Il primo giorno della scuola...!

Yikes! It feels like a very long time since I've had a first day of school! Jill and I are riding with Dad into Florence to drop Kyle, Liz, and Phyllis off so they can catch a train for their 7-day cruise! Then Jill and I are off to Lorenzo dei Medici to become Italians. Or at least to hopefully learn some Italian and not sound quite so American. :) I hope the teacher doesn't call on me!

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Well. Obviously, the first part of this post is from approximately one week ago. And I forgot to finish it on Monday. I was hoping to have skillfully kept you in suspense by inserting that line of asterisks, and then informing you of the rest of my day at school. So much for my clever intentions!

Nevertheless, language school is going very well! I love, love learning language. And both of our teachers are really great. We have two different teachers every day: Luca teaches us for approximately an hour and a half starting at 9am every morning, then we have "una pausa" for twenty minutes, and then enters Silvia for the remainder of our time. I find Luca's section a little more challenging, because he tends to deal more with the grammar....and also possibly because he talks a mile a minute. :) There are two other American girls in our class, and we have enjoyed getting to know them. Their names are Cecilia (yes!) and Tracey. Cecilia is from Connecticut, and Tracey is from New Jersey - they are both studying abroad through different programs, and they are just a few years younger than Jillian and me. Another fact about them that interests me is that they both also study French! I like knowing that other people share my pain of mixing up languages. :)

Another big accomplishment this week was setting up our English lessons! We will be begin meeting this week, starting tomorrow. There are many, many things going on always, and it is hard for me to remember all of them. If you want to know my schedule in more detail, send me an email at ewoodroof@harding.edu and I will share my google calendar with you. :)

We just returned this evening from the Women's Convegno/Retreat, a great weekend spent getting to know many Christian women from all over Italy. This year it was held in Aprilia, Italy, a sea-coast town near to Rome. Our theme was "Unity without Uniformity, Differences without being Divided". We prayed, studied, sang songs, played get-to-know-you games, and ATE together. I must admit, it was pretty exhausting - it's pretty tiring getting to know a whole group of new people in of itself, but even more so when they speak a different language. Luckily I was able to keep up most of the time.

Not so luckily, I seem to have forgotten all nine years of my French education. There was a French girl at the convegno with whom I became friends, and I tried to speak with her a few times, but all I could think of was Italian! This will be remedied, and I plan to brush up on my French (just a quick review of nine years) so that I can send her messages in her own language. Although, she happens to be fluent in English and speaks well in Italian too. Quelle domage.

Like I mentioned before, we have many goings-on this week, but I will write about those later. In the meantime, I am looking forward to commencing with language school and also to the arrival of the new HUF students! I realize that I have an atrocious absence of pictures since my arrival, but don't worry - I have been taking pictures and hope to get around to publishing those soon. :) Love you all, and let me know about things happening over there! Ciao ciao tutti!