Day Eight.

Hello again.

Today was pretty normal.

We woke up and went to class at 9 again and watched a movie called Don Camillo which was essentially about a conflict between the Communist mayor and Catholic Democrat priest of a northern Italian town. After WWII, Italy abolished its monarchy and started a republic. The two parties vying for power were the Communists (left-wing) and Catholic Democrats (right-wing). The Democrats eventually won but some towns elected Communist administrators in heavily-influenced areas. So it was about the rivalry between the mayor and the priest and was pretty funny. In the end they were friends at heart and only wanted to be tied rather than to destroy the other.

After the movie we went to lunch again and I had plain pasta, bread and a banana this time so my stomach wouldn't feel so bad. It worked pretty well but walking around in general makes it angry. Then I went to Akash to buy a water and a croissant and get change from the voucher. Then it was nap time until 2:30 when we had Italian.

In Italian we started out going over the verbs he introduced to us yesterday (esere [to be] and avere [to have]). But then he started to go into gender agreement for adjectives and nouns and totally confused everyone. He just doesn't teach in a systematic way. He goes off on tangents that really aren't useful at the time. Teach us some verbs and then teach us some adjectives and THEN teach us the agreement...then we'll be able to make sentences. Why is that so hard...?

After class I went to the grocery store for some travel-friendly foods (Rome tomorrow!) and there was more napping after I read for a little while.

Around 7 we were headed out the door for dinner when Jordan realized our train tickets to Rome were actually booked for tonight so we ran to the travel agency and managed to get them changed to tomorrow without paying anything extra. THANK GOD she noticed and everything worked out. We catch a train around 8:30 tomorrow evening! Then we went over to Akash and had dinner. I had tea and bread and a little bit of a burger. I feel ok but definitely still off. Actually, as I say that, I feel worse. Joy.

So tomorrow we have something at 9 for our Seminar class (we're taking a Seminar along with Italian that sort of introduces Italian culture and history to us as a companion to learning the language--we have it Mondays and Thursdays sometimes from 9-12 and sometimes in the afternoon in conjunction with Italina) but I don't know what. Then we have Italian in the afternoon and then we'll catch a train at 8:30! I might make a short post while in Rome (I'll have my iTouch) and I'll post a longer post after class Monday morning (we get back to Alba about 20 minutes before class starts). Wish me luck!