Our seventh week ended with a return to inclement weather. It began with high temps and sun but by Friday this had changed back to cold and clouds with rain predicted for Saturday.
We picked up two new students this week, a German woman married to an American soldier stationed in Germany and a Swiss woman, both of whom have a really good grasp of the language. Our group was also combined with another class (a Swedish couple and a Swiss girl) as the school continues to shift teachers and students around – probably a consequence of the larger number of students arriving every week as we move into the high season. Anyway, it’s a real pleasure meeting new people, exchanging ideas and experiences while all of us attempt to improve our Italian language skills.
Anyway, I’ll save any further comments about the program until our final observations at the end of next week.
By and large our week was a quiet one – we attended several extracurricular activities beginning with a session late Tuesday afternoon where we joined a lecture and sing-a-long of contemporary Italian pop music. (One of the two songs we heard and subsequently tried to sing as a group, was performed by a man whose voice was a dead ringer for Bob Dylan’s.) It was fun although the lecture seemed a bit long to us and we would have preferred more music, singing and song study.
On Thursday we stayed in town after school ate a pizza on the Campo, watched people for a while and then went to the Internet Train to do some emailing and web surfing. About 5 in the afternoon we headed back to school for another after school program; this time it was about the unique nature of the very distinct dialect found in Naples. The program, which was the first of two parts,, focused on a history of the local dialect and then a brief examination of how that dialect made it’s way into contemporary film and poetry.
Friday night we joined a large group of students for “Happy Wine” night at the Enoteca Italiana located in the fortezza in Siena. Most of the students were in attendance and of course scads of Italians – everyone had a great time and we finally got home about 11 pm.
Saturday proved rainy and cold but we grabbed the 9:23 bus into town for our coffee and morning dolce before meeting another group of students for a tour of the museum in the Palazzo Pubblico which is the administrative and historical center of the city (it is located at the “bottom” of the Piazza del Campo). There was quite a group (again) probably a consequence of not much else going on with the lousy weather. A couple of students, however, took the opportunity to head to Verona for the one day that Vinitaly is open to public. Vinitaly is THE wine and food product event of the year in Italy (and indeed for much of the rest of the world) and our hope someday is to also make the connection there as well. In the meantime we had to settle for being in Siena, hearing stories of ancient times and looking at paintings which have been in place for centuries working their magic. We had a great time.
Afterwards we went out to lunch with our friends Kris and Floyd (they live in Coin, Spain); Kris is also in language school but Floyd wisely chose to keep his distance and appreciate being in Siena without the pressures of the classroom. Anyway we had lunch in what has become rather typical for us – and that is about three hours worth of food, wine and conversation. They dropped us off at home and we opted to stay in for the duration of the deluge or Sunday morning whichever comes first.
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