How are CLASSES?! You know, the reason you went to Italy, learning from books, yada yada yada . . .

The above is a quote from my mother- after several e-mails of me ignoring her ever constant question- how are classes?
I've honestly been putting off answering this question for you all because how interesting of a post can this be?  Yeah, I sat a desk for a few hours and got talked at and then left.  But I think it's time to answer the question because it is the reason I came to Florence after all and luckily my classes aren't quite as boring as just depicted.  In fact, they're really not boring at all.  They're quite glorious really.
Let me tell you about my schedule first.  I only have two classes each day.  Pretty sweet deal.  What makes it sweeter is that my school week is only three days- Tuesday through Thursday.  Can you say living the dream?!!?  It is every college senior's perfect set-up.  Life is grand.
Tuesday I have Anthropology from 9:30 to 11:30 and Italian from 3 to 4:15.  Wednesday is Intro to Journalism at 9 to 11 and Intercultural Communication from 3 to 5:30.  Thursdays I have my Food, Culture and Society class (essentially a cooking class) from noon to 2:30 and Italian again from 3 to 4:15.  Never has it been so good to be a student.
So let's start with Anthropology.  I have no background in this subject, whatsoever.  It has always sounded super interesting to me and when I needed an extra class, it felt like a good choice.  I has thus far greatly enjoyed it, but this teacher has an interesting quirk.  She'll offer a question that is a little challenging, but doable.  One of us will be brave enough to answer it and we'll come up with intelligent and fairly accurate answers.  Immediately she'll spout of, "Why?"  This goes on for several rounds until we simply give up.  She will have this Cheshire grin on her face and basically tell us what we have been telling her for the past 10 minutes, but in more concise terms.  It's one of those "duoh.." moments.  A fun fact about this class is that there are only five students in it.  And Rockhurst just likes to think it has bragging rights about small class sizes..
My Multicultural Communication class goes along really well with Anthropology.  Both obviously revolve around interacting with other cultures and a lot of the material double dips.  I like this class because the professor integrates a lot of application.  She uses a lot of examples and frequently asks us to step back reflect on our experience and the impact the information being provided could have on our lives.  She is engaging and uses activities in class which is nice when you have to sit through a two and a half hour class.  Because I only have each class (except Italian) once a week, the class periods are much longer.  We are given coffee breaks at some point in the middle of the class to break it up.  How much the Italians love their coffee will never cease to make me smile.
Italian is slowly growing on me.  I went into the class thinking I would absolutely love it and I would pick it up rather quickly given my background in Spanish.  Wrong.  The thing about Italian is that it operates in a different phonetic structure.  So I'm pronouncing everything as you would in Spanish and I'm pronouncing everything wrong.  The class has yet to really exhibit much structure and it drives me a little crazy to come home after class and listen to my apartmentmates practice all the Italian they have learned when I still don't even know numbers.  Luckily things have started to pick up this week, but I still feel really behind.
I've fallen in love with my Intro to Journalism class.  Of course, the thing with me, if the class has a knowledgeable and engaging professor, there is high probability that it will become a contender for my new favorite class.  My professor is still fairly young and an American who has moved here.  She loves getting to know us on a personal level and really loves her subject.  She has a way of making it interesting and making us still do serious work.  She one of those teachers that if you don't personally give your best, you feel as though you have let them down, and that's the effect she has on me.  Between the class and this bog, I've come to realize that I really enjoy writing when I have something that I really want to talk about and now my imagination is trying to create some job that involves helping people (I do still want to stick with counseling) but I want to write too!  Houston, we have a problem.  This is not healthy talk for a Senior in college.
Finally, the best for last- Food, Culture and Society.  God himself must have created this class.  I get to, for two and a half hours, sit around and talk about food, then make the food we talked about, then eat the food that we just made and shoot the breeze with our chef.  Hee.  How fun is that to say?  I have a chef.  ; )  He is also young and pretty quirky.  He likes to just talk and keep us engaged.  And the food- good Lord, the food.  My taste buds don't know what to think after the class.  There's disbelief (wait, YOU made this food??), shock (food tastes THIS good?!), and pure joy (and I get to eat as much as is available because Chef Walter said I could!!)  My mouth pretty much starts automatically watering as soon as I walk into the class or really whenever I think about the class.  Woops, just got a spot on the keyboard..
The school I'm attending is called Palazzi.  It is a school made up of several different schools around the city. I technically go to school at Apicius International School Hospitality, sQuola, Center for Contemporary Italian Studies, and FUA, Florence University of the Arts.  There other schools with other emphases, but these are the three that I am a part of.  This makes getting to class very interesting.  It's not every day you have to battle a mob of tourists to make it to class on time and you want to be in class on time.  Attendance is not something they take lightly here.  Two tardies equals an absence and if you have three absences, you automatically fail the class.  This has required some extra responsibility on my part.  Gone are the days that I can wake up fifteen minutes before class and call it good.  It takes thirty minutes to get to one of my classes and you are also expected to look semi-presentable.  T-shirts are almost non-existent here and that has been an interesting learning curve for me.
You also know you're out of your league when one of the professors offhandedly mentions that this palace, blah, blah, blah, but naturally, all you got from the sentence was 'this palace.'  Excuse me, but what do you mean by "THIS palace"???  That's right, folks.  FUA is a converted palace in which a member of the nobility used to live.  It's not everyday that you get to say something like that.