Wait, you mean I have to take classes here?

(I wrote this Friday but forgot to post it!)

Today we began our Italian classes and mine went well, although it was two and a half hours long which I’ll have to get used to since classes here (and I’m assuming other countries in Europe) are much longer than in the U.S.  The class is small, about 15 of us I would say, and our teacher is really nice and very patient.  She speaks only in Italian unless we don’t understand something or need help with meanings, which is intimidating and difficult but I know that it will be better for me in the end.   She also said at the end of class that her objective is to teach us modern, conversational language; essentially she wants to teach us words and phrases that we can actually use in daily life which is really cool.  Also, we had a little field trip in the middle of class!  She gave us directions in Italian and we had to find our way to La chiesa di San Maurizio (the Church of San Maurizio) and then answer some questions about it.  Here’s a picture of the inside, it was beautiful! 

The field trip was cool and really struck me because when we stepped out of class/the building it felt like I was in a movie…for so long I was used to walking out onto the regular Penn State campus after Italian class and when we had Italian today, I think I forgot where I was momentarily so when I realized that I was in Italy, it didn’t seem real!  It was pretty cool how we could learn Italian and then practice it immediately.  I hope this all makes sense, it’s hard to explain!

After Italian class, my roommates and I went to lunch and had fabulous mozzarella panini’s at a cute place near our school.  Then we walked around the area for an hour and a half to explore the area; it was funny how exciting we found grocery stores to be!  You can really tell what Italians value by walking into a grocery store…aisles of wine, cheese, bread, and pasta are standard which is awesome.  Half of my roommates went grocery shopping yesterday and I think the rest of us will go tomorrow or Sunday.  Afterwards the 3 girls I was with had to get their permit to stay like I did yesterday so I took the metro back to our apartment.  Yes, first time using the metro by myself!  I considered it a milestone :)

One thing that will never get old here is hearing the church bells from my apartment, they’re beautiful and it’s so sweet to hear them throughout the day. 

Today we noticed 2 more paradoxes/inconsistencies about the Italian way of life haha one is that although lines seem to be an artifact of the past for Italians and they seem to prefer chaos to order, when you take the escalator after getting off the metro, you stand on the right side of it and let people walk past you on the left.  I guess we don’t do this in the U.S. because walking up escalators is frowned upon? Haha it’s just amusing to see such an orderly process take place in a typically unorganized culture.  The other funny thing is that although a lot of emphasis is placed on eating together and enjoying in the experience of eating, many Italians eat on the go particularly for lunch.  You’ll see many people eating a Panini or panzerotto (like a calzone) standing up or walking around.  It’s just interesting because you’d think that you’d see a lot more of that in New York and big American cities because they are so much more fast paced and not as focused on eating but I don’t recall seeing as many people eating on the go there as I do here.

Oh when we were walking around today we saw the FUNNIEST thing.  A cop car went by us with its lights flashing and sirens buzzing and we look up and see that the policeman in the passenger’s seat was waving a paddle out the window!   We guessed it was another way to alert people that they were coming but it looked so silly, a cop waving a paddle out of a window when they already have sirens and and lights going – like who is the paddle for?? The deaf? Isn’t that the reason they have the flashing lights? Hahaha wish we had our cameras out so we could have snapped a picture!

Last night we had fun!  We tried the pizza place down the street from us for dinner and it was delicious.  We got take out for the pizza and while we were waiting for it outside, these 2 really skinny, tall, stylish guys walked by and were speaking English so naturally we said something and started talking to them.  One of my roommates saw that they had small portfolio-looking things in their hands with “Model” and then numbers written on the front so she asked them ‘are you guys models?!’ And they, embarrassingly, said they were!  It sounded like they were from the U.K. and they said they were in Milan for the weekend for a model casting!  One of my roommates said that the men’s fashion week is next week or coming up soon so that’s probably what they were here for.  It was so cool meeting actual models.  After dinner we went home and Meredith, one of my roommates, and I went to a bar called Frida down the street from our apartment.  We met some Italian guys, surprise surprise (Mom- it’s ok I didn’t fall madly in love with any of them haha) and we had so much fun talking to them.  I got to practice and use my Italian as well which was really cool; it’s in these situations when you really learn the language, especially the everyday use of it.  Something that was funny too was that one of them guessed I was from PA when he realized we were from the States!  I didn’t think people thought Pennsylvania when they saw me haha but maybe they do?  Who knows!

One more thing - I’ve noticed that as I learn more and more Italian, I lose more and more English!  I feel like my grammar and sentence structure has changed because my brain is so overloaded with not only another language but another way of using English, as hearing Italians speak English has thrown off how I use it.  It’s weird, I didn’t expect being surrounded by another language or surrounded by another form of English would really affect my writing and speaking of English but it did!