It’s been a while since my last post, which means that the past few weeks have been incredibly busy. A lot has happened so I'm going to try and update you all as much as possible. As I write this post I am on my way to Carnevale in Venice for the weekend.
My first week in Rome seems so far away but it was really only five weeks ago. It's funny how quickly Rome has come to feel like home and how quickly I have come to feel like a Roman. The first thing in becoming a Roman 101 was learning the public transportation system. I knew that I could walk to school but remembering what happened two days earlier I decided to take the metro. The stop was only one block from my house and then about three blocks from my Italian school, so this was the safe bet on the first day.
It worked pretty well to get, but after the class I felt adventurous and wanted to figure out how to walk home. It turned out that it was only really one street to get home. I took it straight it from Italiaidea back to my house and it only a ten minute walk. It was amazing that it was so simple, but we got so lost a few days before.
Needless to say I have the most envious commute. Most people have to leave their house by 9:00, I'm usually not getting up till then. It’s been five weeks and I still haven't been able to figure out if the 117 subscribes to any type of schedule. Some days it shows up at 9:43, other days 9:57, or sometimes not at all. It's a very interesting thing; the bus is half the size of the regular buses, that should have been the first indicator that it couldn't be taken seriously. Overall it’s not that bad because if it’s late or doesn't show up (which has happened), it's only a ten-minute walk.
Italian class has been interesting; we finished our first course in the first week of February. It’s amazing that we already took 60 hours, over a semester worth of class in just four weeks, three hours a day. It started out pretty easy but definitely got a lot more difficult as it went on. The class was only 10 people, all Loyola students and focused on conversational skills. The first class was an introduction and now we are in the second level. Instead of focusing on grammar and things of that nature, it focuses on conversational proficiency. They do this so we can actually use the language and get by while we’re here. Overall the first course was helpful and not too bad, a quarter of the way in and one class down. Our second Italian class started last week and we already have a midterm coming up in a few days.
It’s amazing how confident I've become in speaking. Even if I don’t know how to say what I want to or properly structure it, I can find ways around it and still get my point across. Our new teacher doesn’t care if we talk while doing work but it has to be in Italian. So, the other day Evan and I had a whole conversation about our travel plans for Sicily in April and fully understood each other. We were thoroughly impressed with ourselves since only a month ago we were nervous saying hello to someone in Italian.
My three other classes are History of the Papacy and Catholicism, Art and Architecture of Ancient Rome and US/ British Literature about Italy. For the most part they are interesting classes but three to three and a half hours is a lot to take. I love taking three-hour business classes at Loyola, but they usually involve activities and are more interesting to me. So three hours of lecture is tough. The one upside is site visits. Its like we’ve gone back to elementary school, site visits are the grown up version of a field trip. Overall, classes aren’t that bad and its nice having two afternoons off a week.
No comments:
Post a Comment