Studio l'Italiano*

One of the major challenges of life and study in Italy is the obvious one: everybody speaks Italian! Furthermore, when Dan and I begin our classes at the Gregorian University in the fall, all of the lectures will be in Italian. The university also requires all of the seminarians to pass an EU proficiency test for the language.

In order to help us adjust to speaking Italian with local Romans, as well as to understand our classes, the NAC has arranged several possibilities for language schools. Some of the seminarians are attending schools in Assisi and Siena, and we are studying in Verbania, a very beautiful town in the Italian Alps. We are living at a hotel called Il Chiostro, which means "the cloister" - it is a former monastery that was converted into a hotel. This is wonderful because we have the benefit of studying in the quiet cloister courtyard, and there is a chapel on site where a priest comes for daily Mass.

All in all, I'm pleased with my classes so far. We were each assigned two tutors, and we spend an hour and half with each. The one-on-one interaction is very helpful, because we each can work at our own pace, and we are forced to learn everything for ourselves. I can already see improvement in my own speaking and understanding after only three days of classes.

More to come later!

[* This actually means "I am studying Italian"]