The First Weekend

This weekend, we decided to see the sights of outlying Venice, mainly the islands of Murano and Burano. Murano is famous for their glasswork, and Burano is famous for their hand made lace. These islands were much more run down than Venice itself, but were still beautiful. They actually had grass! :) It had been a while since I had seen honest to God grass. All of the glass work was amazingly beautiful, but very very expensive! After Murano, we went to Burano. Not only is Burano famous for its lace, it is famous for its multi-colored houses! They come in every color of the rainbow and are definatley a sight to see! We (Sarah, Gloria, and I) ate at this little restaurant in Burano, and had a actual dinner for the first time since we've been here! Mostly it's just pizza on the run! I had the tuscan grilled chicken, which was great, Gloria had a shrimp and zucchini pasta, and Sarah got spaghetti. :) Dinner was good, the house red wine was amazing!~ The funniest thing happened while we were there though. A stray cat kept walking under the tables, not so much looking for food, but more like it was its natural path it always took. However, it saw Sarah's purse, and curled up right on top of it! It was even funnier because she is afraid of cats! He eventually went away, which was sad cuz he was so cute. After dinner, we saw a concert in the park. The Italian band was singing mostly American songs, though, like CCR and Bon Jovi! I loved it and knew almost all the words, and Sarah and Gloria just laughed at me doing impersonations of the singer. :) Good times! After the concert, we caught the boat to the Lido again to see Sam (my English friend who is coaching the rugby team there on the Lido). We hung out for a while, had a few cocktails on the beach, then headed home.
On Sunday, we just relaxed on the beach all day, working on our tan and studying Italian. It is so much harder than I thought it would be! I was doing okay for a while, because my background of Spanish was pulling me along, but now I am just so lost! Our first teacher of the day, Bette, does absolutely nothing to try to catch you up again though. She acts like you are an idiot for not knowing the words she just wrote up on the board (which we have never seen by the way), then just tells you to study. THere is one little problem though, if I don't know the rules or the words that we will be studying the NEXT day, how in the world can I study? Like with the rules for conjugating verbs with adjectives and nouns. Some of them you change the ending and use the verb essere, but some of them you do NOT change the endings and use the verb avere. I have no idea how to tell which one to use when, and she will not explain to me. She just says "Studio." Thanks, thats a load of help.
Thankfully though, our second teacher is very very very helpful. I wish we had her the whole day instead of Bette! Her name is Silvia, and she is full of spunk and always willing to stop what she is saying until everyone in the class completely understands. She is amazing! Our first period today, I was just about ready to throw in the towel because I had no idea what was going on , and Bette kept calling on me to make examples of me. Almost everyone in the class has taken some Italian before, except me, Sarah, and Julia. So, she makes examples of us in front of everybody and treats us like complete idiots. I cannot stand her.
However, Silvia was our teacher after the break, and I understood every single word in her class, and if I did not understand a word or two, she was more than helpful in explaining it to me until she was sure I had completely grasped the concept. She is so nice when she does it too, not like Bette who might as well be burning you to death with her stare. :S
So long story short, I am taking an afternoon in, doing laundry and studying up Italian. My class decided to meet up for dinner tonight, and afterwards, we are going to have a huge study session. Anything that we do not understand, we are bringing to the study group so that someone who DOES understand that part can make it much clearer for us. We considered taking a private lesson or two to clear things up, but the cost was out of this world. For an hour of lessons, it was €48, which is about $70 American. I don't think so!!! So we are going to try to cheat the system by answering each others questions, then if there is something we all just don't understand, we can ask Silvia after class, because we know that she will help us. :) :D Thank God for helpful people!
Sometime this week we are going to go around and see the museums and churches in Venice. This weekend, a group of us is heading to Florence from Friday night to Sunday night! :) Should be a blast! The weekend after that, we are going to fly to Rome, and then the next weekend, I will be flying home! :) It is going by so fast I can hardly believe it! See you all soon, and take care! Ciao, Becky