Weather: Sunny, 35° F
Song Playing on iTunes: Past as performed by Schiller
Current Book Being Read on my Kindle: Still working on the previously mentioned Sherlock + Royal Blood (Royal Spyness #4) by Rhys Bowen
Up Next in the Kitchen: Fresh loaf of bread + vegetable/beef soup
Relative of the Day: Carl Washington Evans, 1913-2004 (1st cousin, 3 times removed according to Ancestry.com
So today’s topic is for discussing one of the areas in which I’m preparing for my first trip to Italy (!!!) – the language. I would love to do a tour of Italy on my own, but I know that I am not gifted with languages. So I did what I consider the sensible thing and booked a trip through a tour agency. (Note to self: the rest of the payment is due within 60 days.)
Anyway, I’m trusting to my tour guides to do the bulk of the translating for me, but I know there are times on the tour schedule when we have free time, so to speak. There are lunches and dinners when we are dining with the group, but we’re on our own. I’m even planning to arrive in Italy a day early to help with the jet lag and get acclimated. So I know that I’ll need a few more Italian words at my disposal than just the 50 or so food-related Italian terms I know.
Determined to improve my chances to be able to get from point A to point B, I signed up for an online Italian language course. I lasted all of three days there. The coursework was fine, but the website design wasn’t what I considered user-friendly for me. Thankfully, it wasn’t an expensive course, but it’s the principle of the thing.
Next I bought a book/CD combination which promised to teach me Italian in 30 or so days. I’ve had the book for three months, and I’m on lesson three. As you can easily see, the fault is probably not with the teaching medium. It probably has more to do with me and my old habit of waiting until the night before an exam to review the material. That method worked well when I was in school and had listened to every lecture, read every page of required material, and all that was left was to review what I’d already heard or seen. Unfortunately, it doesn’t work the same when it comes to learning a foreign language.
So with that humiliating public confession, I’m off to push through lesson three. At this rate, I’ll finish the book by December, well after I need the information. Ciao!
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