Well hey, there.
I finally met with the Foundations Engineering professor! I am the only student, so he is going to sort of tutor me. I will teach myself most of the material, and I meet with him every Monday at 11 for an hour, and he will explain anything I have questions about (I’m sure I’m going to have more than an hour’s worth of questions..); so it’s pretty much an independent study. I meant to bring my soils notes to Italy, but I’m pretty sure I left them in Rolla… I hope I don’t need them. He told me he would give me a book in English, covering the material I learned in my soils class in Rolla, which would explain everything, perhaps better, than my notes. I sure hope so, because soils was not easy to understand in America, where the professor’s first language was the same as mine… He promised me that all the handouts will be in English and that he will teach me everything in English, because it was promised to be an English course, but he said he can teach me some basic engineering terms in Italian if I want. He’s a very nice man. He told me if I ever need any help navigating Naples, that I should call him. He told me Naples can be very beautiful and nice, but it can also be very treacherous. Also, he lives in Pompeii and said that he takes a group of students every semester to see it, and said that he would let me know when he is going this semester! I’m excited to see Pompeii.
I am just really having an incredibly hard time making my brain work. None of the Italian words are sinking in, and I can’t remember what day they collect the laundry, or even what time dinner is! Is it 8:30, or 18:30? I think I’ve hit that plateau stage- like when people go on a diet and you lose a lot of weight really quickly in the first couple of weeks, then you can go weeks and weeks of working even harder, with no progress (I learned this on biggest loser), but after that, you start dropping pounds again. Hopefully my brain gets back into gear soon… the girls are starting to get less excited about practicing their English, and some of them won’t speak English to me at all (I know that they’re just trying to help me learn Italian quicker, but the way they speak is not helping me learn anything (like the professor of my Italian class!)…I just spend less time involved in conversations).
Not only has my brain stopped, but I am ravenous all the time. There is a good side to this one though…now the food tastes even better than amazing. Last week, I was not very hungry at all, I think all the congestion was the cause of that, but this week, I can’t get enough! I literally went to snack 3 times today (I really hope this is just one of those days where it doesn’t matter how much you eat, you never fill up, and that I’ll be back to normal tomorrow). For lunch, our first course was soooo good- farfalle in a light, butter sauce with mushrooms and priscuitto. For the next course, there were several things: fries! (the American style...not fried other things, like Italian fries are. They were extra salty and delicious), fried potatoes and onions, uovos fritos (fried eggs), and something that looked like fish sticks or chicken fingers, which they would not let me have… the said it’s “for diet.” I think that means that it’s for girls who are one a special diet because of allergies, because there’s no way they’re serving those fish sticks to someone who’s trying to lose weight, but watching the “diet” girls eat, I cannot figure out what they are allergic too… they’re loving the gluten and dairy, which are about the only food allergies I know, other than peanuts, which I have not seen in Italy yet.
I have now been to dinner (turns out it’s at 8:30pm (20:30)… I showed up to an empty dining room at 18:30 and was very disappointed). For dinner, the first course was soup (like chicken noodle, without the chicken or noodle…so basically broth with some vegetables…it doesn’t sound great, but it was) and pasta al forno (baked pasta which looked really good, but I didn’t finish my soup in time to get it). The main course was roasted eggplant and giant meatballs. For dessert, one of the girls brought an assortment of Italian sweets (I’m not sure why..I don’t understand Italian); è stato delizioso, of course.
Before dinner, I checked over a paper that the girl who went to Venezuela had to write in English for her Master’s program. I marked that baby up! It was fun to be helpful.
For our after-dinner talk tonight, one of the girls gave a presentation on Finland because she studied there last summer. It was interesting, what I understood of it. I finally made the powerpoint today about my life in America, but it turns out that our after-dinner talks are filled up until next week, so I guess I’ll just make it better! Right now, it would last about 20 minutes (and that’s with speaking slowly so they can understand), and the girl tonight spoke for over an hour, and she certainly wasn’t talking slowly… I’ve got to step up my game.
Sorry today’s post was so bland… there’s nothing too exciting to tell, and as I have said, my brain is too mushy to be able to put an entertaining spin on any of the news… maybe tomorrow will be more exciting.
Okay, byebye now.
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