Florence, Day 12

Today during the second half of our Italian class, we took a field trip to the Oblate Biblioteca (the Florentine public library). That's right, the library. And I am now officially a card-holding member. It's pretty sweet. We were given a worksheet (similar to the one we had to fill out on our last field trip to the market) that involved finding an Italian book of poetry and a children's story that we knew. I spent a lot of time in the children's section of the library, mostly because I could actually read the books that were in there. It's a strange feeling to suddenly not be able to read anything but the simplest kids books. I know I've only been taking Italian for about a week, but part of me feels very frustrated when I pick up a book on English literature (or something else that I would normally pick up in the library on campus) and can't read a word of it. However kids books are a great way to learn more of the language - they're written using the easiest sentence structure and utilize a lot of sight words. And I can read them. Thank God.

Rewind a little ways to the first half of class today: Luigi shared the names of his top 6 gelaterias in Florence. I have been to three of them. Luigi was rather impressed when he kept giving us names and I would say, "oh that one's good!" He finally just shrugged and told my classmates "you listen to Anna. She knows her gelato."

Back at Linguaviva, Isa and I headed down to our spot in the courtyard (affectionally named "our table") for lunch and homework. Time to be impressed: I finished all of my homework before 2pm (or 14:00, if you go by the European clock).

This afternoon we had "course presentations" where the four professors we're working with (Jodi, Gail, Sarah, and George, the representative from the Cecil Studios) stood up and explained what their classes will be about. We were given the add/drop form (just in case) and then talked about our weekly and semester calendars (for some reason people found them confusing? I don't know. I thought they made sense.)

Afterwards, Gretchen, Isa, and I went to the WIND store to reload/purchase SIM cards for our phones. Yay for running errands. We treated ourselves to gelato afterwards, where I had Mars Bar (holy cow, it was amazing. Plus there were pieces of Mars Bar in it.) and Chocolate Chip Cookie - so good. I've also decided to make my on top 5 (or 10, who knows) list of gelaterias. Why not? I'm certainly eating enough of the stuff to make an informed decision on which are the best ones.

Dinner was squash-minestrone soup again (don't care, it's good), with chicken burgers and salad, and grapes for dessert. I also think Anna has figured out that Sarah and I will eat whatever she puts in front of us (even if we're not sure about it), because she keeps pressing more food on us. We end up eating second or even third helpings of dinner because she tells us there can't be leftovers and that we must finish it. It's good food, but we leave the table absolutely fit to burst. First world problems.