And there is heat ... plus the oven works!

I guess I'm just really into blogging now?

I wanted to tell you all some more details about my day-to-day life that seem to be coming together nicely. At first, everything in my apartment was an adjustment - I didn't have sheets the first night, I didn't buy a comforter for a couple of days, my roommates are much older than me, etc. I think it all started turning around with the heat last week.

Finalemente! We each strangely have our own toilet paper and so mine is kept on the heater in the bathroom ... well last week I noticed that my toilet paper was warm because the heat was turned on, whoooeeee! I actually learned this while abroad before: In Italy, the comune or city decides when to turn on the heat for the whole city and the lucky decision day was October 15th. This meant that they couldn't turn the heat on until the 15th and they would decide whether or not it was cold enough or whether they would wait. We had nice weather basically until last week when it turned towards the cold so the heat was a good call, Brescia.

About the same time I realized how wonderful it is having Italian roommates with whom I can speak! Sometimes, I do zone out - but especially the past week and weekend, I have really been present in all conversations and have learned a lot. At first, I was really taken off by Giovanna from Caserta [near Naples] because she partially speaks in dialect cutting off the last two syllables of every word - imag tryi liste to eng lik thi or imagine trying to listen to English like this! - it was difficult. Now, not only do I understand more the dialect that she speaks, but I also know a little bit more about her and so I can understand better what types of things she might say ... capisce? [or her way of saying it capi?]

In the end, I feel more like one of my roommates than the foreigner living with them and now we even have new jokes of which I'm a part. Plus, I finally fixed the mystery of our dysfunctional oven! My first night here, Daniella tried to cook fish in the oven and it didn't get hot enough. Since then I have only heated up goods ... and not even this always turned out well. One dial controls the temperature and we would set the oven to the max of 220 degrees Celsius and it was never hot enough, yet the light would go off saying the oven was pre-heated. Tonight, I wanted to eat frozen stuffed olives from the region of Ascoli Piceno [ahem our name]. So I set it on max and waited a while - not hot. I really wanted to eat these olives from the oven. So I imagined the dial put on backwards or opposite and set the oven to 60 degrees ... this way the non-marked side of the dial was really at the max of 220 degrees and voila! The mystery of the oven solved: the dial must have fallen off and someone put it back on wrong!

Now when I stop at my bread shop in the center and wait in line with my number to buy bread for half off after 6:30 pm  ... I know that I can buy more to freeze and put it in a functioning oven to heat up :)

Of course, my city has its own Castle :)

Brescia and I

Hi Friends!!

I'll start with a lead-off from last week ... I walked through the mall last Monday to pick something up for lunch and of course [!] I ran into one of my Gelato store owner friends! Haha. So he brought me to the pizza place that his friend works at and that is where I had lunch : ) .

The same mall between my apartment and my school has "Original Language Movies" on Tuesdays and Older movies on Thursdays for a discounted price. One of the English teachers at the school and I went to see Robin Hood with Russell Crowe on Tuesday afternoon ... the idea was to invite her fifth year English students to see it with us but after we made the plan, she forgot to tell them about it! So it was just us two. Regardless, I have a list of the movies for Tuesdays and Thursdays for the rest of the year so I can check out any new ones to see.

View of the city of Brescia from the Castle. The large building is the Loggia and you can also make out a tower and the duomo in the back.

 This weekend, my older roommate's husband has been visiting from Palermo and on Saturday we went on a guided tour of the Castle in Brescia! It was a tour put together by the "Spelunking or caving" Association and even though they have a more "adventurous" caving tour, we did the "classic" tour easy for everyone to do and so we saw different watch towers and went underground where they have excavated various rooms and staircases. We went in one of the towers that used to be a prison and could read on the stone walls where prisoner's etched their names or how long they had been there.

Part of the Castle from within the grounds

Yes, I crawled through this hole. It lead into a very large room where Brescian people used to keep water? And then they used to store oil there?

My oldest roommate Daniella and I!

 After, we got a ride back down to the city center and walked through one of the nicest areas of shops and restaurants. Continuing to the historical center, we walked through the Duomo Vecchio or the old main church as opposed to the Duomo Nuovo the new main church. It is really interesting, less built up than the new duomo and also round! Underneath, you can walk through some roman columns found from an old church that the Duomo Vecchio [the old main church] was built on. So that certainly shows something our tour guide told us: Brescia is not a city with a preserved history from one single era, but you can find monuments from the ancient era of Roman Brixia to the unification of Italy. There's the new duomo in the center of the city and next to it the old [and round duomo] underneath which there are remains from an even older church!

After our jam-packed day, I found Halloween cookies in the grocery store!! Maybe this means my students might know a little about Halloween already when I do my lessons about it in a couple of weeks?

Pumpkin cookies :)

Ciao Tutti

Ciao Tutti!

I have finally finished my first week of classes. I can't wait to sleep in tomorrow morning! And yes, I finally got myself a gelato :)

It's a bit hard to describe my classes at the school ... the students and teachers vary greatly. I am working with 8 different professors for my 16 classes [some I have class with three times, twice, or just once]. The main goal is conversation - to get the students to speak. This week, we did introductions and general discussion on American culture or questions they had for me. Some classes have 10 students, others have 30 with varying English speaking abilities. In both third and fifth years, there are students ranging from ages 15 to 20 ... and then I actually have a couple of 21 and 22 year old's in my fifth year classes. With that being said, although I don't have any class more than once a week and might be able to plan one general lesson plan for all my classes in a week, I expect that I'll have to do a lot of adapting for each class.

