Wednesday 6.20.07

Today in class we learned more vocabulary words and the conjugation of the regular –are and –ere verbs. There are so many verbs in Italian that are similar to Spanish verbs. We also played Pictionary, which was interesting. My team kept getting hard words like “match”, “sing”, and ”play” while the other team got words like pizza and scissors. Despite that, it was really fun; probably the most fun we’ve had all week.
I was asked if the style of teaching at Dante Aligheri was good for learning Italian. This was a difficult question to answer because I haven’t taken an introductory language class in nine years. Even then, I had some Spanish under my belt from high school. I honestly forgot how hard it is to learn a new language from scratch. I feel like, if I ever do this trip again, I definitely want to take a semester of Italian first. I definitely feel lost because I’m not able to communicate with people like I would like.
In the afternoon, I finally posted to my blog. The Internet Train, the internet café near our apt is great. We can get in and get out without any problems. After the Internet Train, we headed over to the bank on Banchi Di Sopra. This bank is the oldest bank in Siena and it houses some great Senese paintings. Too bad we didn’t get to go in and see them. Apparently, the website that tells you how great these paintings are forgets to mention that they’re not available to the public. The man in the lobby was extremely rude to Celeste. But she held her own.
Afterwards the group split up and Tiffany and I went on the hunt for some shoes. My canvas converse split a hole on the side and they were making my feet hurt. So I wanted to find some running or walking shoes. Every store wanted an obscene amount of money for the plainest and ugliest shoes. So we gave up for the night.
When we got home we set up the laptop and watched Freedom Writers with Hillary Swank on DVD. It was a good movie, but had an unnecessary amount of profanity. The theme, though, was good and I even thought that we could watch it at diversity committee retreat. It gave an interesting prospective about how the educational system works in poor areas and in particular in one school in Los Angeles. If you get a chance to watch this movie, it is really good. The advertisement made it look like the typical white teacher going in to save the helpless black kids. But under the surface it was so much more than that. The movie is based on a true story, which if you watch the DVD extras, you get to see more of the real teacher and students about whom the movie is based.