Day 8 - First Week of Class Done

# Campari & Soda: 0, # Gelati: 1

I've completed one week of classes and I'm not sure if I'm any more fluent in Italian than when I started.  While we (mostly) talk Italian in class, the rest of the day I often use English.  I do use Italian in shops but ordering coffee & pastries, gelati or food doesn't require much in conversational skills.  

Class was better today.  We had a new teacher for the morning session, Luigi, who did a better job of keeping us on track and sticking to Italian.  We are still working on the conditional and the future tense though.  I hope next week we move on to something new.  Celina, the Argentinian woman, is moving to a more advanced class next week.  I'll miss her from class.  She is so cheerful and outgoing, she makes it fun for all of us.  I'm thinking of asking to be moved to a higher class too.  My conversational skills aren't there, but the grammar we are doing is all revision for me.  I could also arrange some individual conversation classes in the afternoon, but that is the nuclear option.  I'll wait and see how next week starts.  

In the meantime, tomorrow there are flea markets, including one devoted to second hand books.  I think I'll buy myself a book in Italian and made sure I read a few pages every day.  But something not too difficult.  Perhaps an Agatha Christie or something like that.  Nothing literary.

My plans for tomorrow are just puttering around the markets and then visiting the science museum.  I had planned to visit it this afternoon but by the time I got out of class and had had lunch it was almost 3pm and it shuts at 4pm.  (Lunch today was a poke bowl from a Japanese (!) place near the university.  I need more vegetables in my diet.)  Instead, this afternoon I just pottered around the western part of the city centre.  I'm in the east, where the students are.  The western part is more upmarket and has more tourists.  I had planned to get a gelati at the Cremeria Cavour as it is very highly rated.  However, the quese was out the door and down the street.  It is obviously listed in all the tourist guides.   Instead, I went to Gelateria Grom.  I only had to wait there because the couple in front of me took forever to make up their minds.   Their gelati is decent but nothing special.  Also I see they are a chain, owned by a multinational, these days.

On Sunday I'm going to Ravenna with Kim who I meet at the Academya.   We are going to see the famous mosaics.  It should be a fun trip but dreadful for my Italian as Kim is a complete beginner so we will be talking in English all day.

Monday is a public holiday here, plus it is generally a day when most restaurants are shut in any case.  I'm not sure what I'll do.  I'm thinking of walking to the Sanctuary of  the Madonna of San Luca outside Bologna.  It is a 4km walk but you can go the whole way under a covered portico which would be an experience.  It would also burn of few calories which would be a good idea.  My jeans are fitting a little more snugly already.