Italiano Intensivo

After our magical first week, we were subjected to this little thing called "Italiano Intensivo"...for those that can't translate: Instensive Italian.

The week consisted of 4 hours of Italian class a day with 2 hours in the middle spent with Italian college students from the University of Florence we deemed the uscitas. We were split into groups and went with the uscitas to various places throughout the city. Or so we thought. On the very first day, my group was assigned to go to il teatro; thinking we were going to go catch a show at the theater, we thought it a little weird that we were shepherded into the Love Music Room. Then one of the uscitas started acting a little strangely and since she was speaking Italian, no one had a clue what hell she was saying. From what we could muster, she lost the tickets to the theater, meaning WE had to become the theater. That took us like 20 minutes to figure out.

We then proceeded to play essentially icebreaker games for the next two hours, the whole time thinking we were eventually going to the damn theater. Never happened. Instead, we had to convince another person in our group that there was a train behind them by yelling TRENO!!, do some yoga poses, and say our name with different emozioni.

While the whole theater thing was kind of weird, it introduced us to our uscitas who would be our guides for the week. My group was blessed to have Michele, Monica, and Martina. The three of them would lead us to the supermercato, ufficio postale, il bar (for coffee, obviously), and la libreria. Not many of the uscitas speak English but the ones that do had very specific instructions NOT to use it and ONLY speak Italian to us. So I'm sure they got a hoot out of watching us struggle with the language and stooping down to using hand gestures and help from others to get our point across to them.

At the end of the week, we had a final in our intensive Italian classes which everyone is pretty sure we all failed. To get our minds off of that, our last day was spent by having a fashion show with people dressing up in some weird Italian fashions, like B-Boy, Emo, Metalheads, Classy, etc.

This was followed by a Pizza Party at Il Pallaio Firenze, an amazing restaurant that fed us until we all almost died...

Speaking of eating until you borderline qualify of being guilty of Deadly Sin known as Gluttony, the following day we went to our Program Director Elizabeth's house for a BBQ. We were greeted by a group of Medieval-esque Italian trumpeters and flag bearers (one of which happened to be Elizabeth herself). The day was spent hanging out with each other, Elizabeth, and the uscitas in the hills of Tuscany with some of the best food we've ever tasted. Seriously, we think they're trying to fatten us all up for some devious plot. Or they're just really nice.

The weekend ended with some of the group heading for grape picking and others staying in the Villa due to either sickness or exhaustion. Much rest will be needed. Tomorrow classes begin. For real this time though.