laughed, and said no. Apparently the phrase doesn't mean you literally take a bath in the pool. It means more like a dip or swim. Who knew.

3. And my favorite one (which my family will understand why) involved a homework assignment. The sentence said "We know 'poche persone' in Florence." Again, I knew the meanings of the words. Poche is like poco, which is little. Persone is plural for people. I literally translated it to mean We know little people in Florence. So I thought by little people, the sentence was referring to midgets. It took me about five minutes of dictionary flipping before I realized that it meant a few. We know few (or a little in amount) people. Not midgets, unfornutately, as that would have been more entertaining.

That is all for now. I realize this is a very long blog, but it'll have to last you through the weekend. We're going on a trip to a nearby active volcano, so I should have lots to share in Monday's post.