The first rain of the voyage

*I think officially I have wished away my first Friday. Although it will be nice to have the weekend, it officially means that I have been here nearly 2 weeks already and my time is almost a 4th over. So much still to do!! Maybe I be sensible and wise enough to use my time fittingly.*

So it was the day of the strike and I really had no interest in opening my eyes and get out of bed. I hadn’t showed the night before and for a very brief instant pondered the possibility of just going without one. I then quickly remembered that it is far hotter in Italy and last night I had heard it raining outside which was to continue during the day, so it would be extra humid. I quickly showered, grabbed some breakfast, and ran out the door. I made it with 10 minutes to spare before the sciopero began so I bought some coffee and sad in my classroom to read for a while. Class went by rather quickly and I was pleased with how well I was picking up prepositions until we left the realm of prepositions for the world of reflexive verbs. Not so easy. Ah well.
After class I had nearly 4 hours to kill before I could head back to the Metro. So what did I do? Oh that’s right, I did what any self-respecting Kreidenweis male would do and had lunch with 5 women who were at least 40 or more years older than him. Four Germans and a Brit and I was set for excellent conversation and of course my fair share of being set up on dates with their granddaughters. A hilarious time accompanied by AMAZING food. We went to a trattoria (the Italian equivalent of a small café) and found that they had a lunch special of bread, a drink, a main dish (no meat), either dessert or fruit and coffee for just 10 Euros. I had the gnocchi and I was quick pleased that I had. It was like no other gnocchi I have ever had before. Picture a tomato soup (but with chunks of tomato and some kind of peppers and torn basil leaves) filled with gnocchi and then smothered in cheese and put under a broiler so that when served it almost looked like French onion soup… except… gnocchi style. I nearly cried it was so good.
Since the majority of the table was German and I made the very poor mistake of asking if the restaurant was far from the school in German, they decided it was perfectly acceptable to have a great deal of the conversation in German. Jenny (the Brit) and I would just kind of give each other this “Yeah, I have no clue what the hell they’re saying either” kind of look when they got to speaking quite quickly. However, I was surprised by just how much of the conversation I actually understood. When they were asking me about my age, where I went to school and some other mundane questions, I actually held my own relatively well in German. What made it even more challenging is that they would often remember that we were all studying Italian and would switch mid-sentence into Italian or English and then back to German and Italian and English and German… so on and so forth. Quite confusing at times.
After lunch we parted ways and I decided that even though the weather was not promising and I would likely get rained on at some point, I headed on a long walk to Villa Borghese. Where else would I want to spend 3 hours while being stranded? I made it with no real trouble of direction and just walked around while being amazed by the amount of people out and about the park even though it kept intermittently sprinkling and the sky was a perpetual gray. When it had stopped sprinkling for a long period of time and I thought it was safe, I pulled out my book and read next to a pond under a willow tree; talk about perfect reading spots, eh? Finally, I walked back to the Metro and headed back to Villa. I went for a run before dinner and it felt good since I had been sitting most of the day. I quickly showered and then after dinner I went to choir rehearsal. It ended up lasting nearly 2 hours which was a little annoying, but still fun. During rehearsal while Fabio was working with some other section, one of the girls was asking me what I did today and I started by saying that I left for school early to get there before the strike. She replied by saying “Oh yeah, I was a little surprised it didn’t actually happen today. Oh well, I’m sure there will be another one.” Great. I was “stranded” all day when the Metro never actually closed down. Oh well, it was still a very good day to walk. After rehearsal I somehow got roped into singing Ave Maria for the choir which was a little scary since I’m sure they all know that prayer in Latin far better than I do and I was worried I would forget a word or two, but I never did and they apparently liked and I was asked to sing at two of their weddings whenever they should happen. Another excellent day, natürlich.