Week 2 at Il Sasso - Italy

I need to buy more aspirins! The good news is that there are some words in Italian are the same as in English,like:
computer
yogurt
cappiciano
pizza

So, I know those words :)

The rest are all jumbled in my head. I hope something comes together by the end of the month. I did hear that a few women from my class went out together this weekend and made a mistake like I usually do. They were telling someone that they were taking a class at Il Sasso,and pronounced Sasso wrong - so they ended up saying they were taking a sex class instead of a language class. Thank goodness that wasn't a mistake I made! Of course now that it is in my head, it will probably come out my mouth one of these days here.

Back to our daily life here, when Seyour and I take our walk at 7:30 am, there are always workers sweeping the road and a truck picking up trash. I usually bring my trash out to the street and drop it in one of the bins along the street because I don't know how to ask Fiorella where to put the trash.

Seymour has learned that when he has to go to the bathroom, he will find very few trees or bushes so he actually has just used the street. I have already gone through a roll of poop bags here. Seymour is getting to dislike some of our walks and I will post pictures by tomorrow of his typical morning. Even with his complaining, he is a great travel companion.

Tonight Fiorella is having a dinner party for her son. I don't know if I am invited or not since I can't understand what she is saying, so Paulina said she will ask.

Yesterday Fiorella let me do laundry at her house. (I may have already said this, I'm forgetting what I'm writing) Anyway, I got to see what was behind the door on the first floor - the washer room. It is interesting that the room was cut out of rock, so it is a little like a cave. She does not have a dryer, so she gave me a large drying rack to dry my clothes. Since I almost always hang my clothes out at home, this was fine. It was great having clean clothes!

Seymour and I are done with class for the day so I'm going to drop off my books and computer and walk to the supermarket to get him more dog food. I wish they also sold doggie toothpaste because I can hardly stand Seymour's breath!

Even though I've been walking up and down these hills for over a week, I am still tired by the time I get from the supermarket to our house. Paulina did show us that there is actually 2 elevators in the park that will save us some walking on the hills. Siena had 3 escalaters to get from the bus part way up the hill to town. I guess I'm not the only one complaining about the hills!

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.

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