Earthquakes and Karaoke
Fyi, I wrote this blog on the 4th, but am just now posting it....
Last week Megan, Lindsey, and I went to this Italian civic class that is a new requirement for immigrants (yes, we keep forgetting that we're immigrants now!). In this just lovely four hour video class, we learned (from and American, mind you) how to get our visas and do all the paperwork for our permessos that we already had to have done to have gotten to this point. Oh well. Did learn one interesting fact that I have seriously started looking into. Apparently, if your heritage is Italian as close back as your great-grandfather, you can claim Italian citizenship and have dual citizenship. So, since my grandpa is Italian and I have both of the cities and names of where my great grandmother and great grandfather came from before they took the boat to New York, it shouldn't be that hard for me to claim citizenship here. So I'm seriously looking into it so I don't have to go through all these paperwork and fees each year.
On an even more exciting note, I experienced my first earthquake last Friday. On the 25th there was an earthquake that hit near Lucca, Italia. It was a 4.5. Apparently Italy gets a lot of earthquakes?! Anyways, sitting on my bed when I felt the whole bedroom shake for a good half-minute. Then it stopped for a few seconds, and did it again for just as long. I kept thinking the whole time, "Is this an earthquake?" By the time I finally decided that it must have been, it was over and I hadn't even moved from my bed. I just sat there like a dumb bump on a log. Alan didn't feel it. Only half the people in our house felt it. I don't see how because it felt so strong to me.
Friday night we had Karaoke night! Quite a few people came. We sang songs in both Italian and English. We also made lots of good food. Alan and I ran a little photo booth for fun too. Arbin, one of Alan's students, came. He doesn't speak much English yet so some of us (who don't speak much Italian) had whole conversations with him using google translate on our ipods. It works really well! haha :) We found out that he's actually from Albania and is working here.
Kyle and Elizabeth had Alan and I over for dinner one night. They are a really sweet couple, and we enjoyed getting to spend some time with them before they got busy when the HUF students arrived a few days ago.
Saturday, Alan and I met one of Melissa C.'s friend. She came down for the weekend, and Alan and I went with Melissa to meet her at the station and to go out to dinner with her. I found out that Juzy and Melissa both studied in York for two weeks. York was only 45minutes away from where I lived in England, so we bonded over some familiar sites we had all been to.
Sunday evening I went to a piano recital. One of the ladies at church is a piano teacher so her students had their recital. A young violin teacher, Arianna, had some of her students play there too. I talked to Arianna for a while afterwards. She doesn't speak much English, so it was a little hard. I found out she lives near the Bible School. So I'm thinking about asking her for violin lessons in exchange for English lessons. We'll see...I probably don't have time for violin lessons, but it would be a neat way to get to know her. After the recital, we went to the station, and Megan got pinched on the butt by one of the homeless guys!! So we have all learned the phrase, "Non mi toccare" or "don't touch me!"
Met with my student Marisa for the first time this week. She is so sweet and absolutely on fire to read the Bible. Reading the Bible with her is like getting to have the experience of never having read the Bible as a young person and hearing about it for the first time as an adult - it's amazing! I never realized how much there is in the book of John. We didn't even finish the first chapter. It is opening my eyes, and I can feel the Holy Spirit working in this. Watching Marisa fall in love with Jesus, is making me fall in love with him more and more. I wish everyone could experience this.
Tuesday, I had my first grammar class. This class requires a lot more work. I have to actually prepare a worksheet and grammar exercises ahead of time. The other classes are really just discussion. This is more like what we are doing in our language school right now. So I prepared a lesson based on the text from Genesis one. My four students are so sweet and funny! I have to keep telling myself to talk slower, and I admit there were times we had to pull the dictionary out because I didn't know the Italian word for something. But they were very patient with me, and they are so eager to learn! I don't know how it came up, but somehow I ended up explaining the different between ya'll and you guys to them. haha Debbie told me later that she ran into them when they were talking outside after class (apparently they do this each week till midnight sometimes!). She asked them how their new teacher was, and after much thinking, one of the ladies said, "She's....she's....delicious!" :) I'll take that as a compliment.
Everybody has been sick in our house for the past two weeks, and it was finally my turn to catch it. I started feeling bad in the middle of class on Friday. I've had a fever since then. Today is the first day I've been able to stay awake for a couple of hours without feeling like my head was going to explode. So....that being said, I did not go to the lock-in that we hosted at the church building last night. I will let Alan write about that in the next blog.
Oh, and before I forget, we all did well on our final exam and our final oral test this past week! We start the second month of our course with new teachers on Monday. Prayers that we continue to pick up the language would be much appreciated.