One thing I'd like to prepare for all of my classes is a topic list of statements or quotes or opinions with which one can easily agree or disagree. I'd like to use this list as a base to assign homework for my students to prepare opinions or responses at home to have a discussion or debate the next class. Any ideas? I'd really appreciate if you'd comment or email me any thoughts you have ... they can be simple and personal like "What would be your dream job?" or more debatable like "Wars never solve anything" -- Thanks!!

Now to the fun stuff - I walked quite a bit around the city the past couple of days and though I forgot my camera, I saw some interesting sights. I visited the "Piazza del Foro" where the Roman Forum was located when Brescia was known as Brixia and was a Roman city. The city is still in the process of excavating the remains, but I got to see the original columns in the entrance of an important building and half of a theater.

I also had my first gelato! I had a cone of stracciatella [chocolate chip] and biscotti [cookies] in a really cute place in the heart of Brescia. I guess they heard my foreign accent because the owners asked where I was from and I ended up having a 20 minute conversation with them as I ate my gelato! At one point, they asked if I had any Italian friends here and I said - oh no, not yet - and then they said - now you have two with the both of us! Haha. Oh friendly Italians ...

Why have I not yet had a gelato?

Hello there family and friends!!

This is my first post of my blog as an English Language Assistant in Brescia, Italy. I will use this blog to update everyone in a centralized way about my life here abroad. Feel free to post reader comments or questions or email me personally to catch up. Where to begin?!

I arrived a little over a week ago on Tuesday, September 28th. I flew from Newark to Milan and then took the shuttle from the Milan Malpensa airport to the Milano Centrale train station and then a train to Brescia. It only takes 45 minutes from Milan to Brescia by train - so it was pretty easy. Luckily, I found someone getting off in Brescia to help me with one of my two huge American suitcases. Yet, my adviser in Brescia was looking for an American girl struggling with two suitcases so she missed me as I casually walked out with one! We went straight to my apartment, which is a five-minute walk from the historical city center and a twenty to thirty minute walk to my school.

The view from my room's window onto Via Milano which goes into the city center.

I have my own room in an apartment with three other Italian girls. The only common space we have is the kitchen, so it's a little tight but we all get along well. My oldest roommate's name is Daniella [43] and she is from Palermo in Sicily but is here in Brescia to teach Elementary school. Next, there is Giovanna [28] who is from Caserta near Naples and also teaches Elementary school. Finally, Paola [28] is from Varese just an hour and a half away or so and is training to be a lawyer here in Brescia. She studied law at university and has just finished her two years working with a lawyer [in Brescia] before she can take the test to become a lawyer herself. I know nothing about the BAR exam ... but as for the Italian version, she takes the written part in December and doesn't hear until June whether she's passed and can take the oral part in July! Talk about waiting a long time to find out your results. 

The name of the school where I am teaching is "IPC Camillo Golgi" - it is an "Istituto" versus a "Liceo" which means that it is a vocational high school as opposed to a "normal" high school where kids might go on to college. In this way, Italian kids separate and specialize in either an Istituto or Liceo. Golgi has a sector for Chemistry, Advertising, and Tourism [other istituti have other sectors] whereas normal high schools might separate into liceo classico [classic high school], liceo scientifico [science high school], etc. The students go to my school for five years and are thus trained to go into the workforce. This semester, I am teaching third and fourth years in all three sectors and I'll have the fourth years starting in February. Consequently, this semester I have 16 one-hour classes [all different classes!] per week whereas I'll only have 9 one-hour classes in the spring. It's a little backwards, because I have way more to prepare for as I'm just getting used to teaching and once I've had 4 months of experience ... I'll only have 9 hours a week! Oh well, better to have it start out hard and get much easier than the other way around. My school goes from 8 am to 2 pm, Mon - Sat and yes, I actually teach four hours on Saturdays - but at least I do have Mondays off. I might try to ask for Saturdays off next semester with only 9 classes to coordinate.

Enough of my apartment and school - something about Brescia! Brescia is a city 45 minutes east of Milan that is nicknamed "La Leonessa d'Italia" or "The Lioness of Italy" because in 1849, Brescian citizens united to rebel against Austrian oppression for ten "dramatic" days. It is a very industrial city so there are many people who come here from the outskirts [or the south of Italy like my roommates] to work. Unfortunately, I've been so busy getting settled in and starting teaching that I haven't yet gotten to visit parts of Brescia's touristy spots! I'll let you know when I do. Last Saturday, Brescia hosted a "notte bianca" or "white night" celebration of the arts. All around the city center, artists and galleries displayed art, musicians played in the streets, outdoor markets were set up with food and crafts, and some places like the theater and some kind of parliament building were open for viewing. My roommate Daniella and I went out for pizza and then walked all around the city center. It was really nice to see the heart of Brescia full of people and activity!

This is the Teatro Grande where they have Operas and Ballets
We viewed it for free during la notte Bianca!

Who knew? They had pretzels at the festivities - the second one was covered with cheese, mmhmm.

Sorry this post was so long, but I wanted to get out all of the basic information and then a little fun! My goal in the next couple of days is to FINALLY get a gelato before the temperature becomes too cold!!

a presto
Ciao ciao