Il Sasso - Italian Class Day 4

Our school day consists of class, 30 min break in the late morning for espresso, and a 15 min break around lunch time. BTW, coffee here is espresso that you can add milk or water to. I am drinking 2 cups of that strong stuff every morning so even though I am tired, that could be the reason I'm having trouble sleeping. Anyway, we get out about 1:15 pm which is when most people get ready to go to lunch. Many shops are closed from about 1 until 3 pm.

We have been given a course book called Caffe Italia to use in class. If we want to purchase it, it is 18 euros. The book is all in Italian so I must say that after class I sometimes stay and use Goggle Translate to find out what I did not understand! I won't purchase the book because I don't want to carry anything else around Italy but they have given us many handouts and I have a few notebooks of words and phrases I need to learn. Right now we are learning to conjugate verbs - and it is only day 4. Fiorella (my sweet hostess) is still talking to me in Italian and now I can understand about 2 words. It makes for short conversations!

There is a market here every Thursday but it only goes from 8 am until 1 pm, which is when we have class. Today all of the classes went there and practiced saying our fruits and veggies. I can say "banana", "melone" and "pera" - and I expect that you also know those words.

We then had an hour to shop around. I found a tee shirts for 1 euro which will be worn often. I wish I had found 1 more pair of capris or long, cool pants. I did end up purchasing a wind up watch for 5 euros because I can't figure out how to change the time on my watch. The last time I tried, I accidentally set the alarm to go off at midnight every night and I had to hide the watch in a drawer so I wouldn't hear it!

Of course the market is at the very bottom of the hill and our class is about 3/4 of the way up the hill - more exercise!

At the end of class today we had a pizza party - 6 euros. I do have to keep track of what I spend here since I still have over 11 weeks left in Italy.

As a reminder, if any of you want to post a comment or ask a question, I think you can just sign in under anonymous and then sign your first name.

Learning Italian in Italy - With a Dog

I just sent in my deposit for a 4 week language class with Il Sasso in Montepulcaino, Italy. Here are a couple of pictures previous students took of the area - very pretty.

The city is between Rome and Florence but so far, I haven't found it on my basic map of Italy.

I have signed up for their Standard course, which is 3-4 hours of language lessons 5 days a week. The 4 week course is 600 Euros. I also asked to do the homestay with the single woman with a dog. I sure hope Seymour will play nice. This is also the place that said Seymour could come to class with me. If you want to read more information on this city and language school, their website is http://www.ilsasso.com.

Since I will be flying in to Rome, I plan to stay there for a couple of days before I head out to my language class. They give directions on how to get there - take train, then bus, then walk. Oh boy, that will be interesting for someone with no sense of direction and little Italian. I am taking that 7 session course on Italian for Travelers before I go, so I hope that will give me a few good words to use!
It's getting more real -

Trip Planning Odds and Ends

There is so much to plan for this trip to Italy. I'm slowing getting things done - or at least started:

1. Emailed the Animal Shelter where Seymour was adopted from to find out what kind of microchip they put in him. I hope I don't have to purchase a separate scanner.

2. Signed up for a class "Italian for Travelers" that will be held in July. I decided I better get some early practice, before I take my language class in Italy. It's like someone who cleans their house before the cleaning people come. I would totally do that if I had cleaning people!

3. Wrote to a language school in Italy (It's in Tuscany) to see if they would accept me with a dog, and if one of the homestays I want to stay in for a month would also accept a dog. I haven't heard back yet.

4. Found a pretty good website www.pettravel.com that has a lot of good information on traveling with a pet overseas. I ordered the Pet passport from them. It comes with all of the paperwork and list of health records I will need to get filled out before we go. They have a forum and I posted a question about how to get a Pet's Health Certificate translated into Italian. Supposedly I need to get that done. No response yet, but five people viewed my question. Maybe it was too dumb to answer!

5. Seymour is beginning to spend more time in his new carrier. Because he likes his sling, I put that in the carrier as a blanket and he has really taken to it. Unfortunately, I haven't started zipping it up yet! He is an expert un-zipper so I'm not ready for that challenge yet.