The Placement Exam and The Vatican

ITALIAN PLACEMENT EXAM!! The test wasn’t too bad. I felt like I knew everything that was on there (or at least remembered learning it at some point) except for the other future tense—I know futuro semplice. I don’t even know what it is called. I don’t know how I did but one of my roommates only took 8 classes of Italian (no, not semesters. 8 individual classes) and she placed into the 400 level Italian class. That’s as high as you can place. She’s also from Bulgaria so she speaks French, Bulgarian, Russian and English fluently so that might have something to do with it. So far three of my roommates placed into the 302/400 class. I’m not sure why they are together… but whatever. I don’t have to worry about that. I’m hoping to place into 202 (essentially three semesters of Italian) or 301 (four semesters of Italian). The 302/400 class is for people for have studied Italian at least 5 years. Two of my other roommates definitely have. One has studied Italian for 8 years and the other has an Italian father, speaks Spanish since she has a Mexican mother, and lived in Italy for a while. So I don’t feel any need to try to compare myself to them. I’ve only been taking Italian for 8 weeks—technically longer, I guess, more like 12 or 13 weeks now—but that length of time doesn’t compare at all to the amount of time the other people taking the test have been learning it. Now that I think about it, during the oral part of the exam I should have said something like I have only been taking Italian since the beginning of the summer. But of course, I didn’t think about it. I was too nervous! I was not expecting an oral portion of the exam. I thought it would just be a quick test and I would be done. Nope. I had a 10 minute interview with one of the professors and she would not slow down for me! I guess that is a good thing…but it made me nervous. Thankfully I understood what she was saying and could respond but I made some very silly mistakes. Oh well, as long as I’m not with the beginners I’ll be happy.

I also had to buy a cell phone today. Unfortunately, the man who was selling the plan I wanted didn’t feel like showing up today so I ended up getting the only other one available. It’s by no means terrible, it’s just not what I wanted. The lady seemed rather flustered because she had to come in from Florence for the day but she forgot to bring SIM cards for us and since we had to wait for her to figure out what she was going to do, she gave us 10 euros towards our plan. So that’s 10 euros worth of phone calls and texts that I don’t have to pay for! It was a little stressful but tomorrow I will finally get my phone and my sim cards ( I get two… one for Italy and one for traveling in Europe so I don’t get roaming charges).

While I was waiting for the lady (my exam ended at 15:30 and she wasn’t supposed to show up until 16:30) two of my roommates and I took a quick walk to the Vatican to see St. Peters. We didn’t go into the basilica because we didn’t have time to wait in line but we walked around, took some pictures which I’ll post once I get them from my roommate (unfortunately I didn’t have my camera. I considered taking it this morning but I figured we’d only be doing our placement exams so what’s the point?), then we walked back. I didn’t realize how close it was to the IES center. So cool!!

We went to the store again also since it’s on the way home from the bus stop. I finally bought some shampoo (I’m sure my roommates are thankful that I’ll stop mooching off of them) and my first bottle of wine. I am quite proud of it. I felt a little bit like I was doing something wrong but no, I’M IN ITALY! It is un vino bianco dell’Umbria. I’m sure an equivalent wine would be much more than 3 euros in the United States. I don’t know if it will be good or not,  but the point is that I bought it all by myself. I also signed up for a wine tasting trip to some vineyard in Tuscany. I’m pretty excited about it and hopefully I’ll learn more about wine. I might as well since I’m here.

Well, it’s about dinner time so I should start thinking about that. Tomorrow we are headed to a lake so I better remember to bring my camera!!