From our terrace.
And again...
Apologies for the long silence. Ben and I just finished three weeks of intensive Italian classes at a school called ItaliaIdea: three hours a day, five days per week. Plus homework! At the same time, Ben started tennis lessons two afternoons per week, after Italian class. So suddenly, we found most of our time spoken for.
It was a bit bizarre for me – except for the occasional poetry workshop, which doesn’t really count, this was my first time in school for over 20 years. Imagine my surprise in actually finding the class fun! My French (and four years of high school Latin) came in handy, plus a classroom ethic that encouraged improvisation rather than perfection. So I would try a French word with an Italian accent and 9 times out of 10 would be pretty close. I can now say such useful phrases as, “No, I don’t like Bush, I hope Obama…” and “We are returning to Rome this evening. May we leave our bags here for the day?”
It was a long stretch for Ben each day, but he did marvelously. He is a perfectionist of the first order, and so has all the irregular verb forms memorized, even when he can’t remember what they mean. Now, we both need to find ways to practice, practice, practice.
Our class was an interesting group: an accountant in her 20s from Chicago whose fiancé is here studying art; an oil engineer from Venezuela vacationing in Italy and using part of her time to study the language; a graduate student in finance at one of the US universities that has a Rome outpost; and a sweet 17-year-old half-Italian barber from a tiny village in Wales. He promises to do some creative barbering on Ben, perhaps a thunderbolt above one ear… We’ll post pictures if it comes to pass.
The same day we started class, all of us suffering horrible colds, we moved to our spectacular new apartment in a little neighborhood named Celio, next to the Colosseum. The 12-foot ceilings are a great antidote to the head-cracking garret of our first month and we have beautiful composite marble floors and two bedrooms. No more living room sleeping for Ben. The real highlight of the place, though, is the palatial terrace, with views west and a gorgeous sunset every evening. From one corner, and from the living room desk where I now sit, we can see the Colosseum. From elsewhere, medieval church bell towers, the back of the Palazzo Venezia, some random ruins, trees, rooftops. See sunset photos… From our bedrooms, now that the days are shorter, we have lovely sunrises over the back courtyard and a tiny peak of the back of the statues on top of San Giovanni in Laterano, one of the great basilicas of Rome and home to the papacy until it moved to Avignon. When it returned, the popes moved their headquarters to the Vatican.
We’ve continued to have gorgeous weather – too hot, the Romans say, but we benefit, luxuriating in the sun and eating all our meals on the terrace. I’m sure the cool weather will come soon, but in the meantime we get all the advantages of Indian Summer. The tourists are still here in hordes, especially it seems, large groups of middle-aged Germans, following a guide with a red scarf on a stick or, in one instance we saw, a tiny wooden Pinocchio. Living by the Colosseum of course we see them in greater number, but the residents of the neighborhood still seem to be primarily Italian and the café/bar downstairs is mobbed with elderly Italians playing the lottery every evening.
A couple of translation joys: A sign inside the elevator of the building housing our Italian class: “Please get up over three persons. Thank you. The Direction.” And on a menu posted outside a Trastevere restaurant (whose blackboard says, “We are against the war and the tourist menu!”) “Chicken breast milk and lemon.” Ew, we said, until we remembered that chickens are not mammals and do not suckle their young.
Ben will be posting about our recent trip to Orvieto. Gorgeous! On the way up we shared a four-seat with the Italian women’s karate champion, headed to the world competition to defend her title, her last year, she told us, as she’s now 34. On her cell phone she showed us a photo of her scoring a point against her instructor.
More soon – so much to catch up on!
Apologies for the long silence. Ben and I just finished three weeks of intensive Italian classes at a school called ItaliaIdea: three hours a day, five days per week. Plus homework! At the same time, Ben started tennis lessons two afternoons per week, after Italian class. So suddenly, we found most of our time spoken for.
It was a bit bizarre for me – except for the occasional poetry workshop, which doesn’t really count, this was my first time in school for over 20 years. Imagine my surprise in actually finding the class fun! My French (and four years of high school Latin) came in handy, plus a classroom ethic that encouraged improvisation rather than perfection. So I would try a French word with an Italian accent and 9 times out of 10 would be pretty close. I can now say such useful phrases as, “No, I don’t like Bush, I hope Obama…” and “We are returning to Rome this evening. May we leave our bags here for the day?”
It was a long stretch for Ben each day, but he did marvelously. He is a perfectionist of the first order, and so has all the irregular verb forms memorized, even when he can’t remember what they mean. Now, we both need to find ways to practice, practice, practice.
Our class was an interesting group: an accountant in her 20s from Chicago whose fiancé is here studying art; an oil engineer from Venezuela vacationing in Italy and using part of her time to study the language; a graduate student in finance at one of the US universities that has a Rome outpost; and a sweet 17-year-old half-Italian barber from a tiny village in Wales. He promises to do some creative barbering on Ben, perhaps a thunderbolt above one ear… We’ll post pictures if it comes to pass.
The same day we started class, all of us suffering horrible colds, we moved to our spectacular new apartment in a little neighborhood named Celio, next to the Colosseum. The 12-foot ceilings are a great antidote to the head-cracking garret of our first month and we have beautiful composite marble floors and two bedrooms. No more living room sleeping for Ben. The real highlight of the place, though, is the palatial terrace, with views west and a gorgeous sunset every evening. From one corner, and from the living room desk where I now sit, we can see the Colosseum. From elsewhere, medieval church bell towers, the back of the Palazzo Venezia, some random ruins, trees, rooftops. See sunset photos… From our bedrooms, now that the days are shorter, we have lovely sunrises over the back courtyard and a tiny peak of the back of the statues on top of San Giovanni in Laterano, one of the great basilicas of Rome and home to the papacy until it moved to Avignon. When it returned, the popes moved their headquarters to the Vatican.
We’ve continued to have gorgeous weather – too hot, the Romans say, but we benefit, luxuriating in the sun and eating all our meals on the terrace. I’m sure the cool weather will come soon, but in the meantime we get all the advantages of Indian Summer. The tourists are still here in hordes, especially it seems, large groups of middle-aged Germans, following a guide with a red scarf on a stick or, in one instance we saw, a tiny wooden Pinocchio. Living by the Colosseum of course we see them in greater number, but the residents of the neighborhood still seem to be primarily Italian and the café/bar downstairs is mobbed with elderly Italians playing the lottery every evening.
A couple of translation joys: A sign inside the elevator of the building housing our Italian class: “Please get up over three persons. Thank you. The Direction.” And on a menu posted outside a Trastevere restaurant (whose blackboard says, “We are against the war and the tourist menu!”) “Chicken breast milk and lemon.” Ew, we said, until we remembered that chickens are not mammals and do not suckle their young.
Ben will be posting about our recent trip to Orvieto. Gorgeous! On the way up we shared a four-seat with the Italian women’s karate champion, headed to the world competition to defend her title, her last year, she told us, as she’s now 34. On her cell phone she showed us a photo of her scoring a point against her instructor.
More soon – so much to catch up on!
