Today was my first day of school! I woke up at 6:15, drove to the lake, took a 5 minute boat ride across the lake, walked to the bus stop, took a 45 minute bus ride to Verbania, and finally ended up at school at 8:00! I was really nervous at first to go to school because of classmates, teachers, the fact that I don’t really know Italian, etc. But it actually wasn’t as scary as I thought it would be. The students in my class were really nice to me, and they helped me understand important information the teachers were saying. Most of them actually spoke english really well, so that made it easier for me to talk to them.

My first class didn’t start until 9:00 today because it was the first day of school, but in the future, classes will start at 8:00. My first class was Italian. Just like we study English in America, they study Italian in Italy. During this class, we had an activity where we wrote down one positive and one negative thing we did over the summer. I wrote: “Io va a l’Italia” (I go to Italy) for the positive – I haven’t learned past tense yet lol. And then I wrote “non lo so” (I don’t know) for the negative. The rest of the time was just the teacher talking about something; I couldn’t understand him. Then the bell rang, and all of the students started tumbling out of the classroom and running downstairs. I was very confused the whole time and had no idea what was happening, so I just followed them. Apparently, since Italian schools only last until about 1:00 every day, they don’t include lunch in their schedule. So instead of letting students starve for 5 hours, they put in a “snack break,” which is a 10 minute break where students go to the little cafeteria place and eat a snack. However, if you’re only one person out of 2,000 people who wants a snack, it takes a very long time to buy something from the cafeteria, and then you end up only getting 30 seconds to eat your panini. It’s a very stressful time for tired, hungry students. My next class was physics. Again, the whole class period was just the teacher talking so I was really bored the whole time. My last class was supposed to be English language class, but the teacher is apparently in Canada right now (huh?), so we joined another classroom and sat in on another Italian class. School ended at 12:20 today, so some friends, Camilla, and I went to eat lunch at a caffe down the road from school. Then Camilla and I hopped back on the bus, the boat, and then the car to get back home at about 4:00.

Another thing that happened today, I had my first flute lesson with Camilla and her flute teacher! It went pretty well, we started with scales, and then moved on to pieces. I will be taking lessons every Monday evening.

Tomorrow I have school again, and then an Italian lesson that evening. I can’t wait to see what my other classes are like! I will update you all at the end of the week. Buona notte! :)