Rain, rain, go away

Rainy day! boo! Rainy Sundays here are pretty dreary, since there really is absolutely nothing to do. I'm currently sitting outside one of the University buildings, precariously sheilding my laptop from any rain that might blow in my direction. Yesterday, Adam, our three guests and I went to Venice for the afternoon/evening. It was nice, and we took a water bus, so I was glad to have gotten onto the water, since the buildings on the water are really a sight, but I still need to go back and spend a full day there. Both times I've been, I've really only walked around, had dinner, and then left. There must be so many more things to do and see and enter. I might just have to take some time for myself some weekend and explore it at my own pace.
Anyway, here's another little post that I wrote last night:

Saturday, March 24
Gli amici dei miei amici sono i miei amici
I'm really liking my linguistics class now. We've moved past the things that I had memorized long ago (IPA chart... what? It's cool) and are getting into some definitions of concepts that I either didn't have a good grasp on before, or that I had never heard of, so it's definitely feeling like I'm learning now.
More importantly, however, class itself has recently gotten much more fun. See, it's a class of maybe fifty students, and I'm the only American. It was kinda intimidating for a while, since everyone seemed to know most at least one other person. So, for the first few weeks I sat alone and was pretty self-conscious of the fact that I clearly had no friends in this roomful of people. But, that has now changed! Those kids that I talked to the other day in class have taken a liking to me, and now I sit with them. I talk a lot with one of them in particular, Giuseppe. A week after we met, I showed up at the University building, and I see him and Manuel, one of the others that I met. Giuseppe tells me that class has been cancelled. Oh, Italy. Manuel had things to do, but Giuseppe and I had the rest of the day basically free. He lamented that he basically got up out of bed for nothing. He didn't feel like studying, so he asked me, "facciamo un giro?" I said "sì," we got on our bikes, and started biking aimlessly through the city. We wandered for maybe fort-five minutes, talking about various things, until we ended up back at the building we started at. We parked our bikes, went inside to sit down, and then just kept on talking for nearly another two hours. It was amazing! He studies English, so sometimes I teach him little things here and there, and he'll help me with my Italian. It's a really good feeling to be having conversations, making friendships, and making someone laugh, in italiano. I haven't been getting enough of that lately. We've got three houseguests presently, so it's hard to practice Italian. So, I really treasure my interactions with Giuseppe and the others. He lives generally in the same direction as I do, so yesterday he and I biked together until we got to my apartment (which couldn't really possibly be completely on his way) but he took me in a slightly different route that doesn't involve the kinda intense cobblestones of Via Ercole I d'Este, so I think I'm going to keep with that one.
On my way to class I had fallen off my bike, scraped up my knee decently and bruised my shoulder. It was on my street, which was empty, so I wanted to see how fast I could go. Well, the left handlebar grip, which I had noticed had been wiggling for a while, under all the pressure I was putting on it came off the bar, thus placing all of my upper body force onto the right handlebar. Physics, gravity, acceleration, inertia, pavement. An old woman turned the corner as I was picking my bike up off the ground (I think she probably heard me cursing in English while I was walking off the pain). She asked if I had fallen, if I had hurt myself, told me to tell the bike-store man about what happened since it's a rent-a-bike and it would be bad if the same thing happened to other people, and when I said that I was renting it for a few months, she gave me directions to the bike mechanic's. I thanked her, and although I wasn't really interested in going to the mechanic since a little bit of glue should fix it, it was good to know that when someone falls there are people who would help him out. Maybe that's why I smile.