School begins

First day of school began on the heels of our very first ever snow in Tuscany. We woke up a bit after 6 AM since we had an early call for class, and after coffee and a light breakfast headed to the bus stop to catch the No. 1 bus into the city’s centro storico. Usually school begins at 9 but since this was the beginning of a new session, new students had to arrive by 8 in order to get oriented and of course to deepen our general confusion.

After taking our placement tests we found ourselves with a lively group who had been together for at least three weeks, so we jumped in apparently at week four.

Anyway, the class is made up of three Japanese women, two Australian girls, one Swiss woman and a young Dutch woman whose last name is "VandenBurg", and of course Sue and I. Our instructor for most of the day’s lessons is Egina (named, she says, after the small island directly across from the Greek city of Athens) and for our one-hour afternoon session we have Serena. One nice surprise came when we saw one of our two great instructors from 1999, Chicca, married now with a little “bambino”. She still has one of the prettiest smiles you’ve ever seen, and a personality to match. But then one of the first things you might notice about nearly all of the instructors here is just how friendly, genuinely friendly people they seem to be – and it must take an enormous amount of patience to do this kind of work for sure.

Anyway, the two Australians and two of the Japanese finish this week and, presumably, next week, we will a new group of students who have been assigned to our “level”.

Like most other language schools in Italy Dante Alighieri school (“scuola”) uses the immersion technique, wherein the only language spoken, even for beginners, is Italian. And since there is very little deviation from this approach one must focus intensely on what is going on in class all the time. Aside from the first day’s placement exam there are no tests and no grades. One just has to keep up since you are after all in Italy and cannot escape the language even if you were so inclined.

After an intense and head-empting first day we headed back to the bus stop after a stop at the UPIM department store and grocery to pick up a few additional items for the apartment and for dinner (like “carciofi alla romana”, artichokes in the Roman style). One positive note: they ran out of textbooks so no homework for us this evening.

Ciao for now.