Mi Piace!

It's raining. I didn't know it was supposed to rain today and had to walk home from school without an umbrella. My head was wet, but thanks to lots of buildings with overhangs, I was able to dodge a lot of the rain. Now that I'm in, I hope it will rain hard and clean off the sidewalks a little.

Today was my first day of Italian class. I couldn't sleep well last night, I think because of the mate I drank with Hernan. He said mate doesn't have the same effect as coffee, but he drinks coffee at 10 p.m., so for him I think nothing has any effect. Mate does not have caffeine, it has mateina. It is still a stimulant, and I think I will not be drinking it during the mate hour anymore, especially when I have a 9 a.m. class.

I got up at 7:30, and got out of here at 8:30. I thought my class started at 9:30, but since I found out I could retreive my student records online using my id number, I went and checked the room number for my class and saw that it started at 9. Good thing I checked. I was hoping it was a mistake and I'd have time to go the bar (cafeteria) for a coffee before class, but when I got to school and checked, it did indeed start at 9.

It was interesting walking to school so early (well, 8:30 is not that early). I thought the streets would be crazy like the evening rush hour, but aside from a few people walking their dogs and some guys who had started working in the garment district of Once where my school is, there wasn't a whole lot of activity. It was a warm, humid morning and it was nice being out early and seeing what it was like. I think I am going to enjoy Spring, and I think I am going to enjoy walking to school in the morning.

My Italian class was great. The teacher's name is Blas, and he is about 30 years old (I think he said he is 31). He is Argentine, but lived for 2 years in Rome and has studied Italian for several years I guess. His Italian seems pretty fluent. He did several things in the class that I loved! I feel like I finally found a language class where the teacher has a similar philosophy about language learning.

First thing he did was start speaking Italian right away. Some of the students freaked a little, but really, Italian is so much like Spanish, I think it should be easy for them to make the adjustment. He then had us go around the room and introduce ourselves. Nice! My arabic teacher did this during the break when half the students weren't there. This was a great way to start off the class. I've always thought it was boring for my students when I do this, but as a student, it was great for me to hear a little about my classmates, and also let them know a little about me.

The first thing we did was a song. I couldn't believe that he was starting with a song on the first day, but it was a great exercise. He had us fill in the missing articles il/un, la/una - definite or indefinite, masculine or feminine. Even though there were some words in the song that students didn't know, it was a great exercise for us to start right away with italian and to begin making hypotheses about how to use these articles. It was so much better than explaining it to us abstractly and then having us try the exercise.

I remember one of my students in level 1 who was an elderly man who was a Spanish teacher in Mexico. He was very traditional and his approach to education was also very traditional. One time he said to me in Spanish, something like, "there are two approaches to education, inductive and deductive - your class is ____" I can't remember if my method is deductive or not, but I think it is. He wanted the other method. He wanted me to explain everything to them rather than have them figure things out. I like figuring things out. I feel like the information sticks better that way. So I was really happy with this song exercise. We made guesses about when we would use the definite or indefinite article, and the masculine/feminine part was fairly easy because it is similar to Spanish.

After that, we listened to the song and checked. Again, a really good exercise. We had a clear focus and it was a little difficult to hear the article sometimes, so he repeated the song and even certain lines so we could hear it.

After the break, one of the students asked him how much something was and he said 10 centavos. Everyone started going up and putting 10 centavos on his desk. I asked my neighbor what we had to pay for and she told me we had to pay for the copy. I realized how lucky I am as a teacher to have access to a copy machine and pretty much unlimited copies (of course there is a limit). Here this guy had to make copies on his own money and was being reimbursed by the students.

After we finished with the song we started with the book which is pretty much a communicative approach. It starts right off with conversations and introduces the grammar little by little in context. There are lots of practice exercises and he had us working in groups again with the stuff in the book.

It was a really fun class. Level of difficulty? 1. It is super easy (it's my third time taking Italian 1), but, the challenging part is trying to relax and undertand the Italian the teacher uses. Some of the students speak Spanish in class, but Blas really encourages everyone to try to communicate in Italian.

There are about 20 students, mixed ages and levels (some, like me, speak some Italian). It's a nice group.

One interesting thing I found out is that some people have Italian passports because their ancestors are Italian. I want to find out if I can get an Italian passport.

As I was leaving, after I ate lunch across the street, I ran into my teacher from last year, Marcella. It was great seeing her and I sat and spoke to her a little while she ate lunch.

I came home to a clean apartment (Norma came this morning), and I'm now drinking a nice cup of tea and listening to Gotan Project. I might go to the gym later and then this evening I am meeting another conversation partner.


At some point I am going to have to weed out these conversation partners because I can't meet with all of them, but I am hoping to find some good connections. I like Mario because he lives nearby and can come here. Luis is pretty much written off. This guy today (I think his name is Leo) seems like he speaks a lot of English and I have to go back over to Once to meet him, so those are two disadvantages. But one guy I am going to meet next week wrote and said he doesn't speak a lot of English. He lives very near, and sounds like he is perfect!

Things are really starting to take off and I am beginning to feel busy, but I still can come home and take naps, drink tea and relax during the day. I'm being careful not to plan too much for one day - I just don't have the energy to do that.

Today is a perfect day to crawl back into bed, so I think that's what I'm going to do!