First Week at the University

Today is an amazingly beautiful day--one of those fall days when the sky is such an exuberant blue that the green trees--barely tinged with orange--and the yellow and white buildings stand out sharply against it.   it's the first really "cool" day, when a jacket is actually needed.  After the humid haze of summer, this time of year always seems so clear and bright. 

I have finished the first week of class at the University of Florence.  I think I will like it. We are learning very practical, useful sorts of words in class.  Not being the slowest, like in the last school, is really helping; I think I am speaking better already because I am not so afraid of being wrong. 

It's fun to meet such a wide variety of people, too.  I've spent quite a lot of time talking with Cheryl, who is from Oregon, and her French husband, Matthieu.  Yesterday, Cheryl and I walked around Centro together while we waited for the bookstore to reopen after lunch so we could buy our workbooks for class. 

Today, I talked with a group of Japanese girls and a Nigerian woman during our break from class.  Tomako, one of the Japanese girls, taught me that in Japan, holding up the thumb is a gesture meaning "man", and the pinkie finger means "woman."  I don't really know where that came from, or why she wanted me to know that, but there we are. 

Now, I think I will take a bus back to San Marco or somewhere, and do some picture-taking.  It's the perfect day for it, and I figure I ought to get my looking-like-a-dorky-tourist in before I've been here long enough that I want to try to blend in as a local. 

Piazza Savonarola

Well, here I am in Piazza Savonarola again.  I just got out of my first full day of class.  The first half-- well, a little more than half--is grammar.  Today, we did present-tense conjugation.  So, it's a little beneath my level, but I don't know how quickly we'll go.  It was nice to be one of the better ones in the class, however, instead of the slowest, as I was in the last school, since I'd come in a week into the course.  I just want to learn as much as I can, and I hope we don't go over what I've already learned for too long.

I spent some time talking with Cheryl, and American, and her French husband, and a Japanese girl named Shiho (that's probably not how it's spelled, but that's how she pronounced it).  There are quite a few Japanese students. 

The second part was a lecture on Etruscan art.  I was surprised at how much of it I could understand, but the professor was doing his best to speak slowly and clearly, and not use too many big words. There are lectures on different cultural topics everyday.  Many of the elementary-level students don't stay, but I think I will.  The only thing I'm not sure I like is that there isn't a part of the schedule specifically for conversation.  It's certainly less stressful without that, but that's where I felt the most behind.  Oh well, I guess I'll get quite a bit of that at church.

I guess I'll head back to Scandicci now; I think I'm getting Lauren's cold, and I just want to take a nap.