# Campari & Soda: 0, # Gelati: 0
Today I started my second week of class. We have a new teacher, Rodolfo, but the same group of students. He is a better teacher than Beatrice both in terms of explaining things and managing the class. However, he does speak more quickly than she did. More of a normal speed rather than deliberately slowing it down for us foreigners. All this is good, however we are covering the same material as last week. I studies the two past tenses - passato prossimo and imperfetto - the first semester last year back home in Melbourne, the first semester this year in Melbourne, last week here in Bologna and now we are doing it again?! I still make mistakes with both tenses but more practice will fix that. I can do that in my own time. I've asked Andrea, the owner of the school, to move me into the next higher class tomorrow. Wish me luck.
After class Kim and I had lunch at Berberè Pizzeria near my apartment. Their claim to fame is that they use a sourdough pizza base made from wholemeal flours, so you can pretend eating their pizza is healthy. They are certainly tasty.
After lunch we went on a school excursion to the church of Santa Maria della Vita, which I have to confess I found rather dull. Still it was pleasant to chat, in our woeful Italian, with the guide Diana and two other students from the school, Paolo and Dorotea, who also came along. Dorotea is new and is from Germany. She is fluent in English and is adding Italian to her list of languages. All these multi-lingual Europeans are making Kim and I feel very uneducated.
After the excursion I just came back to the apartment to study up on the grammar I'll be learning about in class tomorrow - the subjunctive. I've taught it to myself with Duolingo but that isn't the same as really learning it. I was amused to read that, according to Google, most Italians don't bother using the subjunctive in conversation. It is generally used by people who are trying to show (off) how educated they are.
The other class excursions this week are the cooking class tomorrow (which I've already done) and an afternoon trip to Modena on Friday. I would have liked to go to Modena. It is the home of balsamic vinegar but I'm headed to Vienna on Friday evening to spend the weekend with Vanessa. It blows my mind to be going to another country for the weekend.
Tomorrow afternoon I'm doing a food tour with Delicious Bologna. I'm guessing the "rice cake" in the English description of the foods we try is actually means arancini. It's odd that they bothered to translate that but not "tigella modenese". I guess I'll find out what it all is tomorrow.
Now to plan something to do on Thursday afternoon.
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