That's Bologna!

Written Monday, March 12
I like this. This is cool. I'm smiling, and a lot. Okay, where to begin? Well, I just went to a class that I'm not enrolled in, because in my linguistics class today the professor told us that if we had the time, we should go to this class, because it would be on sign language today. Easy choice. I'm there. It was just fun to learn a little bit about the structure of LIS (Italian sign language), even though we just barely touched the surface. Oh, and there was a word that took me a very long time to understand, but I finally got it. The professor was talking about questions: there are yes/no questions, and eiquworhfiuqehwof questions. I couldn't decipher what he said at all, at first. Then, slowly, I began to piece together the sounds and figure out the meaning. "doppiavuacca" questions. What is that? you might ask. Literally, "double-u aitch" questions. wh- questions. Is that what they really call those in Italian? Has English so totally corrupted the Italian language that the description of a grammatical concept relies on our "who", "what", "when", "where", "why" and "which", in stead of their "chi", "cosa", "quando", "dove", "perché" and "quale"? I love how Italian is slowly becoming English.
Another thing: before the class began, I arrived in the classroom, which looks out over the courtyard of the faculty. All of a sudden, I hear singing from outside. Somebody had just graduated (there are little groups of graduates basically every week, here. I guess that not everyone graduates at the same time, so every so often I'll find a huge mass of relatives crowding the place, taking pictures and talking with their enrobed daughter/son, niece/nephew, whathaveyou) and her friends were all crowded around her, in front of a poster that they had made for her, singing Gaudeamus Igitur. Let us rejoice, therefore. That brings me way back to sixth grade Latin, where we learned the traditional graduation song. Crazy.
AND! I finally got the chutzpah to talk with some of the kids in my linguistics class (the one that I'm actually enrolled in [not that I'm actually enrolled - you don't enroll for classes, you enroll for the exams, and this doesn't happen until later, I think], not the one I went to today for the hell of it). I am planning on attaching to them like a remora for the remainder of the class. They were three Ferrarese guys, and I've sat near them a few times and heard them throwing out little phrases in English, so today before class started I asked them if they study English. Obviously, they do, and I explained that that's my mother tongue (is there a less awkward way to express this in English? All I can think of right now is the Italian word "madrelingua"... boh). They ask, and so I tell them that I'm from the USA, little town near Boston, you know, the standard questions. (none of them asked me what I see from out my window...) We got to talking and joking (! I can make people laugh in Italian!) and it was just generally a nice exchange. Next Friday's objective: learn their names.
Oh, and I took a trip to Bologna yesterday by myself. It was short, and I didn't see too much, but I did get to the the archeological museum. The basement is entirely on Egypt and is really cool. I loved learning about the various writing systems they had - hyrogliphics also had a "cursive" version, and then as Egypt was Christianized, the Greek alphabet was borrowed and adapted for their language and for the first time, they had vowels! Or, at least that's what I think the signs said. Whatever, it was cool. And then upstairs was a shitton of Roman, Greek and Etruscan stuff, most of which was specifically Bolognese. It was an overwhelming amount of material - you really can't appreciate every individual piece, because there are just too many, and they aren't really individually labeled in a museum-type fashion. It's more like a library, if you ask me: if you were curious about the arm ornament that was found in a specific tomb in a specific locality in Bologna, you could find it and look at it. But otherwise, it almost just mixes in with all the other findings. And the last thing I did before I returned was stop at the Nutelleria and order a piadina alla Nutella. Which is basically a toasted pita filled with Nutella and sprinkled with powdered sugar. Yeah, happy day. Better than Saturday's Midd-sponsored trip to Siena, which just kinda sucked. I'm going to have to re-do that one with the family.
I've still got a bit of a cold, but I have managed to get a whole lot of sleep every night, which is nice. Okay, to the next post!