Mormon who?

June 9, 2009

This morning I didn’t have classes with Professor Monaci so I went to school early to I could see if Professor Mango had classes and if she’d let me come with her to her classes.  Like I’ve said before, it’s a good experience because I get to see how a different teacher runs their classroom.  I was with her for two periods.  The first period there were kids from a 4^th class.  I talked to them about the education at the university level in the United States.  The next class was a 1^st class.  Since Professor M. and I don’t have any 1^st classes it was sort of different to see kids younger than what I’ve been teaching.  They seemed unusually calm and I’m guessing it’s because it’s their first year of high school and they’re not as jaded as the older kids.  Its funny too because they all sort of stared at me from the moment I walked in.  I seriously felt like I had 30 kids judging me all at once!  It was a bit intense and intimidating.  I spent most of the class time talking about personalities and the different colors that describe them. I told them of how I’m a red in most situations and then they took turns describing their personalities.  I also took time talking about myself.  I showed them a picture of my family.  Someone asked why I spoke Italian.  I explained about being a missionary in Italy.  It’s funny because I’ve introduced myself to about 8 different classes and whenever I talk about The Church of Jesus Christ of latter-day Saints or the “Mormons” no one has every heard of it!  This time when said something about white shirts, ties, and nametags one kid had seen them before.  Yay!  Finally!  Slowly but surely, right?!

I met up with Professor Monaci for the rest of the class periods.  The first class was the 5^th class.  Professor M. interrogated a student on 20^th century British literature.  He sort of just skipped around topics and asked questions about a lot of different things.  I was really sleepy and a couple of students caught me fighting my eyelids.  It’s so hard sometimes!  Especially this week because it’s sort of “wrap up” and review week so a lot of it is unbelievably boring!

The next class was the 2^nd G class.  They looked over the things they had learned for the year and signed it.  Then we took some time to summarize About a Boy again in English because we’re going to try to finish watching it the next couple of days.  Some of the kids kept asking to leave to go to the bathroom and I think it might have bugged Professor M.  he asked if there was something cool to see in the bathroom because everyone kept wanting to leave class to see it.

The last class was the 2^nd A class.  We did some grammar exercises.  The teacher gave students certain Italian sentences and had them translate them into English.  I usually follow along so I can work on my Italian grammar as well.  There are a lot of things that don’t match up within the tenses.  I’ve still got a LOT to learn about grammar!

Professor Monaci invited me to come over and have dinner with his family tonight.  I’m really excited because he’s got this super cute little boy.  I’m also sort of scared because I know I can be shy and fidgety sometimes.  It’s weird because the last time I went over to an Italian family’s house for dinner it was with a pretty specific goal—teach them the gospel.  And that was a long time ago.  I just hope I can make some intelligent conversation and that they don’t think I’m not a complete weirdo!