Soooo I'm beginning to second guess my last post...time may be more casual in Italy, but the Italians sure move at a quick pace when it comes to the classroom.

Welcome to my Italian class: On the first day, we skipped over the usual, you know, basic stuff that you should probably teach stupid Americans who study abroad in Italy without the slightest knowledge of the language. However, instead of teaching numbers, salutations, or even the Italian alphabet, Professor Roberto Bazzouli jumped right in, rambling about who knows what in Italian and posing questions to the class that could only be answered with blank stares and snickers. When he became frustrated, he moved onto the next lesson: conjugating verbs. (Like are you kidding???) The rest of the class continued about the same, moving at such a fast pace that when I would start to make a little sense out of what was happening (thank goodness I took five years of Spanish), he would be on to something else.

So, with a lot of struggle and use of my Italian-English cheat sheet, I can now:

1) Ask for someone's phone number. (Not sure why I'd need to know that right off the bat.)

2) Explain where I am from. (Already a little too obvious for my own good. These Italians can pick out an American from 100 feet away.)

3) Conjugate Italian verbs. (That I do not know the meaning of.)

4) The phrase: "como si dice," meaning, "how do you say..." (Which could actually be very helpful. Score one point for Professor Rob.)

If only I could maybe ask for directions, order an espresso, or, you know, count to three. Good thing most people speak English, or I guess there's always Rosetta Stone.