Long Day

My internet was not functioning last night.  If it does this every time it rains, I’m going to start never having internet.  This blog was written in a word document last night.

The first two hours of class today were History and Philosophy.  During this time, I typed up the final draft of my Rotary speech and finished the English version of my art homework.  I still have to translate it to Italian for the teacher with the help of my friends.  During art, I studied for the English class test that we were having next.  I basically read the textbook page 5 times to make sure that I totally understood it.  During break, I asked my friend to help me with the English conjugation of verbs such as present simple and present continuous because I had no idea what that was for the English language.  Everybody was laughing because an Italian was teaching me English, but then I explained to them my predicament and they agreed that they don’t really know this stuff for Italian either.

English was very interesting.  The teacher made me move to the front corner of the room so that I couldn’t help anyone.  You may think that the test was easy for me, but it was super confusing.  For one of the questions, there could’ve been two right answers, and for some of the verb conjugating sentences, I just put whatever I though sounded right and I don’t even know if it’s the form of the verb that the test asked for.  The last two questions required a written answer, and even though I memorized that portion of the textbook, there was still some information that the teacher had talked about one class (that I couldn’t understand because of his strong accent and because he spoke Italian a lot of the time) that wasn’t in the textbook, so I’m not sure that I answered the question completely, even though I wrote a ton.  When I turned in my test, the teacher looked it over and then he pointed at a word and looked very puzzled.  He kept saying something in English, but I couldn’t understand him. Then he wrote on the board “travelling” and told me that I had spelt it wrong because I only put one L.  I told him that it was spelled with one L but he kept saying it was two.  Then he asked some other students and everybody said it was with two L’s.  I was starting to doubt myself at that point and I was getting embarrassed because I didn’t want the whole class to know that I spelled an English word wrong.  I got out my dictionary and luckily found the word “traveling” with only one L!  I showed him and a bunch of other kids in my class and they were all very confused because I guess they’ve been spelling it with two L’s for their whole lives.  My mind was finally at rest.

Then we had Biology and I organized my Rotary email because there were too many emails in my inbox and I wanted to put them into different folders.  By the time that was finished, we had math and I tried to study online, but I ended up talking with some of my friends and doodling. 

After lunch, Janie came over and we frantically worked on our PowerPoints to go along with our speeches because we had to go to Italian lessons soon.  I finished most of mine and Janie was still working on hers, but then the internet quit so we headed to the school and Janie took her laptop.  When we got there, we asked the teacher if we could work on our speeches the whole 2 hours and she said it was fine.  We ended up going to the computer room and I got to add more pictures to my PowerPoint and finalize everything.  Then Janie and I practiced reading them out loud a couple of times, and by then, it was time to leave. 

There was a big fair thing going on in Fabriano today with a lot of street vendors, similar to the one that we went to in Matelica.  Janie wasn’t in the shopping mood, and I’m never in the shopping mood, so it was a little annoying because there were people everywhere!  We prefer it when it’s in another town.  Fabriano was barely recognizable to us.  The fair only lasts for today though.  We met up with some friends and walked around for an hour until Janie and I had to walk home to change for the Rotary meeting.  We were ready within about 15 minutes and then our Rotary counselor came to pick us up. 

We went to a hotel near my school where the meeting was being held and we met a bunch of new people.  We also met the Rotaract group, which are teenagers our age.  We got to sit at a table with all of them for dinner.  We listened through some people talk, and then it was our turn to go.  I felt like my speech went pretty well.  I only stumbled on a couple of words, but I felt like my pronunciation was good overall.  Janie went after me and she did very well too.  She had a little bit more trouble with the pronunciation, but she had a lot of personality and some of the Rotarians were helping her when she got stuck on a word.  After we were finished, we took a bunch of pictures with some of the Rotarians and then we got to sit back down and talk with the Rotaract students again.  

The meeting formally ended around 11, but everybody ended up talking until 11:45.  We also found out that a lot of the Rotarians are willing to take us on small trips to different places around Italy.  Janie’s host mom finally got us out because we still have to go to school tomorrow, no matter how hard we tried to persuade our host parents that we would just be too tired!  (We tried about 4 times, but to no avail.)  I got home at 12 and it is currently 1 in the morning.  I don’t feel really tired right now, but I’m sure it’s going to be terrible tomorrow.  Maybe if Lorena sees that I look like a zombie in the morning, I won’t have to go to school??  I don’t think it’s going to work though…

Here’s to a tiring Saturday at school!

Ciao!

~Devon