Le Lezioni (Classes)

Hello everyone!

So by now I've had a full week of classes, and other than the fact that it's a lot of class per week, I'm really enjoying it! I finally finalized my schedule, and I'll be taking 4 classes, along with an internship+seminar that I can get credit for like a class. My classes are all 2 hours long (whew) but most of the professors include a 5 minute break in the middle (pausa) and then finish a few minutes early, thankfully. So. First, the classes: 

I have Advanced Italian on Monday and Friday mornings (my only Friday class), which is going really well so far. It's a bit challenging, considering some other people in my class have been taking Italian for a lot longer than I have. But it should help me improve, so that's a plus! I also love my professor, Alice (pronounced A-lee'-chay, which actually means 'anchovy' in Ialian!) - she's young, really sweet, and really enthusiastic about the subject, so that helps us get excited for it as well. We have about 10 people in the class, and it's a good group of people so it's been fun so far.

Next, I have this Art History class called "Comparing Siena and Florence During the Renaissance", and it's on Monday and Thursday afternoons. So far, it's sadly not as exciting as I had hoped. Yes, we're covering amazing works of art, but the issue is that our Professor, Sara, speaks very little English... and she's teaching the class in English. So that has proven to be a big problem, even in our first few classes. Most of the time in class is spent by her reading off her English notes about the works, not really knowing what she's saying, and asking us if her English is correct. Don't get me wrong, she's a really sweet person; she just graduated from the equivalent of grad school last year so she's new to this, and she tries really hard so I can't get mad at her. And her little mistakes definitely lighten the mood of the slow-moving class - for example, yesterday we were studying an altarpiece called "The Birth of the Virgin", but on her powerpoint she had written "The Bird of the Virgin". When one girl asked about it (because she really thought that's what it was called, and there is clearly no bird in the image) Sara didn't understand at first - but when another girl translated for her, and told her that she had written "Bird" instead of "Birth", she burst out laughing, and so did the rest of the class. Soooo that class should be interesting. :) Oh and we're also going to be taking a few trips for class, to Florence and other Tuscan cities nearby, and it will be nice to see what we're studying!

Another class I'm taking is called "The Literature of Love", which is taught in Italian, and is on Monday and Thursday afternoons as well. We only have 4 people in the class, all girls, and it is INTENSE. Our professor speaks so quickly, and his voice is really deep and monotone so it's difficult to understand sometimes. He never speaks English, and he just whips through his lecture for the entire 2 hours. I feel somewhat accomplished because I can understand almost everything he says, even when he's talking a mile a minute, but you definitely can't lose concentration for even a second in that class. We've had 3 lessons so far, and after each one I've had a headache. I'll have to remember to take some medicine before that class or something... But it's a really great subject - we're going to read works by Dante, Petrarch, Bocaccio, and other Italian writers, whom I've always wanted to study. Plus, it's a direct equivalent for a class I would need to take at Richmond for my Italian major, so it works out really well! It'll be tough, but I'm excited for the challenge.

My fourth class is the required core course, called "Presence of the Past", and it's basically a class about the history and art history of Siena and the region of Tuscany. It's also taught in Italian, and it has about 11 people in it (basically our advanced Italian class plus one girl from intermediate). Our professor, thankfully, is very understanding of the fact that Italian is not our first language, so even though she never speaks English during class (she doesn't know much anyway) she'll slow down or repeat herself if she can tell that we're not fully understanding her. She also seems extremely knowledgeable on the subject, so that is making us all excited to learn. The class is twice a week like my other classes, but the Tuesday class is lecture, while the Wednesday class will always be a field study somewhere in Siena. So on those days we'll meet our professor somewhere in town to go see what we've studied, and she'll teach us on site (kind of like a guided tour). There is also an English section of "Presence of the Past", and they'll be going to the same sites at the same time for the field study, so it'll be the whole group of us together. I haven't had one of these field studies yet -our first is tomorrow - so I'll let you know how it goes. And I think I'm most excited for this class, especially because it seems like it'll focus on art history even more than my art history class will, and I think it'll be the most interesting Italian-taught class. But we'll see! :)

Now, the internship. I had no idea that I was going to be doing this, but a girl I know was talking about it and it sounded like a lot of fun... So I initially applied to get an internship at a museum in Siena, but sadly none were accepting interns at the time. However, I'm really excited about my new endeavor: I found out that I'll be teaching English to kids at an elementary school! I don't know the details yet - I should be getting them this week - but I'm so excited to see what it'll be like. I love working with kids, and for some reason I think little Italian children are the cutest things ever. So I'm sure it'll be great. :) And as a nice bonus, little kids don't usually know all the proper grammar, so I won't feel stupid if I say something wrong in Italian. (And I probably won't even need to speak Italian that much anyway, since they'll need to be hearing English.) Along with the internship, IES requires that we take an internship seminar, which is once a week for two hours on Wednesday afternoons. Our professor is quite the character and is really enthusiastic about us learning about other cultures and expanding our world views and whatnot. He speaks English really well, but since all 5 of us doing internships are in advanced Italian, he said he would speak Italian more often in order to help us. But then he ended up speaking some combination of Italian and English, and it was even more difficult to follow than if he had just spoken Italian... Haha but that class will definitely be fun. He told us that we'll even do a bunch of our lectures on site in places around Siena. Like for example, he mentioned that during one lecture we'll be talking about Italian healthcare in comparison with that of other countries, and we'll hold class at Santa Maria della Scala, one of the first hospitals in Italy (which is now an art museum). I'm actually not sure what else we'll be doing in that class (none of us are, really) but I'm excited nonetheless!

So those are my classes! And this may all be very boring, but if you'd like to know my schedule as well, it's as follows:

Monday:

9-11  Italian

2-4  Renaissance Art

4-6  Literature of Love

Tuesday:

2-4  Presence of the Past

Wednesday:

2-4  Presence of the Past (field study)

4-6  Internship Seminar

Thursday:

2-4  Literature of Love

4-6  Renaissance Art    <-- (these two switch times on Thursday - weird, I know)

 

Friday:

9-11  Italian

So there you go! And I'll also have a few hours per week of teaching English, but again I won't know the schedule until sometime this week or even next week. 

I'll try my hardest to post again soon, but until then, arrivederci! :)