Language School

I attended language school for the month of July at Cultura Italiana (http://www.culturaitaliana.it/). It is located in the very center of town, very close to the two leaning towers and convenient enough that I could commute by Vespa every day (and then zoom home after with Keiko on the back during the first two weeks of classes). I enjoyed the course - two hours of grammar and two hours of conversation every morning – though it moved along more slowly than I hoped, and I didn’t study as hard as I should have, though I did attempt to speak at least a couple of hours of Italian daily outside of school. But it covered enough material for me to build upon what I know, and the instructors there are very nice. I had attended a class there for two weeks when I was nine months pregnant, and was happy to have one or two favorite teachers again (they circulate instructors which is a positive and negative feature). Anyway, they take photos of the class every week so you can fondly remember your teacher and classmates – getting to know the other students was actually the highlight of the course. Being in a room together and feeling humiliated in attempting to express oneself in another language makes for some fast, intense bonding and we socialized outside of school as well. Here are some photos of a couple of dinners we had at our apartment – one with Japanese students, Yoshi, Ai and Chika, while Keiko was here (photo forthcoming), and another a few weeks into class. We also met at a park for a picnic where Julia, who is a chef, cooked some nice dishes (and carted it all over to the park) and a few nights ago, we met at a restaurant to bid farewell to a few outgoing posse members.










How often does one get tossed into the air by a rugby player named Scott? Ray had a great time at the picnic - lots of attention. Yoshi, always the most popular-guy-at-the-party, learned how to juggle in just a couple of hours.

It was fun to have Father Michele in class with us. He is a retired Franciscan priest from France who had Andrea teach him how to play Italian cards (http://www.virtualitalia.com/sports/cards/cards.shtml) and was quite the class clown.
Chika had her mother send this nice gift from Japan after I told her how much I loooove osembe!