Un Giorno Normale

I thought this whole moving to Italy thing was going to be a piece of cake...that most of my days would be spent sitting in a piazza with my journal and a cappuccino. Not the case. Everyday, we wake up at 8:30am, which you might think is late by American standards but you would be surprised how hard it is to get out of bed at that time, when we were just up until 2 in the morning doing homework. So, we get up, fight our way through the crowds of locals going to work, or tourists getting lost in the subway. These aren't just ordinary crowds either...you virtually cannot move when getting to or on the subway. There is no such thing as personal space anymore and you get used to a perfect stranger leaning up against you, or feel comfortable standing on someone's feet. We stop at our favorite cafe, where our favorite barista, Federico, starts our drinks before we even order. The foam on my cappuccino is such perfection every morning, I have honestly considered naming my first born Federico. We head to class, which starts at 10. We wouldn’t dare be late for our first grammar lesson of the day. Our teacher, who is a seriously strict Irish woman, with white skin and jet black hair just looks at you and you want to crawl out of the room in tears. She starts out the day, with something like this, “OK, give me a sentence using a subject pronoun, auxiliary verb in the base form and a main verb in past participle form….ummm, Andrea.” I seriously feel like vomiting every time she says my name. She has been affectionately referred to as “The grammar Nazi” by our classmates. And I am convinced she has it in for me. Believe me…I learned grammar that I didn’t know existed, faster than I would have thought possible. Then we have teaching methodology class, with an Italian woman, who speaks English uhh pretty well. If you ever ask her a question she doesn’t know the answer to, which is most of the time, she says in her heavy accent, “it is that way just because it is…I don’t know why, it just is. I cannot help you.” She is teaching us the phonetic alphabet, however, is teaching us British phonetic spelling. So there are a bunch of Americans in our class pretending to have British accents so we can spell the words correctly and don’t fail the exam. It is pretty funny and odd at the same time. Then after class we prepare our lessons, and in the evenings we teach hilarious Italian students English. My favorite students to teach are the teenagers. They are pure entertainment and say things like, “I will only date a boy if he pays.” Or, “everyone wants to be with our clique”. Or, “if I met Brad Pitt, I would make him come home with me.” I am just happy they are using the grammar and vocabulary I taught. We head home around 8pm, make a fast meal, and lots of coffee and do loads of homework. We are both exhausted, but hanging in there. Final exams start on Monday, so we are in for a long weekend cramming as much grammar and phonetics that will fit into our brains…one more week to go!