We started our new classes here on Monday. It’s going to be a great three months. The hardest part is that I have to stay attentive and focused for two hours. If my mind wanders for a second I miss enough Italian that I have no idea what they are talking about anymore. It’s quite a brain work out. Even though they are all taught in Italian, I think by the end of the semester I’ll be able to understand most of what they are saying. For now, I’m satisfied when I understand big concepts.
La storia del’ EU
For example, in my history of the European Union class I was clear that he was talking about the EU…no I’m kidding, I understood a bit more than that. Its daunting though cause there are only two other kids in my class and the other girl speaks excellent Italian. So even though occasionally the professor would check in with me to see if I was understanding everything I was almost embarrassed to admit no. I usually responded with, “uh, generally.” From what I did understand, our class will be divided into multiple parts. A bit of history, both Europe and America, then political science, then fields that myself and my classmates are interested in. So for me he’s going to look into public health issues (which he said he knew quite a bit about from his work), and for Erin, education, and for Henry, finance. Its really cool to have a class specialized just for you. He seems very intelligent. He had a lot of interesting…and controversial things to say about the global system. For one, he argued that the concept of globalization is in many ways a myth. (Every student who took a Sophomore Seminar can start freaking out now) He argues that because the US and Europe have different standards it actually hinders progress. For example, in manufacturing, anything made in Europe then has to be re-sized to for American measuring standards. Or drugs made in America have to be approved by the FDA and then a separate system to use in Europe.
L’italiano
My new Italian class is great. There are two of us. Though one other person may be joining us. (Apparently my other classmates were too smart for kindergarten and moved up) This means I am the only girl. Anyway, Laura my new professoressa is amazing. Yesterday we played a game in class. Unlike the intensive Italian class, we move much slower through concepts this time. Again, this class is also very personalized. We will each get assigned different homework. Out first assignment was to write this brief essay, and based on the types of errors that we make, we will get different exercises to work on. Pretty cool huh? I’m sure this means I will have lots of homework… My favorite moment of class the other day was when Laura had my classmate Vince describe his ideal woman. Vince is gay. He and I both started laughing and he tried to change the gender in the sentence, but she just thought he didn’t understand the question.
La storia dell’arte (Masters of the Tuscan Renaissance)
I’ve been saying for a while that I was so excited about my art history professor Pierre Luigi. There are four of us in the class (all girls), and two of the girls are my best friends so Im so excited. Luigi is hysterical. He comes in with these two giant books textbooks for us (one in English and one in Italian) and I kid with him that we need to read them by tomorrow and without skipping a beat he looks at me and says, no they were due yesterday. Then throughout the class he kept talking to us about the different types of Jesus models in Byzantine era and he uses facial expression. He pulls up this one slide and is like this is the “Sylvester Slaone Jesus”. Of course he is making fun of all of these religious pieces and occasionally, when something was a tad of color he would say, “Non dica alla tua nonna!” (Don’t tell your grandmother!) In addition, he would give us examples and use funny voices. Once he was talking about Barbarians and he looks at my friend and is like, you are a farmer, I am a Barbarian. And then he proceeds to have a whole dialogue in this deep, raspy tone. We were all in hysterics. (Katie and Chelsea, he reminds me a bit of Dave Drake the peasant). We of course get to go on field trips during class.
Come figo? No?
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