Day 5 - Still Going To Class

# Campari & Soda: 0, # Gelati: 1

Today was the second day of class and everyone showed up.  Nobody has decided it wasn't for them after all.  One of my classmates, Luigi, is an American lawyer and is still working so he only shows up for half the class.  Another classmate, Lindy, is also an American working remotely.  She comes to the entire 4 hour class, but then works for her US employer from 2pm to 10pm.  There are downsides to being a digital nomad it seems to me.  Of perhaps, just downsides to not being retired.  However, Luigi has no plans to retire, even though he is old enough.  He says he likes working too much.  Personally I much prefer not working.

The weather today was bitterly cold.  Worse than yesterday.  Even though it was sunny it only got to a maximum of 12C.  Tomorrow is going to be more of the same.  The later part of the week is going to be warmer, but only because it will be raining.  The clouds will mean it won't get so cold overnight.  Fun times.  I'm so glad I stumbled across that cat charity shop and bought that coat and scarf.  Today I was merely cold rather than a frozen ice block.

Once I got to class, I was OK as the room was toasty warm.  Two of my classmates wear face masks but the rest of us are ignoring Covid and don't.  It is too hard to communicate already, without being muffled by masks.  The mask wearers would prefer we also keep the windows open but they got no support for that idea today.   

Today's class was all about the conditional tense and when to use it and when the future tense would be the appropriate choice instead.  We are really scampering along.  Back home in Australia we would have spent several weekly lessons just on the tenses we covered yesterday.  We would have two lessons on this material, rather than just one 2 hour lesson.  

For our coffee/conversation pause we went to a different bar.  The pastries were better at this one but the coffee was bad - a mortal sin in Italy.  The set up was better as the seating area was larger and more effort was spent keeping class groups together.  However, I caught up with the American woman I'd met yesterday (her name is Kim) and we just sat together chatting in English.  I'll try harder tomorrow.

After the break, we were each given a problem and had to come up with 5 different pieces of advice for solving it, using the conditional tense.  My problem was to give advice to someone who wanted to stop smoking which was a challenge for me as I don't understand why anyone would do it in the first place.  Of my 5 options the one that was received the best was to eat a piece of chocolate everytime they  would have reached for a cigarette.  You will end up fat, but you'll be happy.  Martin was required to give advice to someone who hated their job.  He suggested finding a rich wife instead and then quitting.  I'm not sure the Italian phrases we are learning will have much practical use but it was fun coming up with them.

After class I had lunch at a pizzeria near my apartment, Pizzeria Spacca Napoli.  I had a pizza with tomato, buffalo mozzarella, basil, hot salami and ricotta.  It was delicious but enormous.  At least 40cm in diameter.  I had what was described as a single glass of wine but it was at least 250ml.  After all this I had a quite decent coffee.  The total was 16€, only 4€ than yesterday's lunch but vastly better quality.  I have bought some tortellini to have tortellini in brodo for dinner.  However, it is now 9pm and I'm still digesting lunch and can't face the thought of eating any dinner, so it will have to keep.

This afternoon's excursion was a visit to the International Museum of Music.  It wasn't as much fun as yesterday's tour.  Our guide was my teacher, Beatrice, and a fellow teacher Giulia.  Both are very early 20s and are still studying languages at the University of Bologna themselves.  They didn't provide any commentary on the museum exhibits but just chatted together, although they were always happy to answer any of our questions.  I really think they should do more to engage us and help us practice our Italian.  That is their job after all.  One of the others on the tour was the Englishwoman I'd met yesterday so I had a pleasant time but we only spoke English, so it wasn't much of a learning experience.

After the museum we all went to a gelateria near the school, the Cremeria La Vecchia Stalla.   I had pistachio and chocolate with sour cherries.  Both flavours were tasty but I think the gelateria near my apartment I went to on Sunday was better.  I've been told about a good one on the same street as the Cremeria but at the end closer to the city walls, rather than the city centre.  I shall have to try it out to determine where it ranks.

I thought about asking some of my classmates on the tour to join me for a drink or even dinner but I was too cold and too full of food, so I just said "see you tomorrow" in my best Italian and scurried home to my apartment to wrap up warm.

Tomorrow afternoon is the cooking class.  Andrea (the school's owner) was very insistent on making sure I was OK with dogs when I signed up for it, which I found a bit odd.  It turns out that one man who went to the class last week has a phobia about dogs.  The cooking class teacher has several of them.  He completely freaked out.  Andrea and the teacher apologised profusely, completely refunded his money, offered to take him straight back to Bologna and buy him an excellent meal at a good restaurant, but he wasn't placated.  He was enraged that the teacher would allow such "filthy animals" in the house and wanted everyone else to agree with him.  When nobody did, he got even angrier.  It must have been a very awkward time all round.