Once more, proof that I am just a little bit nerdy: On Monday, Wednesday, and Friday Rosa cooks lunch for us and has it ready by the time we get home from language school. Very wonderful. Then we all sit down together and chat - always in Italian, because Rosa CLAIMS that she doesn't speak English. I am still skeptical of this. Anyway, last week an amazing thing happened. We were sitting there talking, and I was telling Rosa about something that had happened earlier that day, and.......I correctly used a sentence in the imperfect conjunctive tense!! Weow!! Now, I know that may not seem like a big deal to most of you, but it was a milestone for me. It was the first time it came relatively easily - that is to say without scrunching my nose, lowering my eyebrows, and squeezing it out of my brain.
My school decided that we are improving as well. They permitted us, after completing the intermediate 3 class in september, to sign up for the advanced class this month. We started the class on Monday: Jill, Cecilia, and I are all together again with the new addition of Camilla (Colombia), Isabella (Boulder, CO), and Kamal (Egypt). Also we have one of our teachers from last month again - Luca. He teaches us all four hours this time instead of having two different teachers for two hours apiece. So much fun!
Gramma still hasn't arrived, because of some trouble with her medication. I think everything is worked out now though, and she is planning to arrive Monday. Yay!
We have been having our women's Bible Study every Monday night, and that has been a really good thing. This week Ermenita's birthday was on Monday, so mom and tracey baked her a cake and we surprised her after bible study was over. Also there were flowers!
I have ten Italians studying English with me now. Whoo! And more asking all the time. We're having to tell them that we won't be able to take anymore until November, when we are finished with language school. Haha, in language school today, we also learned some idiomatic expressions that involve animals. I thought it was a fun exercise, so I did the same with one of my more advanced students. It's funny, because they have a lot of the same ones we do! There was one in particular today that really made me laugh. I told her that in English we have the expression "that's a long row to hoe". And she looked it up last week and today she told me that they have an expression that means the same thing: " Che brutto gatto a pellare" - "What a (hard) cat to skin!" Bah hahah.
Some things coming up:
Jill and I are hoping to go to Poland at the end of November/beginning of December to learn the program that Molly and Annabelle Dawidow have developped. We will be teaching English up there for about a week. So exciting!
Also there is a youth retreat (with relief I discovered that we are still considered "youth") for ages 18-25 organized by the young people in Aprilia - a town close to Rome - that I hope we will be able to attend.
We're having fun hanging out some with the HUF students, doing projects at the church (like decorating the bulletin boards ;) ), learning Italian, and going to Bible studies. All is well in Florence!
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