At Scuola Romit

I’ve been at school for two days and I love it.

Aside from, that is, having to set my alarm for 7.30 am (when it’s just getting light here in Rome) to be out the door by 8.45 am.  My morning walk takes me past the cat sanctuary on the Largo Argentina, through the Piazza Venezia (where Mussolini raved from his balcony in the Palazzo), and on to the massive white marble “typewriter” of the Vittorio Emanuele Monument.  The Romit school is in Monti, the rione I blogged about last week, and in an area that’s bordered by Trajan’s Forum, and further along, the Colosseum.

The school is in a little street, the Via del Boschetto, and the Via is full of eateries, bars, artisan shops and other small businesses.   It’s very tempting to get side-tracked in the morning into stopping at one of the many cafes for yet another coffee.

My teacher, Claudio, taught me last year at the Leonardo da Vinci school and he was my favourite, having a genuine enthusiasm for teaching, for the Italian language, for history – and he has a marvellous sense of humour.  In the middle of last year, Claudio left the Leonardo school to set up his own business with three friends, also teachers - the Scuola Romit.   This is the four of them on the Italian Abbey Road  equivalent - the Via del Boschetto.  Claudio is on the extreme right. 

My class (there are three, and sometimes four, classes running concurrently) has another four students besides myself – an American, a Venezuelan, a Vietnamese and a Croatian.  We range in age from the oldest (me) to a twenty-something journalist who is here to live with her family. 

We start each day with some informal conversation, and Claudio eases into the lesson with lots of asides into Roman history (for example, the significance of Roman numerals, why the “quartiere” is named so, how Latin became Italian, and so on).  By 11am everyone wants a break, and we head out for coffee and try to stay talking in Italian as we walk.  After around 20 minutes we’re back for some grammar via our textbooks, and some practical exercises.  Today we used the past tense, the imperfetto to sort out our individual truths from lies (i.e. ‘When I was young I was..’,  ‘Every year my family …) – a great way to reinforce speaking naturally.

I'm particularly loving that there's very little homework - 15 minutes at most :)  Because I Skype via the online community 'Conversation Exchange' every week, I'm using this forum to practice speaking as I learn.

So at the end of today I went out to find a SIM card for my phone.  I am very happy (thrilled really) to say I did this totally in Italian.  I find myself less shy these days in taking the plunge and just speaking, rather than trying to form perfect sentences in my head first.  I’m managing to make less mistakes, and have become quite disciplined in watching the Italian news every night, and looking at the news headlines on line every morning.

I still have a way to go, but I have to say, I think I might just actually get to fluency. 

Spero di si (I hope so).