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I ragazzi della classe 4E
The class picture of the kids in room 4E. They are all awesome and fun to be around and I'm very fortunate that they can all speak some degree of English... except the guy in the on front left. he's not too good, and he sounds like a cartoon when he tries :) Hmm... the second to last day of school... again.... Except this time I don't have the pressure of writing a speech or anything on my shoulders. So, it is a pretty relaxing thing! However, in the past 2 weeks, I have gotten to know a lot of Paolo's classmates pretty well, and I will miss them after tomorrow. However, through the miracle (and curse) of Facebook, we can still keep in touch. That way, I can practice my Italian with them via Internet. But hopefully I'll be able to see them all a couple times before I leave to come back to America. Also, they had an extra photo of the class that they offered me 😊. Because they stay in one classroom all day, this is their version of a yearbook, where they pass around the photo and have everyone sign the back of it. I think it's a pretty nifty deal 😊
By the way, I did tell a few of the kids in class today that, instead of speaking English to me, if they speak Italian really slowly, that I will try to figure out what they were saying. Hey why not? It makes it easier on
Random picture in Rovigo
I don't know who that bust is of or what he did, but it's a pretty dang cool picture. them to not speak English and it makes my life harder but I get to practice listening to Italian that isn't at 4 Billion MPH. I think it's a fair trade....
So normal morning routine, wake up, shower, eat breakfast, and have multiple heart-attacks while we're driving to school amongst the absolutely insane European drivers (we're talking men here too 😱 just joking...).
First class was math. I can't understand the teacher so I try to understand the math. But remember when I was telling you how graphing is done differently? Well, EVERYTHING math-wise is done differently. From the notation of sides and angles of triangles in trig, to how they solve problems. It's just insane... so I just tuned it all out. The prof... well he's pretty spacey anyway, so I don't miss much. Like he get's off subject (I can tell) completely randomly without any student provocation. He's like a crappy knock-off of Mr. Maio (Maio is at least interesting). He was lecturing about something and then randomly came up to me and started talking about the "Italian Phrases for Dummies" book I had on my desk. I don't even know what he was talking about...
Random half-naked biker
So right when the storm moved in, this guy rode by on his bike wearing nothing more than a spandex one-piece suit. He looked like a UFC fighter or something. It was strange... something about there being something similar to "dummies". Il e pazzo. (He is crazy).
Next was Italian, so the teacher passed back the tests that we took on Monday. Now, how they grade tests is very different than in the USA. Instead of an A, B, C, D, F system, their point values are translated into a number from 3 to 10. So they get a number in that range as their "voto" (grade) for the test. To my surprise, (and everyone else's too) I scored a ten! So everyone took my test and was looking at what I wrote (which was "Sorry, I haven't read these books so I can't answer question" and so on) and were pointing out my spelling mistakes to me (how she didn't cound off, I don't know). But I will keep that test forever. (The stupid math teacher never gave me the test I took for him back. Another reason why he is a lot less awesome than Maio).
The prof also gave everyone (including me, actually) some homework for the summer (reading two Italian plays). I'll just say that "The Servant of Two Masters" counts as one, and I might actually
Pioggia
It was raining pretty hard out there. buy one of the others just for kicks. There's one that actually sounds pretty entertaining.
Anyways, at some point before the break, Maria Elena took out her English notebook for some reason so I borrowed it from her and got to looking at the huge table of irregular verbs we have in English. Then I went through and told her which ones even us Americans don't say correctly, so she doesn't really have to worry that much. But it's crazy how much we screw up our own language! There are some past-tense words most of us say that aren't really words according to the table. For example, we say "dreamed" instead of "dreamt", "grinded" instead of "ground", "leaped" instead of "leapt", "spoiled" instead of "spoilt", and "knitted" instead of "knit". Wow we stink at English. I even found an irregular verb that I said wrong in my graduation speech! ("casted" instead of the grammatically correct "cast") Way to go valedictorian.
Besides the irregular verbs, Maria Elena and I traded some tongue-twisters (sciogliligua). An Italian one:
"Apelle, figlio di Apollo,
fece una palla di pelle di pollo,
tutti i pesci vennero a galla
per vedere la palla di pelle
I ragazzi
Here we are... hanging out... waiting for a giant tempesta to pass along so we can play (or, for me, attempt to play) calcio (soccer) di pollo
fatta da Apelle, figlio di Apollo"
This translates to:
"Apelles, the son of Apollo,
made a ball of chicken skin,
All fish were floating
to see the ball of chicken skin
made by Apelles, the son of Apollo "
It sounds a lot better in Italian. And less weird.
Theology and then English came along, and again, the English teacher had to use me. A lot. I recited my compiti (homework; Marc Antony's speech) and then she asked the class to call out other things for me to read in English. Ugh. So I read some Hamlet, some limericks, and then the teacher told ME to choose something... one of my favorite poems or anything I wanted. Well, thanks for letting me know ahead of time I was going to do this... so instead of having something particular in mind, I just randomly picked "The Raven" by Edgar Allen Poe (I had just read it recently and I thought it was good), so I started it, and then I realized that it was REAAAAALLLLYYY long, so I felt really bad that I made them listen to all of that. I
Capelli pazzi!
Crazy hair! These old ladies definitely need to try to fit in another way. read English poetry and prose for a whole hour today... and I think I'm going to have to again tomorrow. I'm sorry Italian colleagues 😞.
After school ended, I must say that I told you I would have pizza again soon! We got pizza for lunch and ate it after school before we walked all the way across town to play calcio (soccer). As we got to the campo (field) it started to pour pioggia (rain), so we waited half an hour under an awning at this one store for it to let up. We then started to play, and to make a long story short, I really suck. 😊. It was fun though. I admit.
We left to go to Paolo's first lesson with his new bass teacher (yes, Ranger Bob, before you ask, he does play bass) which lasted about 10 minutes, and then we went home. I was glad to finally be where I could just sit and relax, have a small cup of coffee (Oh! I need to tell you about the coffee situation later, too... muah-ha-ha...), read, learn some Italian, and play some Wii. In fact, I did all of those things when I got home.
Well that's all for today. I'm still working on getting a picture of Nico and Elena for you all. Elena is a bit photo-shy... plus, Nico got home really late tonight, and I think Elena had already headed to bed. So I promise I will do that ASAP.
Ok, well...
Buonanotte! (Do you remember it means? I'm not saying!)
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