L'ufficia postale e il primo giorno di classe.

Today I visited the post office to turn in paperwork for my permesso di soggiorno. The post office in Italy, like in the US, is a wonderful place with lines of people learning patience, piles of paper work, signs, and office workers who love their jobs. Yes the post office was a magical place, expect, I had no idea what to do, what line to be in, or who I was supposed to talk to. Because of nerves, all of the Italian I knew fell out of my head. It was quite a cultural experience.

One older Italian man with graying hair pointed me to the other side of the room. I doubted his expertise in my situation and stayed in the line I was in, chatting in broken English and Italian with one Italian guy who had learned English by spending time in San Fransisco. He was nice enough to ask the man at the desk where I should be when his turn came. The office worker reaffirmed what the older Italian had said, and I ventured down to the last lane in the office.

When I finally waited in the correct line and my turn came (it had already been over an hour), the annoyed office worker made me fill out more paper work. He then got into an argument with the only other male worker about..something. You learn to make time for these delays in Italy. It would have been funny but I was pretty terrified. Gratefully everthing was finished and post office adventure ended.

My first and only Italian class of the day was four hours long in a building called "procciuti" (which means curred hams but is the last name of someone), with fifteen minute breaks each hour. I sat by a couple of friends from my program as well as some girls from Korea. The rest of my 25 classmates were from all over the world. The teacher spoke Italian the whole time we reviewed grammer, but she spoke slowely and very clearly, and I comprehended most of what she said.

For la cena I cooked wheat pasta and dropped in some chopped carrots and mixed in some of the best pesto I have ever had. I also had toasted bread and made hot chocolate with cocoa powder and soymilk. The rest of the evening I spent getting to know my roomates who represent three different countries: Russia, Greece, and Mexico. Still with them in the nearby caffe, each on our respective computers talking to those who we miss and wish were in Italia with us.