June 12, 2009
The people here are so funny when they talk. They stand so close together!
I’m sitting here in the teacher’s lounge before class and it is so funny to watch them talk.
Two lady teachers that seem to be good friends talk to each and aside from flaying her arms around every time she wants to drive a point home she leans in really close to the other lady and touches her arm or her shoulder as she talks to her. And they talk so loud! Its funny to observe Rita at home talk to Barbara, the new girl, because Barbara isn’t all that used to it yet. 
Barbara always has this frightened and stressed look on her face because Rita just shouts (talks) to Barbara about nothing really and most of the time Barbara doesn’t understand. Poor lady. Whenever Rita talks to me I find myself just shouting right along with her. It’s weird but it’s really the only way to respond and be heard. This morning our first class was the 2nd G class. We watched the end of About a Boy and there were a few girls that wanted to do their last minute interrogations to try to get a better grade. Professor Monaci was mad and told them that if they had tried this hard all they way back in September they wouldn’t be almost failing. As usual all he got from them were blank stares. He told them he might not be their teacher again next year and again…blank stares. Its weird because the other class has been fighting to keep Professor M. as their teacher next year and this one doesn’t really seem to care. One of the girls in the class had made a birthday cake for another girl. They gave us a piece. It was so good cake. Italian cake is different than American cake, I think. This one was chocolate but it was dry and flaky. I really just need some chocolate cake…the one’s from cosco! With some cold milk! Hm…The next class was the 2nd A class.
We didn’t really do much in this class.
Since today is the last day of school everyone was in chill mode. Professor M. told them that they need to keep studying English during the summer so that they don’t come up empty in September without having even thought about English. There were some announcements made in class about a school assembly tomorrow where they’ll hand out prizes and stuff. I wonder what these kids would think if they were to see a US high school assembly (pep rally) where the band plays and the cheerleaders dance and the drill team does their thing. They’d probably crap their pants. Some of the students in the class are trying to get a dance organized. I asked professor M. if there was a student body president. They don’t really have that sort of thing here. The last class was the 5th class. We played a game where Professor M. asked questions about the literature they had read and they had to answer. 
If they missed a question twice they had to point their finger at someone who would then have to answer a question and if he was wrong then he was eliminated but if he was right then the one who pointed the finger is eliminated. It’s kind of patterned after the game show L’Eredità. I watch it all the time when I eat dinner in the evenings. I really like it because they ask questions about all sorts of things and they will have the question up on the screen so it helps me learn new words and the spelling of them. It’s also got a lot of interesting facts that I’ve never known so that s why I like it. Anyway, today was the last class period of the last day of high school for these kids so they were really excited. I had them all get together and take a picture with me. These kids have been in the same class for the past 5 years so they’re all super close. 
And they’ve also had Professor M. as their teacher for the past 5 years so they are close to him. Professor M. was asking me about how different that is in the US where we never really stick with just one teacher in high school. And its true. Only one of my high school teachers stands out in my mind. Other than that I never really got attached to any of them. Here in Italy they students and the students families are rather close with their teachers because they are in contact for so long.
Would this affect the grading of assessments? Would it make it so your more subjective than objective? At dinnertime Barbara had more questions about the Mormons so we talked more about it. She’s also working really hard at trying to learn the names of things like tomato, soup, etc. She speaks some Spanish so most of her Italian is Spanish. She was like, “pomodori?” “tomato?” and I was like, “nope, it’s tomates.”
Poor lady! She got this really confused look on her face and then I told her I was kidding and that the Italian word was “pomodori”. I’m so mean! But she laughed so it was okay. After dinner I went on a little walk. I miss Hillary already. It’s oddly quiet without her because she just chatters all the time. But it was nice to feel the breeze outside and see the fields. I like living out in the country.
No comments:
Post a Comment