Josh and I are just finishing week one of a month-long intensive language course. We are studying Italian for four hours a day, five days a week. It is really fun to take a class with your spouse–at least for the first week. Stay tuned.
When we were in Lake Como, there was a copy of Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert in our Airbnb. I had read the book before and remember feeling that the author was insufferable and also disingenuous. But, I re-read the Italian section anyway, just to get the perspective of a semi-middle aged woman moving to Italy on a semi-premeditated-whim.
So, OK, there are a few threads of commonality. While I am not gaining inches on my waistline daily by eating mountains of gelato and pasta, Gilbert did sign up for four hours of Italian study a day. She then proceeded to pepper her Italy chapters with her delight of the Italian language and of all the sweet phrases she was learning. I promise I will not be that person. Please complain if I start to write a lot of words in Italian and then tell you why I love them so much.
But in Italy, if someone is talking about what time their doctor’s appointment is, it can sound like poetry. It is truly a beautiful and lyrical language.
Our Italian class meets every morning from 9:30am to 1:30pm. It’s in our neighborhood, on a stately street of buildings with beautiful facades. Josh and I walk there together every morning. The first day I crossed my fingers that the class was not full of college students. Thankfully, it is not. There is a lovely married French woman (Soraya) with a daughter, a young, beautiful woman from Niger (Rosemary) , a Norwegian mechanical engineer (Andrea), a gorgeous Brazilian housewife (Poliana), a Taiwanese woman with a great sense of humor (Peju) and a beefy German (Michele) living here with his girlfriend. Our teacher (Monica) is a 40-something woman who comes to class on a lime-green Vespa, and wears converse low-tops with a skirt and a t-shirt every day. Very chic.
Four hours is a long time to do anything, even something fun like learning Italian. Monica does a great job at keeping us engaged, but by the 11:30am break, we are bee-lining it to the coffee machine. Lavazza coffee is based in Torino, and there is a coffee machine that makes incredibly delish coffees of all types. We all take our various shots of caffeine and gamely head back for the last hour+. This is my favorite dialogue so far in class. I have translated into English.
Monica [teacher]: What are you scared of, Poliana?
Poliana : Frogs.
Monica: Oh! Peju, are you scared of frogs?
Peju: (deadpan) No. We eat frogs.
If that isn’t funny to you, then you obviously haven’t been sitting in a bright orange classroom for four hours. And that is how it is going in Italian 101.