Speaking the language

This is exactly what we were hoping for...to be in a quiet village, learning another language,conversing with our Italian neighbors and shopkeepers. Each day we study and practice what we know. We are adding expressions and verbs to our ever increasing list of "knowns". Italian is quite tricky because the vowels are significant and you must pronounce each one. Take for example the following words... key: chiave, close: chiuso, church: chiesa. These exact pronunciations might not be that critical, you might think. But here are three words that are: penna: pen, penis: pene, penne: a type of pasta. Needless to say, I have warned John,who is having a difficult time pronouncing the vowels distinctly,.....never to utter these words. We are each at diiferent levels of competency in our understanding and usuage. I guess you could call this differentiated immersion. ( for all you teacher friends). Another important lesson that I have learned is to let John do all of his own ordering. Of course, I thought that I was being helpful...John might call it "controlling". Ordering lunch in San Remo last week, two bottles of acqua con gas( carbonated water) arrived at the table and yesterday in
Imperia, two plates of fresh fish arrived at our table instead of one. Of course we managed to enjoy these extra dishes ! John did a solo shopping this morning and survived. He walked down to the local veggie and fruit market to buy frsh peaches, bananas and zucchini. We had a great adventure yesterday when we took the bus to Imperia, the closest train station. From our research we knew that Imperia is actually two cities that sit on opposite sides of the Imperia River. A century or two ago, they were rivals controlled by two important ruling familes. Both have lovely ports, active marinas and lovely little restaurants along the water. We investigated how to buy train tickets and figured out the train schedule for our trip to Torino next weekend. It was a lesson in asking for directions....and actually being able to understand the spoken directions, and finding our way around each city center. Large towns and cities have turistica informazione, look for the "i" sign. These are often hard to find. We asked several people and finally found the office. Yipeee! We have quite a collection of city and town maps. Arrivederci mi amici...




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