Week 2

So I haven't posted much this week, I know, and the reason for that isn't that I've been super busy like last week, but that this week just hasn't been as exciting. Last week they had us running around on a schedule (group lunch at noon, group dinner at 8, various meetings throughout the day, a couple tours) so there was a lot of hanging out, going out at night, and exploring and reveling in the newness of things.

This week, we started classes. With class descriptions like Film in Italy, Images in Christianity, and Italian Pop Music: 1950s to Present and its American Influence, as well as Elementary Italian Language, you'd think that these would be fairly easy and fun, right? Weeell, not exactly. We've only started the Music in History and Italian Language courses, both of which are taught by Italian professor Dino Bosco. Dino seems like a really nice guy, but he has a pretty deep voice and a kind of heavy accent that makes it hard to understand him sometimes.

In the Music course, he doesn't really follow any sort of logical way of lecturing; he seems to be more just winging it and having a conversation than teaching, so it makes it really difficult to figure out what to take notes on and what he expects from us in this class. All we've done so far pretty much is talk about what music we like, listen to some songs from YouTube on his computer (country & bluegrass on Day 1, regional Italian music on Day 2) and then discuss what we think about them. As far as I know, there aren't any tests or such in this class - grading is just on participation, behavior, and then 50% of our grade is on a final paper that we haven't really heard anything about. There also isn't a set schedule for this class for the semester; this week we had it on Mon & Wed from 10am to noon, but my impression is that that will vary week by week until we fulfill the number of hours required for a 4-credit class. It's an interesting (and I will say seemingly inefficient) system. We thankfully got the schedule for the rest of the semester for our other classes and some other local visits they have planned for us, but there still seem to be a couple holes. For example, it seems that all of our group trips are only to local places; I was under the impression that we'd get at least one big trip to a city like Rome or something like that.. one of the other girls said that they went to Florence a previous semester, so if they don't take us someplace further like that, I think that will be seriously unfair. Guess we'll have to see, I'm gonna ask our RA about it next time I see him.

Italian I've actually been enjoying so far, Dino teaches it at a rather fast pace, but I'm managing fine so far because the structure is similar to Spanish. If I hadn't ever taken a language class before though, I would be sooo entirely lost. So even though he hasn't lost me (yet), I'm definitely going to have to do some studying up on this. He hasn't assigned us any homework or anything like that, it's all personal study methods that's going to get us through this course, so I'm going to need to get some kind of routine down and make sure I'm not slacking.

We also met Professor Lingua yesterday, who will be our professor for the religions class. He met with us yesterday to give us an "introduction" to what we'll be doing next week, which is attending the Summer School in Cuneo at the University of Turin for two of the four or five days that it goes for. It basically seems to me kind of like a political science meets religion conference, with lectures by various professors and grad students from everywhere. He basically lectured for three hours yesterday on what we're going to be lectured on next week. Granted, it does seem like an interesting subject (all of the sessions/lectures will be discussing the role of religion in the contemporary public sphere), but it still definitely isn't going to be the most exciting thing in the world.. if three hours was just an "introduction," I'm not sure I can handle what we're gonna be doing next week. I don't really know what to expect.. I think the lectures may be in Italian, and then they'll have to translate them into English for us, so it may take twice as long and my attention span may end up being twice as short (just like a museum tour we took earlier this week where the museum lady only knew Italian, and then Dan, our RA, and Dino had to translate afterwards, turning it into a two and a half hour tour). Sooo we'll see how that goes next week, too.

Despite the not-so-exciting classes thus far, I still love being here. I was hanging out on our kitchen terrace the other day, just taking in the view of red rooftops, clock towers, hearing random Italian chatter in the distance, and it started to finally sink in that I'm actually here. I'm in Italy, and not just for vacation (although that's what it felt like last week, which made this week's classes that much harder to sit through) - I'm here for another three months. I get to see these red rooftops, walk these cobblestone streets, smell the chocolate from Ferrero, and laugh at the unsynchronized clock bells for quite a while longer. That's kind of awesome. :)

Since classes go only Monday through Thursday, yesterday started the weekend for me, which I could definitely get used to. While a couple groups of people are already going out on personal travel - Chelsea and the San Rocco girls are checking out Cinque Terre and three of my housemates, Nikki, Elizabeth, and Sarah, plus Andrew S. & James are headed off to Lake Maggiore - I'm just planning to have a relaxing weekend here in Alba. I could've gone with the latter group to Lake Maggiore, but it was really last-minute planning, and I'm not ready to be that spontaneous. I plan on going to the market again tomorrow morning and will probably attempt to get some studying for Italian in as well. I'm boring, I know, haha, but I'm content that way. I still have three more months to get out there - for now, I'm gonna spend some time in my new home.