Italian Class

So I went for two weeks to an advanced Italian class.  The classes where 4 hours a day from 9 to 1.  The first two hours were grammar and the following two were conversation.  I learned a lot, lots of phrases and words that were very new to me, and mostly I learned what my weakness are and what I need to continue to improve on.  We were a really small group, sometimes 5 sometimes just 3.  So it was very personalized and we got to talk and make all sorts of mistakes to later on be corrected on.  The two students I mostly spent all my time with were a Professor at a school in Princeton, highly educated in literature, German and history in general.  The other student was a 21 year old from Oxford, studying French and Italian and wanting to do PhD studies in Medieval Literature... Both played various (more than 3) musical instruments.... I felt a little small!!!

Grammar time was probably the hardest for me, since I don't know any rules or tenses in any language, not Spanish, not English and least of all Italian....  but I worked my way through it.  Conversation was very entertaining, we spoke about many things, we read and we had a final project which was to choose one topic related to Italy and speak for 15 min. or more.  The professor chose "I Promessi Sposi" by Manzoni, English title is "The Betrothed", so I was able to learn a lot from it, without even reading it.  It is a book that is read by all Italians in school and is considered to be one of the most important.  The Oxford student spoke of the Palio in Sienna, or the Horse race they have in the Piazza at Siena and I spoke about the huge flood they had in Florence the 4th of Nov, 1966.  If you have been in Florence you may have noticed some plaques on the walls, the plaques say that the water reached this point, some points being more than 5 mt. from the floor, for those of you that have not been in Florence yet, when you come..... keep your eyes open!

Anyway, here are two pictures, the one in the top is the one of the classroom and the one on the bottom is from the view of the window.