One Month In

Today I reach my first big milestone of my year abroad! I've now been out of Britain for a month, twice as long as the longest time I've previously spent abroad and one out of the 13 or 14 months I'll be away altogether. In some ways it seems strange to be over a third of the way through my time in Italy this summer, but in other ways it seems like a lifetime ago that I left Crawley on a damp day back at the beginning of June. I feel like so much has been crammed into these 4 weeks and I honestly feel that I've learnt more in a month here in terms of the language, than I did in the entirety of my last semester at university. My understanding of Italian is a lot better than when I arrived. On my first day here, I sat at the kitchen table not having a clue what direction the conversation was heading in, with the exception of the odd word here and there. Now, I'm able to follow what's going on most of the time, even if I don't catch every word. I think I've been shocked by how fast the pace of speech is. Before I started learning Italian I always thought it sounded incredibly quickly spoken, but at university I found that it wasn't as fast as expected. Naively, I expected this it what it would be like in Italy, not really realising that my lecturers probably slowed down their speech when talking to us. My spoken Italian is still pretty basic, and I end up accidently blurting out what I call Fritaliglish (French/Italian/English) words sometimes, but it should come more naturally with practice.

This week has been a busy one and I've been spending lots of time helping the girls with their English, which I absolutely love. I had a really rewarding moment the other day when I caught the 7 year old singing to herself in English after we'd spent the morning listening to songs from her school textbook! Coming from the girl who 4 weeks ago would put her hands over her ears when her parents put the English news on TV, I felt this was a sign of progress :) I didn't realise quite how rewarding it is to see kids improve and use something you've taught them.

In preparation for going to the mountains at the end of the month, we are doing power walks round the neighbourhood a few times a week followed by half an hour on the Xbox doing Just Dance. It's exhausting, but the only way to prepare for hiking and the best way to work off all the tiramisu we've been eating! I happen to be staying in the town where tiramisu was invented, and despite not liking coffee, it has become one of my new favourite things :) Not something to be eaten every day though at 800 calories a slice! Although cold dessert is wonderful in this heat. Speaking of which...

What is this voodoo that's going on back home?

Meanwhile here...

That's all for now folks, I'm off to watch the tennis :)

Alice x