Conversation time.

May 4, 2009

Monday!!  Since last Friday was a holiday and there weren’t classes we went today to make up the week.  Hillary and I got to school a bit early so we could get on the Internet.  We usually have two different teachers.  One of them is Andrea who is like 6’9’’.  He’s really nice but not all that interesting.  I really really like Letizia.  She’s got cute short hair and wears glasses and she always has the most interesting things to talk about.  For example today we did some conversation practice on the topic of eutonosia .  I don’t know what the word is in English but basically it means pulling the plug on someone who has either been in a coma for a long time or is in a vegetated state.  It was great.  We talked about different laws that the government has controlling the issue and the different opinions of the people in the class.  In our class we have three girls from Switzerland. Two of them are from the German side and one of them is from the French side.  And then there is Hillary and I who are not only American but very religious.  And then there is our teacher who is an atheist and who is Italian but has traveled allover.  Anyway, we changed topics to that of abortion and it was surprising to hear that two of the Switzerland girls were more or less anti abortion.  Then we talked about something called “nuove familie” which means “new families”.   This basically refers to couples that live together without being married.  It is very common here in Italy.  Instead of calling each other my wife or my husband they call it ‘my companion’ or ‘mio compagno’.    After classes were over Hillary and I did our laundry at a laundry mat near the school.  After that we headed home.  On our way home we got caught in this freak thunder, rain, and hail storm.  If any of you remember my emails from when I was in Verona on my mission I talked about how crazy the random thunderstorms are here.  It was a really sunny day but all of a sudden it started pouring like crazy and then it started hailing.  We stopped for a bit because I was scared that the hail would hurt.  I think here in Italy they call them “temporale” or “tempeste”.  After Hillary and I got home and we had dinner, we watched some of America’s next top model that I had downloaded on my computer and then went to bed.