First Day of School!

This morning I felt like Nemo: "First day of school! First day of school!"

I got up extra early to make sure I had enough time to get ready and get off and everything. I also had to be at school early to take the placement test, and I didn't want to be late for that!

Fortunately, I found my way back to the bus stop, got on the right bus, and made it to school with time to spare. The test wasn't quite as bad as I had feared; although my professor at school told me to expect grammar questions, I had also heard that it would be a much more arduous process with lots of sections and lots of stupid passages to read and stuff. Luckily, it was just the grammar, most of which I was very familiar with. I know I missed a couple (for which I am still kicking myself- I KNEW I should have spent more time reviewing irregular future stems!), but I thought I did pretty well overall. There was also an oral component where I had to speak with the instructor for a few minutes. To my surprise, that also went smoothly. He told me to come back in an hour (at 10:15) for my class assignment.

When I returned, they started handing out textbooks based on the level achieved. When they finally called my name, I had no book- they said my teacher would give it to me when I got to the room. Talk about suspense! Still, at least they didn't kick me out. I went to my new classroom, only to find no one inside! There were still books and bags and purses and the like, but no people. Obviously, they had to come back sometime, so I sat and waited. Finally, people began to arrive, including my teacher, who gave me a B2 workbook. I'm in a high enough level!

There were seven students in the class, as well as my teacher. The students, who were all older college students or adults, are from all over the place: Russia, Switzerland, Germany, even Japan! I felt very awkward, because they were clearly in the middle of the lesson (it was 10:30, and class started at 9), but they still stopped so we could do introductions. After that, we were working with the passato rimoto, a literary past tense that I covered last semester. At least I wasn't totally lost!

Then, to my surprise, I switched classes to go the intensive component. There are only three of us in this class, a woman from New Jersey and a girl about my age from Switzerland. After the formal classroom atmosphere of my first class, this one seemed extra laid-back. We basically just sat talking for an hour and a half about "what is art?". Our teacher gave us a page with various examples: Someone who built a ship from 22,000 matchsticks, a gorilla who painted something resembling a banana, a computer that made a 3-D image, someone who perfectly copied a Van Gogh, a cook who made a new dish, and several more. We basically had a ToK (theory of knowledge, for you non-IB folks) discussion about what constituted art and what it meant to be an artist. Deep stuff, considering that we pretty much stuttered over our words and had to circumlocute all the good stuff.

School was out after that, so I got myself a nice helping of gelato to celebrate a successful day. Then I returned to the apartment to meet my roommates! We actually met briefly last night; it turns out that they've both lived here for a while, so they already knew each other and were out together. Their names are Bart and Isabel, and they are from the Netherlands and Holland (respectively). We sat out on the patio to do our homework together, which is to say we pretty much spent the whole time chatting. They seem awesome, but unfortunately they're both done with their classes in a couple of weeks. I'm not shocked; classes are ongoing at the school, and can start and end at any time. If I'm lucky, though, someone might come in before I go!

My family came tonight, so I went out to dinner with them. It was fun to tell them about my day, since none of us had any idea what to expect going into this. Although it will be really weird without them here (and able to be called every night), it looks like I'm off to a pretty good start- I have a nice place, good roommates, and, so far, interesting classes. I can't wait to make more friends and get really good at Italian!

La Scuola Leonardo da Vinci!