Day 19 - Classes Still Hard

# Campari & Soda: 0, # Gelati: 1

This morning's grammar class was yet more on the use of the gerund, but I think I understand what is going on now.  However, my confidence was shaken when we got to the "conversation" segment.  Here we did a review of the use of two past tenses - the passato prossimo and the imperfetto - and the subtle difference between "I had to" in both tenses.  To do this we had an exercise where we had to pick the right tense for each verb in a short text.  I had done this very exercise in my first week of classes.  I still got some of it wrong.   On the plus side, I made fewer mistakes this time.

I had lunch with Kim at the Trattoria Giampi e Ciccio.  This was the place I'd had lunch at on Easter Sunday.  The same grumpy owner/maitre d' was in charge.  He seemed to decide if they were full or not depending on whether he liked the look of you, not based on how many tables were free.  Fortunately, Kim and I passed inspection and were permitted to eat.  We are trying to decide if we go to Venice on Saturday.  Kim has been recently but it has been a good 15 years since I've visited.  The alternative is to hire a car and visit some small towns in the region.  The only drawback witht this plan is I refuse to drive here in Italy and Kim is another person who has let her driver's licence expire.

After lunch I did some basic home maintenance - grocery shopping and dealing with the rubbish.  Dealing with rubbish is a big deal here as paper, bottles & cans, organic waste, plastic waste, and then everything else are all handled differently.  I think I got it right.  I managed to dispose of the pizza box which was my main concern.

I then was supposed to do some studying.  I try to spend at least 1 hour, preferably 2, each afternoon cramming some more Italian into my head.  However, I got side tracked looking at real estate websites.  Vanessa and I talked about going halves in an apartment in Calabria at the sea side.  She could have a summer holiday there in, say July, while I could have it for all of August.  We weren't entirely sober at the time we came up with this plan but I still think it has merit.  Check out this place.  It is bigger than we need but dirt cheap and just look at the view!

After actually doing some study, I eventually wandered out for some dinner.  There is a street nearby with a good half dozen restaurants.  However, I wasn't as spoilt for choice as that sounds, as many of them specialised in fish and I'm not a fan.  I ended up at the Antica Trattoria Spiga.   For my "main" I had tagliatelle with pumpkin and saffron.  Sadly this was a mistake as the pumpkin made the dish vaguely sweet.  I might go back another time and try something more stricly savory, as my other dishes were good and the waitress was pleasant.

We have to write a brief diary entry of a bad day we've had using the two past tenses correctly for class tomorrow.  Wish me luck.