Last week Megan, Lindsey, and I went to this Italian civic class that is a new requirement for immigrants (yes, we keep forgetting that we're immigrants now!). In this just lovely four hour video class, we learned (from and American, mind you) how to get our visas and do all the paperwork for our permessos that we already had to have done to have gotten to this point. Oh well. Did learn one interesting fact that I have seriously started looking into. Apparently, if your heritage is Italian as close back as your great-grandfather, you can claim Italian citizenship and have dual citizenship. So, since my grandpa is Italian and I have both of the cities and names of where my great grandmother and great grandfather came from before they took the boat to New York, it shouldn't be that hard for me to claim citizenship here. So I'm seriously looking into it so I don't have to go through all these paperwork and fees each year.
On an even more exciting note, I experienced my first earthquake last Friday. On the 25th there was an earthquake that hit near Lucca, Italia. It was a 4.5. Apparently Italy gets a lot of earthquakes?! Anyways, sitting on my bed when I felt the whole bedroom shake for a good half-minute. Then it stopped for a few seconds, and did it again for just as long. I kept thinking the whole time, "Is this an earthquake?" By the time I finally decided that it must have been, it was over and I hadn't even moved from my bed. I just sat there like a dumb bump on a log. Alan didn't feel it. Only half the people in our house felt it. I don't see how because it felt so strong to me.
Friday night we had Karaoke night! Quite a few people came. We sang songs in both Italian and English. We also made lots of good food. Alan and I ran a little photo booth for fun too. Arbin, one of Alan's students, came. He doesn't speak much English yet so some of us (who don't speak much Italian) had whole conversations with him using google translate on our ipods. It works really well! haha :) We found out that he's actually from Albania and is working here.
Kyle and Elizabeth had Alan and I over for dinner one night. They are a really sweet couple, and we enjoyed getting to spend some time with them before they got busy when the HUF students arrived a few days ago.
Saturday, Alan and I met one of Melissa C.'s friend. She came down for the weekend, and Alan and I went with Melissa to meet her at the station and to go out to dinner with her. I found out that Juzy and Melissa both studied in York for two weeks. York was only 45minutes away from where I lived in England, so we bonded over some familiar sites we had all been to.
Sunday evening I went to a piano recital. One of the ladies at church is a piano teacher so her students had their recital. A young violin teacher, Arianna, had some of her students play there too. I talked to Arianna for a while afterwards. She doesn't speak much English, so it was a little hard. I found out she lives near the Bible School. So I'm thinking about asking her for violin lessons in exchange for English lessons. We'll see...I probably don't have time for violin lessons, but it would be a neat way to get to know her. After the recital, we went to the station, and Megan got pinched on the butt by one of the homeless guys!! So we have all learned the phrase, "Non mi toccare" or "don't touch me!"
Met with my student Marisa for the first time this week. She is so sweet and absolutely on fire to read the Bible. Reading the Bible with her is like getting to have the experience of never having read the Bible as a young person and hearing about it for the first time as an adult - it's amazing! I never realized how much there is in the book of John. We didn't even finish the first chapter. It is opening my eyes, and I can feel the Holy Spirit working in this. Watching Marisa fall in love with Jesus, is making me fall in love with him more and more. I wish everyone could experience this. 
Tuesday, I had my first grammar class. This class requires a lot more work. I have to actually prepare a worksheet and grammar exercises ahead of time. The other classes are really just discussion. This is more like what we are doing in our language school right now. So I prepared a lesson based on the text from Genesis one. My four students are so sweet and funny! I have to keep telling myself to talk slower, and I admit there were times we had to pull the dictionary out because I didn't know the Italian word for something. But they were very patient with me, and they are so eager to learn! I don't know how it came up, but somehow I ended up explaining the different between ya'll and you guys to them. haha Debbie told me later that she ran into them when they were talking outside after class (apparently they do this each week till midnight sometimes!). She asked them how their new teacher was, and after much thinking, one of the ladies said, "She's....she's....delicious!" :) I'll take that as a compliment. 
Everybody has been sick in our house for the past two weeks, and it was finally my turn to catch it. I started feeling bad in the middle of class on Friday. I've had a fever since then. Today is the first day I've been able to stay awake for a couple of hours without feeling like my head was going to explode. So....that being said, I did not go to the lock-in that we hosted at the church building last night. I will let Alan write about that in the next blog. 
Oh, and before I forget, we all did well on our final exam and our final oral test this past week! We start the second month of our course with new teachers on Monday. Prayers that we continue to pick up the language would be much appreciated. 
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