Mercoledi 21.01.09

My second day of Italian class! It certainly is a crash course: 4 hours per day with only a 20 min lunch break. My teacher, bella donna di Roma, is awesome! Not only does she keep us on our toes with rapidfire material, she's also witty and fun to joke around with. Both facilitate boredom prevention.

We covered the most important verbs: to have (avere) and to be (essere). Just like in English, you use them to tell the time, tell how you are feeling, tell the weather, tell what you own, tell how old you are, etc. Then we moved on to ALL the OTHER verbs. There are three classes: verbs that end in "are", verbs that end in "ere", and verbs that end in "ire". Again, it was easy to pick up because of how similar it is to French (francese) but even better because there are less rules of conjugation. Splendido!

The course is not as structured as those in the U.S. She has a few goals to accomplish, but we cover lots of vocab and phrases when they come up in conversation. We spent the last hour of class discussing stereotypes (stereotipo) of each nationality. It was quite amusing since the class is made up of Americans, Canadians, Dutch, Germans, Slovaks, and Australians. It was a good way to practice putting sentences together and using descriptive adjectives.

After class, I spent hours in the computer lab trying to figure out how to fix my laptop and updating my blog. BTW, laptop is fixed but don't know how I did it...just pushed a lot of buttons really. Then (nobody freak out!) I walked to the metro and took it to a discoteca to meet the rest of my friends who were coming from the dorm. So yes, my first time ever on the Milano metro was a solo flight but I survived and get this, didn't get lost. In fact, I took it to a stop that was even closer than the ones my friends had chosen and knew the way to the discoteca better than they did.

We were attending another aperitivo sponsored by the International Student Group (these kids really know how to show foreigners a good time). The dance club was on the edge of a beautiful park with a huge outdoor patio, a heated deck, and a fabulous interior complete with dance floor and three bars. I had a great time meeting more people from all over the world and then dancing to american disco music! That's apparently what they play all the time...not sure why, but it's sure fun to dance to because it gets everyone moving without being selfconscious, kind of like what you would experience at a big american wedding.

Took cabs home and was in bed by 1:30 so we could be in class at 10am!

Giovedi 22.01.09

Class today covered irregular verb conjugation, physical descriptions like hair/eye color, building/room descriptions, and feminine v. masculine words. We completed exercises in our workbook for the first time which added repetition to our practice and helped a great deal.

Immediately following class, those of us who had signed up for the Fashion District Tour met in the lobby and departed via tram for the city center. It was a perfect day for strolling through La Piazza di Duomo , La Galleria, and down Via Monte Napoleone. We learned that Armani had his start working in the biggest Milano department store and then once discovered, built his atelier and shop just down the street. It's the biggest Armani store in the world and we browsed the items (actually not very impressive...) and then ogled all the other windows as we walked down the shop-lined streets. We saw every designer possible and some of them even have two stores within a block from one another! Hilary, Maricor, and I lost the tour group however, when we decided to try on a few dresses in a store called Mari. The most beautiful things and all on sale (saldi)!! We returned home about 4 hours after we would have if we had stayed with the group...