Life Is Beautiful

Started language class today. Our teacher is Costanza. (Not George Costanza, Costanza is her first name. Although we think she might take her shirt off in the bathroom.) We had several teachers two years ago, and she was our last one.

As you can see, she's a bit of a firecracker, and a lovely person. She's passionate about bicycles, and is always talking about how our world (but especially our city of Rome) would be better if everyone stopped driving and started riding. We're considering trying it out ourselves.

Our lesson mostly consisted of listening to a recording over and over. As it turned out, it was a guy telling his girlfriend he was late for lunch because he got trapped in by a really rude driver who double parked. Of course, we didn't figure that out until a good half hour and four or five repetitions later. Even spoken way too fast for us to understand, it sounded like a likely story.

Yesterday, we toured a few language schools. One is literally right across the street (and it's a narrow street). We really wanted to choose that one (nothing like a 30 second commute), but it was just too much fun to show up at our old school and have tons of instant friends. I guess there ain't no school like the old school.

However, at the school across the street, we did learn about an activity last night--it was a weekly get-together consisting of people who want to speak different languages. Even though we decided not to attend their school, we thought we'd go make some friends at their event anyway.

It turned out to be a fairly large gathering hosted at a restaurant across town. People came from all over Rome to speak something other than Italian. We spoke French with a French guy, Portuguese with a Brazilian, a little bit of Spanish, but mostly people wanted to come speak English with us, including a man (also named Mark) getting his Master's in Linguistics in Brussels. For 10 euros there was also all you could eat appetizers. It was very fun. Trajan spoke German to a couple of people, and then a Chinese girl sat at our table and I was like "go ahead, Trajan, blow their minds." He did so, speaking to her in Chinese. Soon they were chopping the air with both hands. For a minute, I thought they might be discussing kung-fu (verbal or otherwise), but it seems that's how you let someone know what tone you're using if you're not a native Chinese speaker. It was fun watching Mark's eyes go wide each time someone new joined the conversation and we engaged them in a different language--it's not easy to impress a European Master's in Linguistics candidate. He was a smart kid--and nice too--so that little bit of shadenfreude was probably beneath me. I couldn't help it, however, since it's one of the few German words I know, and, wo bu zhidao, I didn't want to be left out.

We had our first visitor tonight, a friend of mine named Erin who's working for JetBlue and was passing through Rome with her family. We said hello and had a few minutes to chat near the Fontana di Trevi.

And here are a couple more pics of the ceiling of the church of Santo Ignazio. I can't believe I've never been there before; it should be almost as famous as the Capella Sistina, and it's free!

Trajan and I have resumed our former habit (formed last time we came to Rome) of shopping together and sharing purchases, cooking together, alternating prayers in Italian, and basically acting like mission companions. He took off for a few minutes today without saying where he was going and I was like if he just went out for gelato without me he's a dead man. I have a goal of catching some time to myself--actually, we both do. Even that, we share.

We're figuring out how to eat healthy, getting plenty of exercise, the weather is mid-70's and sunny every day. If I were the type to quote movies, I might even say "Buongiorno, principessa," because, well, Life Is Beautiful.