Today started off with another lesson of Italian with our kind and exuberant instructor, Paola, at the Italian Idea language school. The class is taught through immersion and everyone seems to enjoy our time learning the language of our surroundings. We have been able to apply the skills learned in the classroom to our everyday lives being here in Rome. Many people in the program, including myself, had little to no prior knowledge of Italian before arriving in Rome but this class has certainly benefited us during our time here. We now have the confidence to enter a cafe, supermarket, or bakery and successfully interact with the people there.
After taking in some lunch, everyone headed to the Rome Center for a history lecture. During this week, we will be spending time working our way up to the Renaissance before we journey to Florence next week. Today we covered the Black Plague, and its effects specifically on Italy. To aid our discussion, we discussed the introduction in our assigned reading, The Decameron, by Giovanni Boccaccio. The introduction gives a good summary of the perspective of people during this time period and their reactions to this devastating historic event.
Due to the lack of activity today, I would like to take this opportunity for people to get to know one of the people with the program, my roommate Bryan Chee. Bryan is a junior from Hawaii who has shown his love for cooking throughout this trip. At our apartment in Via Baccina, he has cooked several times for others in the program and done so very successfully. Our Italian instructor seems to enjoy his presesnce in class, as she calls him "bello," beautiful, whenever she takes attendence at the beginning of class. If you'd like to know more, feel free to comment on his blog and ask him a question. Note: This interview was done with the permission of Il Bello, Bryan Chee. The shoes below were purchased at the market by Bryan.
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