Third week

The third week is over and amidst our seemingly endless frustration with various mechanics of learning this language one thing remains constant: we are learning, “piano piano”, step-by-step.

The week began with our group of three growing to seven as four new students joined our ranks: a journalist from China, a retired biochemist from Norway and two Delta flight attendants, all four of whom seem to grasp the language quite well. While a small class size has obvious advantages, the fact that these four “nuovi studenti” possess a real competence will be doubly good for us since they will help reinforce our fledgling oral skills. Steve remains the sole male in the group.

Otherwise the week has remained fairly quiet, as our routine firmly takes hold here. We have a bus schedule to meet most days, of course, and we now have a favorite caffe, near the school, where we often go for caffe or mid-afternoon panini (sandwiches) or late afternoon aperitivi: the Bar Quattro Cantoni.

Thursday we finished our homework at school before heading home to drop off our things and then grabbed the next bus back into town where we remained through early evening for a quick bite after some shopping. We ate a couple of slices of pizza at Cavallino Bianco and urge everyone to STAY AWAY. The food is tasteless and without any redeeming value whatsoever while the wine is worse than that served aboard Alitalia. Interestingly, they had a shelf full of Brunello from Fattoria dei Barbi, of various vintages, the only one of which I could see was I think 1979 (the other labels were pretty much faded form being exposed to the lights for so many years I presume), and the bottles had apparently been sitting there for years since one was nearly evaporated and the others were in various stages of evaporation. Very, and ncredibly stupid.

But to counter the absolutely mediocre meal (and I hesitate to even use that word to describe the alleged food we had just eaten) we had our first gelato, just across the street and near one of the entrances to the Piazza del Campo, before heading for the bus stop to go home. I trust it won’t be our last. (HEHEHEHEHEHEHEHEHEHEHEH!)

The weather continues to hint at spring, with sun out more than not and the temperature hovering around 9-10 C.

Thursday we awoke to no hot water and of course no heat. We walked across the courtyard and informed Alva who immediately took care of the problem. (The pilot light had gone out probably when we lost power the afternoon before and we never realized it until the morning after since we didn’t need hot water or heat for that matter during the evening.)

Andrea Piergallini, the owner called us Wednesday evening in response to an email we sent about arranging a meeting to see the new apartments recently finished in the complex – part of an article I’m writing on long-term stays in Siena. We met with Andrea at about 4 pm on Thursday afternoon at Le Meridiane and he gave us a tour of the recently completed 11 new units as well as the underground parking garage (huge) and the 9 apartments presently under construction, and the new pool (which is scheduled to be open by early summer.

The third week of school ended with a general recapitulation of the previous two weeks or so of work – and a two-hour test (not graded thank the gods). After class we checked emails, updated the blog (of course), did laundry. The plan is to take the car on Saturday and do some exploring outside the city – probably to Montepulciano (one of our favorite places in this area) and perhaps to Cortona or someplace we hadn’t planned to go.