2 Degrees in Bologna...

It is officially freezing. Actually, it's 2 degrees celsius which is still technically above freezing. However, the windows in my house are frozen, which leads me to believe otherwise.

Brrrrr.

The weather here has definitely taken a turn for the worst, which is one of the reasons that I haven't blogged in a while. I just haven't really done anything. I've been curled up inside studying for exams, so I haven't been taking many pictures or traveling much at all. Maybe I'll be able to scrounge up a few interesting experiences to fill a blog, let's see...

First of all, I am officially a nanny. (Or as Italians say, a dada.) I have two very small new friends, Carlo (3) and Giorgia (7). I meet with them 2-3 times a week to "teach English" which usually consists of playing with Carlo's toy cars or watching "High School Musical 3" with Giorgia. It's not a fun job, but somebody's got to do it! An added bonus is the fact that the family has a winter vacation home in Cortina. Where's Cortina? Here's a picture, courtesy of Google:
Simona, the kids' mother, told me that if I come with them for a weekend and speak English with the family, she'll pay me 60 euro per day and "of course" pay for all my food and activities (for example, skiing and excessive cocoa-drinking). As I said, definitely not a fun job.

On a less cocoa-filled note, I took my first exam last week in Applied Linguistics. The first part was written - the prova scritta. It consisted of 5 questions which were painfully broad... one of the questions was literally "Write about something that you find important." I was tempted to write about mexican food (I miss it, alright? My diet here is severely lacking spiciness!) but I figured my professor might not find it as amusing as I would. After 30 minutes of writing she said that we only had 30 minutes remaining on the exam. I found this a bit surprising... see, I was expecting two hours because our professor had said "you will have two hours." Go figure. I only managed to finish 3 of the 5 essay questions by the time she took my paper. I'm not sure why she cut us off early - I think she probably had a meeting or something, most likely with the devil. (Okay, maybe not, but it was still a rude thing to do.)

A week after the written portion of the exam, I went back for the oral portion. Luckily, my professor allowed me to orally discuss the questions that I'd left blank on the written test. It was pretty terrifying, discussing linguistic theories in Italian... especially because there were other Italian students in the hall, just watching me! At first I was extremely nervous and the professor said that I could explain in English if I wanted, but I said no. I felt a little more confident after that, and at the end I received a 28 on the exam. The maximum score is 30, so I'm not complaining!

In addition to doing well on my exam, I had another wonderful surprise last week! Someone rang the buzzer at our building about 10 days ago and I answered "chi è?" like I always do.... but instead of hearing garbled Italian on the other end of the line, I heard "ummmmm.... hi, is Pierluca there?" and my heart lept for joy - Americans!!!!

Kevin and Jeff, to be precise. Pierluca met them when he was visiting a friend in California, and they stayd with us for over a week. A few days after they arrived, my friend Allison (the girl I stayed with in Dublin) came to stay with us as well and for the first time in the history of my apartment, the Americans outnumbered the Italians! Yesss! It was nice living with people who don't find me completely bizarre, and it actually really helped with my homesickness. It was almost like being back home! On one of their first nights here, we ordered pizza, drank beer and watched James Bond. I'm just not sure there's any better combination in the world.

We also made mexican food... not once, but twice.

It really was a beautiful week.