Italia di nuovo...

I'm back in Italy, and I've been here for a week. Not much has happened, really, but updating seemed like a good idea anyway.

I'm still sick, and would probably have taken a semester off for health, but unfortunately my school would only return the money I've already paid for the semester (or transfer it to the payment of an alternate semester) if I had bought their insurance policy. I recieve absolutely no financial aid to attend my school, and (surprise!) can't afford to buy their insurance--which costs an extra thousand dollars per year--on the off-chance that I'll need to take a semester off. This also means I can't afford to lose the money already paid to the school for the semester. If I did, I wouldn't be able to afford to graduate. Bravo, Sarah Lawrence's financial policies.

And if you don't think it's crazy that they won't give me financial aid or that they won't let me transfer my money to another semester on account of health without paying an extra thousand dollars a year, check this out:

http://www.universityworldnews.com/article.php?story=20081106152853440

But on to events.

I came back to Italy to find that I've been transferred to an intermediate Italian class. When I arrived in Italy last fall, I spoke about three words of Italian. Now I speak well enough that I've been placed in a class that knows at least three more tenses than I've officially learned and which is held completely in Italian (whereas my beginning class only had instructions in Italian sprinkled here or there.) My vocabulary is advancing rapidly.

Art history has also been put into complete Italian. Unfortunately, this is a specialized vocabulary dealing with the Renaissance and its artists, and my notes go something like this:

War...lots of war...Renaissance...butterfly!

Actually, they're a little more complete than that, but not much. Additionally, my professor is something of a mumbler. She sounds rather like her mouth is full of marbles. It was hard enough to understand her when she mumbled in English with a thick Italian accent, but now I find it nearly impossible to understand her. But there are no other classes I'm interested in and I believe that the period for switching out of classes is over (if it ever existed at all.)

Art Restoration is in half-Italian, half-English. Currently there is a 1:1 teacher to student ratio (one professor for lecture, another for studio to two students), but after the span of a month there will be a ratio of 2:1. (The second student in the class is going to be transferred to a class at the University of Florence.) No pressure.

Currently I'm working on applications to summer internships (although there aren't many whose deadlines didn't pass while I was completely incapacitated with sickness) and trying to find an Italian Sign Language class. No luck yet, but I've not yet given up hope.