Last Italian Class

It's really hot and humid today. I just got a text from Hernan asking how I was. I replied "tengo calor" - I am hot, but actually I am sitting inside with the air-conditioner on. He replied that he is on the bus on the way to his mother's and can't even describe the heat to me. Okay, I am not hot compared to him. I can not imagine being on an un-airconditioned bus in this heat.

Today was my last Italian class. I stayed up late last night watching some silly movie with Jennifer Garner where she is a 13 year old girl who suddenly becomes a 30 year old woman. Kind of like BIG with a woman. I had figured out how it was going to end about halfway through, but stayed up anyway to see the ending.

As a result, I woke up this morning feeling tired. I didn't have time to eat much breakfast or relax over several rounds of mate. Instead, I drank some warmed up leftover coffee, ate some quick fruit salad and hopped in a cab to get to school a few minutes late.

Today Blas invited his Italian friend to come to class. He was going to play an accordian and we were going to sing. His friend came accordianless. He's going to come next week with the accordian.

Instead, he did a little activity with us where he wrote Italian idiomatic expressions on one piece of paper and their meaning on another. He told us we had to find the meaning of each expression. I thought we would get up and walk around and find the person who had the piece of paper that went with what we had, but we didn't do that. Instead, one person read what was on their paper and then the person who thought they had a match read what they had. One example was something like "be up to your neck in water" and the match was "have little time". It was interesting but not terribly useful. Not that anything we are doing is useful since I don't know when I will ever speak Italian.

I have decided I am not going to take the Italian final. It's a big relief. I really don't like language tests. I feel the best test is if the language results in being used. Since I am not planning on going to level 2 in Italian next year and am not taking this class for any credit, there is no point in suffering through an exam. So, today was the last day I would see my Italian classmates.

They were nice but the atmosphere in the class was not as comfortable as in our Arabic class. I don't know why, because actually Blas did more group work with us. I brought my camera thinking I wanted to take a picture of the class, but decided I didn't want to make a big deal out of the fact that I was not taking the exam. After class was over, I just said good-bye to Natalia and slipped out into the heat.