Classes begin!!

So classes started this week, that's why I haven't been able to post lately, but figured during my down time (I have a 3-hour break between classes) I could get everyone caught up-to-date on what's going on in the land of Firenze, Italia! 

I've actually learned quite a bit in my first week of classes.  First, we'll start with ITAL 101.  The most basic course for learning the Italian language.  The class consists of 10 students (8 girls, 2 guys) and one professor who is extremely fluent in the Italian language.  He has quite a bit of character, and almost reminds me of somebody I know because he's just an overall nice professor.  No homework (yet) for this class, but I'm sure it's going to be heading my way this evening (this is the second class I have tonight).  We've been doing basics such as greetings (ie. Ciao, Buongiorno, Arriverderci, Buon Serra).  In addition to learning numbers and the alphabet.  He reminded us that we need to clear our minds of everything we know about our current language (it's harder than you would think), but he promises that if we REALLY put our minds to it, in 2 months, we'll be pretty fluent and be able to understand every day conversations.

Next class is Quarters of Florence:  A History.  This class is probably the most interesting class (so far).  My professor is a little difficult to understand at times, nonetheless, he has a TON of energy and lots of excitement towards the city of Firenze.  During the first 2.5 hour lecture, he gave a brief introduction to how the city started, and where everything USED to be located.  We then took a short 5-minute walk down the street to where the local market used to be, in addition to the middle of the city where farmers, traders, locals, performers, would spend their days.  The city dates back before the 5th Century B.C!  Unbelievable.  However, a lot has been torn down and rebuilt over the last few centuries.  But after time of studying old materials and maps, we were able to get a feel for what the city was like.  I'll take some pictures later and explain in another post, I didn't have my camera at the time.

 My third class, my wine and culture class.  We tasted a whopping 4 different wines!  Who knew one could learn so much about wine, taste, texture, feel, boldness, bitterness, making, and origin of wine in 2.5 hours!  I feel like I'm going to know so much more about wine when I come home, and I can start making better buying decision when it comes to selecting Italian wines.  The class includes a tasting of over 70+ wines all around Italy, including a few excursions around Italy for field trips to the actual estates on where the wines are created.  There is a surcharge, but it's totally worth every single Euro.

By the way, the symbol for a Euro is €.  Also, they don't have decimal places like we do, they use comma's.  For example, one of the books I bought today was €4,80.  Not bad for a textbook.

My fourth and final class, in which I had earlier today, is Intercultural Communications.  I have a pretty young professor with a great sense of humor.  We didn't do much in that class besides get to know one another.  However, it's going to be fun working with students from multiple other states in the U.S., and 3 other countries including: Mexico, Canada, and S. Korea.

Thanks for keeping up with my blogs everyone, let me know if you would like for me to highlight something!