je ne veux pas travailler - pink martini

we got out of italian class today and everything seemed perfect. the buildings made complicated shadow skylines on the cobblestone streets and women biked with small children sleeping draped across their backs.

it is our second week in ferrara. i love our italian class! we take a class at inlingua, a language school in town. Our professoressa is adorable, she tries to relate our activities to architecture (ie: explaining floor plan layouts to each other in italian). it's like girl scouts (eh kelly) -- never want to go. whine about it. get there. love it. ends too soon. the class is just the three of us so there is no pressure about our horrible accents or lack of vocabulary.

architecture school is another story. as in. it is hard. really hard. This week and next week the three of us are trying out a bunch of different courses to see what works and what doesn't. the classes only meet once a week. the catch is that when they meet... they meet for at least 4 hours. It is such a long time to try to concentrate, translate, and take notes. I think i will end up picking my classes based on which professors are easiest to understand: speak clear and don't have accents. So far I've been to a class on the theory and history of restoration, and one on techniques of representation in arch (graphics and programs basically). During the second class I was totally distracted by the two huge screens they had blinking renderings and short animations behind the professors. consequently i really have no idea what the class is about. i don't think i will be taking that...

the architecture school admits 150 new students each year. the program is considered the best in the country and is therefore pretty competitive to get in. I get the feeling people here take school very seriously and I am a bit nervous.... the other consequence of a small student body is that everyone else knows each other and they all stare at anyone new (us.). it isn't considered rude to stare here and people are pretty obvious about it. i haven't quite figured out what is the best response to that. do you stare back? ignore it?

We are still trying to figure out the night scene. Brenna and I went wandering around town on saturday night and it seemed totally dead. Wednesday is the big evening. All the students go to get drinks and socialize in the main square in front of the cathedral. We're planning to go tonight with the american girls we met in our building. should be fun....

Oh! our building manager, Giorgio, invited Brenna and I and a couple of other americans to his house for dinner tomorrow. He said he is a great cook and especially good with tiramisu! he said if i like his he will give me the recipe. :) I'm pretty excited for a real italian home dinner. I think he likes to practice his english with us and hopefully we can practice our italian.

still needing a bike....