Well, it's September 24 and I just had my first class of the semester (although it was written on all of the school calendars that classes started the 10th). My first class was Glottologia at the Facoltà di Lettere e Filosofia at Università di Firenze. What is glottologia you may ask? Well, I found out definitively myself today. It's the study of indo-european languages most of which are dead: sanscrit and a bunch of others. I haven't decided 100% if I'm definitely taking this course or not, I'm going to try it out for a couple more days, but at times I found the professor a bit difficult to follow (a lot of technical terms that I don't know in Italian). Later today I have another course that I'm checking out, Contemporary History with Paul Ginsborg (some of you might know his name, his very famous in the Italian Studies world). I'm more excited about the possibility of having him as a professor than I am of actually taking the course, so we'll see. And the last course from which I will choose only 1 is General Linguistics. But that class doesn't start until Wednesday so I have some time. I'm most excited that I think I've got some new friends from this first class already and they are in their 3rd year and they study Ancient Literature!
So, like I said, I'll only be taking 1 class at Università di Firenze and then I'll be taking 4 classes at the Sede (Middlebury's "campus"). Right now I'm signed up for Didattica, Estetica, Letteratura, and Unione Europea. But I may drop one of the courses so that I can do an independent study. I was initially not going to do one but I'm a procrastinator and you need good self discipline for that, but I went to the meeting about it and there are so many check points and meetings along the way that I think I would do just fine. We'll see, I need a great topic first. Any way, the classes at the Sede start tomorrow on a provisional schedule so as you can see, things are going to pick up real quickly.
So, if classes didn't start until now, what have I been up to since Sept 1? Well, a ton of stuff. The school had various types of orientations that started on the 7th and continued (about 1 a day) until the 14th. Then I decided, since I knew I had a week free, I'd go visit some friends. I stayed with my friends Sandro and Ionela (the pastry guy!). It was really great staying with them, it was very relaxing and since they are close to AUR I got to see all my friends and ex-coworkers from the school. I went out to lunch with them one day and I did a little bit of networking to start letting them know that I'll have my masters in June. I also got to meet up with my friend Sabrina. We went out to dinner with her friends (it was a ladies night) at one of my favorite places to eat, Zio Severino, and this just goes to show how well she knows me - I didn't even mention the name but she remembered how much I like it so she surprised me. I also got to see Tommaso, a friend of Sandro and Ionela's that loves to recite Italian epic poetry and have me tell him who the author is and what the title of the piece is. Yikes, he had me embarrassed because I've forgotten a lot. I'm going to be studying hard this year!
Other than that, I've been hanging out with my new Middlebury Masters friends. We're a really small group so it's a really good thing that we all get along for the most part. I'm still sans internet at home, which is starting to get really frustrating, but I'm making it work.
Also, for all of my GoT fans out there (Sarah)...I just saw the best t-shirt. It has a direwolf and it says, "Adopt a Dire Wolf". I want one! Also, with all of this free time I've been able to do some reading again. I finished book 1 of GoT and a Chuck Palahniuk book. Now I'm on to Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.
Well, I can't imagine that I have anything else to say right now. I think I've got it all in there, all the important things at least. Oh, I remember, I am now taking reservations for people to come visit me!
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