Non Parlo Italiano

So far, so good, I guess. I continue to remain frustrated at my lack of the Italian language. But life here is certainly interesting. Lesson number one in Italian is that you say thankyou as graztie. However to pronounce that correctly...it is grat - ZE(like saying the letters) - AY (as in the ay in day). The interesting thing is that when you often hear this in the U.S. its normally grat-Z without the A at the end. So there, now the next time you come to Rome, you'll be one step ahead of the stupid american standing next to you. School was rather overwhelming yesterday with all that we are going to do, but I guess most first days of school are like that. Unfortunately for me and the other folks I live with, we are an hour commute away. School is split up into two sections with a big part of the afternoon empty. This means lots of wandering around Rome or doing schoolwork, only dreaming about finding a bed to lay our heads down in. By the end of the day, we get home, grab some dinner and then take a bath and go to sleep. Fortunately for me, I live with two great Brits, Duncan and Sarah, who are quite lovely and have influenced me into using adjectives like lovely, as well as saying half four, which means 430. I also live with Karen, a girl from Long Island, who amazingly enough doesnt have an accent. She studied linguistics in college and hates the sound of her hometown accents. So we all go through the same hour commute everyday...a 10 min walk to the train station, a 40 min train ride, a 5 min metro ride and then another 7 or 8 min walk. Lucky for us, some of the train ride can be used for getting homework done, the day of, if necessary. Im sorry if this post is full of horribly placed commas and missing punctuation, I havent quite figured out the Italian keyboard yet. Tomorrow I actually teach my first class, and last night I had my first pizza in Italy. This afternoon will be a first for the icecream, which I have a feeling will be the start of a very bad habit. More to come soon...