A day of sad news.

February 28, 2011

It felt so good to sleep last night, but I still feel like I’m worn out from traveling this weekend. Today in Italian Gloria had us talk all about our weekend in Rome…in Italian of course. Sometimes I feel like I’m not really learning much in that class because she strays so far from the book and chooses to talk about what is happening in our lives. But honestly, I feel like that is the most important aspect in being here because we learn to talk about what we live while we’re living it. And I think just being surrounded by all of the Italian conversations in the streets, at school, etc. we’re actually picking up a lot more Italian than we think we are. Hopefully next fall in my Elementary Italian II course I’ll be able to blow everyone away...hopefully :]

After Italian was Comparative Media, which I have been anticipating for an entire week now, because we were going to be getting back our midterms and I’m dying to see how I did! However, when we got into class there was a guest speaker who was a man that worked for a popular newspaper company called Corriere Della Sera. He talked for us a while in the classroom, which I didn’t find very interesting because he spoke mainly about journalism and for journalism majors…neither of which apply to me. After a while of talking he told us that he was going to take us to the actually building in which he works to show us what they do and to talk to us further about the newspapers here in Florence and Italy.

Right before we left the building Fabio handed back our midterms because he said if he had passed them out at the beginning of the class we wouldn’t have paid attention to our speaker. But maybe I shouldn’t have been so excited to get my midterm back because I got a B, B-, and C+ on the 3 essays…what!? I was so upset because as I looked around people were getting A’s and A/B’s on all of their answers, and as I was talking to different classmates about it on our way to Corriere Della Sera’s building they were telling me how all of them didn’t really study and that this was all previous knowledge from other media classes they have taken. I don’t get it…I studied for hours over my entire Barcelona trip, and am basically thee only person who actually studied, but yet I got the worst grades. I’m starting to think that maybe I don’t belong in this class because the class is made up of upperclassmen who are communication majors and who have all taken multiple media classes. Everyone is telling me that I still have the final to bring up my grade, but it’s too late to drop the class, and I really don’t know how I can expect to do any better on the next test (which is the only other test) if I studied my butt off for this one? I think I might need to have a talk with Fabio because clearly we aren’t seeing eye-to-eye.

But anyways we made it to the building of Corriere Della Sera and took a little walk around the first floor which was mainly really messy desks before we were taken up these beautiful stairs into this larger room. The room was like a meeting room and inside of it was this ENORMOUS book which contained amendments to Italy’s constitution (if I remembered that right?). But our speaker went on to talk about the different newspapers in Italy and their biggest competitor and so on and so forth. Once our class was dismissed from the lecture I had to hustle back to the school because I had European Issues starting in like 15 minutes and we were all the way right next to the Arno. But luckily I made it back with enough time to go to the bathroom and blow my nose since I’m getting this runny nose-syndrome again.

I had mentioned to Marissa earlier that I have been hungry for sausage, so today while I was in class she went to the store and got some sausage and Lauren got some peppers for dinner tonight. I ended up frying the big sausage links and cutting them into rounds and cooking them with onions and peppers. We made some pomodoro rice (tomato rice) out of a packet to have as a side or to put our peppers and onions on top of. Either way dinner ended up being EXCELLENT…it definitely hit the spot!

However, my night ended up turning quite sour when I found out about some activities happening at home. I noticed on facebook that people were posting statuses saying to pray for the Roswell family, and immediately it made my heart sink because Mariah Roswell is a dear friend of mine, and made me extremely curious what was going on. I was able to reach my friend Morgan on facebook and she informed me that there was a search out for Mariah’s mom Lisa whose car was taken off the road due to the flood this morning back home. My thoughts were everywhere and I couldn’t bear to think what Mariah was going through. Even though Mariah and I haven’t been in contact much once we have gone away to college I still consider her a great friend who I care deeply about…my thoughts and prayers are with her. And I couldn’t feel more homesick at a time like this.