Eccomi! Just catching up

Sorry for the absence last week. I got everybody’s e-mail asking if I were still alive. As you can see, alive and kicking even if I am little cold, tired, and sick. I have had a lot of work to do with school and it’s tough to put the stuff down. I’m trying to make up for lost time I guess. I also got sick on Thursday/Friday; it’s a lot of close quarters with people and there are all sorts of bugs flying around right now and this situation is made worse by the transient nature of my school. In fact, I’m stuck at home right now because I feel like a truck hit me. I was supposed to be on a bus to Rome this morning but decided to cancel that because I really did not feel well. I figured this would be a good opportunity to catch everyone up and blog a bit before I set out to fetch some cold medicine. I also need to apologize in advance for any spelling errors because I have turned off the English checker and activated the Italian one. There is a multilingual setting but when you set it to that, it checks your words against many languages. For some reason, I can’t set it to just the languages that I want. If anyone from Apple is reading this, please take note. Or, if there is anyone reading this that knows how to change this setting, by all means, please leave a comment or send an e-mail.

Since the last time I blogged, many things have happened. First of all, I have decided to stay in Siena for another three weeks (two weeks left now). I adore this city and it’s great for my goals which are to be away from a huge city and focus on studying. I already know Milan, Rome, and a few others and those cities are huge. The classes would have been a lot bigger and full of foreigners (usually much younger too) that are wanting to hang out. I have also decided on eating dinner at Carla’s place. Every night that she has cooked for Mike, I have not been able to believe how great it smells. The aroma alone could sell me. Mike has been telling me that the food is wonderful and so I have decided on having dinner here at Carla’s place as well. That turned out to be a good decision. The first night, Carla made a small salad (which we ate last by the way because that is how it’s done). At first glance it looked like a bunch of leaves drizzled with olive oil and sprinkled with salt and pepper. One bite told me that this was more than your ordinary set of leaves. I’m confident that the reason that the food tastes so good here is that first of all, quality is at a premium. Even the lesser brands have high quality. Everything is fresh and the olive oil is amazing. It’s not like anything that we could ever get in the States. Thank you FDA! The other great part about eating with Carla is that we do not eat in silence and have an opportunity to speak. I need as many of those opportunities as I can get.

Off the food topic for a second, I have also decided to take some private lessons with a private tutor. I just can’t seem to find the student for exchange. The problem is that most Italian kids that want to know how to speak English, already know how to. English is taught in school and so the dedicated ones know how to speak from school or from doing an exchange with the UK or some other English speaking country. The other kids that don’t know how to speak English, well, they don’t have the desire to (at least not yet) as they’re off learning a different language altogether. My first week of lessons have gone well as I really like my private tutor and it’s a great opportunity to talk nonstop for an hour and be corrected. As I am a yakker, I find myself going over on time just about everyday.