Postius of my Timetableius

So my time table looks something like this:

Well technically it doesn’t look something like that... it looks exactly like that. I’m quite enjoying finishing at 1 most days. I can see how it would be quite useful if you were actually following all your classes and had homework and stuff... Giu seems to come home, walk the dog, eat lunch and then watch tv/fall asleep until 2.30/3 and then study until 6/7.30/when Gabri tells her to stop talking and hurry up and get to the table (her study entails reciting her textbooks from what I can tell).

The two blocks of Italiano in grey I am with class 3A, the two blocks of Lettere in brown I have with 2C and then double sport I have with 4D. Both of my classes with 3A are instead of Spanish as is my Thursday (giovedÌ) class with 2C. My sleep in and Wednesday (mercoledÌ) class with 2C is instead of Filosofia which I wouldn't have mined doing but it's not like I was going to understand much anyway. For my double sport with 4D I miss and hour of scienze which is a shame as I can understand most of it and it seems as though that is the day they get to go to the lab. Gloriously I have Saturday (sabato) free while everyone else is at school... I really don’t know why but I’ve just not got any classes then... I’m quite happy to have the day off, it lets me sleep in and use Skype at a sensible time for you Aussies plus I’m not sure that triple Italian and then History were going to be the most engaging subjects.

I’ll give you a bit of a run down on my teachers and what I do in the class here but I’ll write more about my class mates later, they can have their own intro post. Right so lets start with Monday morning and maths. Prof Cane is quite amusing; he took great joy in telling me several times every lesson for the first few weeks that there was a mathematician called Cramer that did some mathsy stuff (some mathsy stuff we happened to use one day in class). Maths was the first subject that I actually started to follow, well I was never not following it. Because I missed school my first Monday in Italy to sleep (and blog) I didn’t have Maths until Friday that week so I had time to get used to things, and hey, maths is maths no matter what language it's in. the prof also stops every few mins to make sure I understand what he's just said and gets someone to translate it even if I repeat a sentence in English in which all the major words are exactly the same. It doesn’t sound like my class likes him too much... they are always complaining about him and he apparently doesn’t notice when they take A4 pages of notes into their tests, something to keep in mind since we have a test on Monday and I’ve only been here for half the content. He also has a rather dubious fashion sense... he has a hair cut like Spock from the recent Star Trek movie (with out the pointy side bits) and has been wearing corduroy pants nearly every time I’ve seen him.

Next is History and I know nothing about the teacher beyond the fact she is not Mrs Reichelt. I cant even remember what she looks like. She came up to me one lesson and started rattling of Italian to me despite the fact I was introduced as not understanding any. We eventually established that she has to give me a mark at the end of the school year which is ridiculous because I only see her one hour a week, I don’t understand Italian and I’ve never studied the same part of history she is teaching in English (I don’t even know what they are studying but nothing I recognise). I generally spend most lessons conjugating verbs or going over vocab or staring into space, however the latter occurs only if the teacher is being loud and/or doing things that make the other options difficult.

My English teacher is quite nice, her pronunciation however is rather amusing in its wrongness. We've just finished a couple of grammar units and are now moving onto English Literature... I do however believe that even if I had done Lit in Australia I would be no better off. The first lesson we spent on it I got a crash course in the history of France and England over about 600 years most of which we briefly touched on in SOSE in year 9. I can tell you exactly where I sat in G12, what the booklets we studied looked like and which type of highlighter I used but all I can remember of the content is something happened in 1066, there was a dude called William the conqueror, a thing called the Domesday book which was like a census and that there was a pyramidal system of power that ended in serfs. This of course compares with the rest of my class who have studied that period of history... oh well it should be interesting. We appear to be going to look at the author of the Cantabry Tales who I have been told is the English equivalent to Italian's Dante

Physics, Physics, Physics, Physics, Physics... (that was a joke/reference to a Catherine Tate sketch with David Tennant in case you were wondering). Prof Cotza is TINY. And in her head is about half way up my chest and she has to bounce on her toes to erase things from the top of the black board. She's got short black really curly hair and the class seems to like her. If paid attention to most physics lessons but they are currently doing projectile motion which I’ve done quite a bit of over the past few years so a couple of lessons I got bored and went back to conjugating verbs. That was a few weeks ago and I’ve decided that I am going to attempt to understand what the prof is saying now... she doesn't seem to mind me pulling strange faces as I try to follow her/ get lost when she reads things from a second text book (I’m currently sharing with Greta next to me so if she reads from the class text I can semi follow). She was reading a problem out for us to do at home on Wednesday and I actually understood the whole thing... we had to determine the minimum velocity that a frog had to jump at to cross a pond of a certain diameter if it jumped at a given angle.

Mortellaro was the first teacher I had and it was quite a full on lesson to have first up on my second day in a new country. She mainly just reads from the text book so no one actually listens to her. Most people chat, text, do other class work, play card games or just leave to room to go to the toilet or get coffee and then don’t come back until the end of the lesson... one day there were 14 people in the classroom and we're a class of 25. needless to say that I don’t follow this class... I don’t even know when they are doing Italian and when they are going Latin! The prof got me a Italian grammar book in my first week there and I ploughed though it in about 2 and a half weeks, it was 130 I think pages long...

My 3A Italian teacher is really lovely. She was the host mum for a Australian girl on a summer exchange with the same program as me who left a few weeks after I arrived. Every lesson I am allocated to a student so they can help me. Being allocated to a student involves evicting the person they sit next to down to a lone desk at the front of the room that they had to fetch for me. I’ve spent my time here conjugating verbs, working in my grammar book and for the past few Thursdays I’ve attempted to hold a conversation with a couple of girls who don’t like Italian Literature and so took me out of the classroom to chat.

I’m not a big fan of the design teacher. She is always very quiet and its very annoying. I’m in the front row and I can barely hear her so no wonder the people at the back chat so much. Design is sort of technical drawing, from what I can tell they've done stuff on how to draw things in perspective (I think) and then they analyse pictures of old paintings and stuff... not really that interesting so I don’t pay attention... my class actually has a second hour of design after the 12 o'clock intervalo but I get to go home which is cool. Giu finished at 2 on that day so I’ve got 2 hours at home by myself which is generally when all my cooking or at least the planning for my cooking occurs.

Prof Guesa of my 2C Italian class has longish blond curly hair that she never seems to be bothered to do anything with. I’m not a big fan of her either... she makes me stand up along with the whole class while she explains what they'll be doing that day, despite the fact I cant understand her and don’t follow the lesson, it wastes valuable conjugating time. Because the teachers move rooms while the students say put I generally cross paths with her on the way to the class room and we attempt to have a little chat while we wait for the previous teacher to finish. Its quite funny, I can understand what she asks me because the question is simple but I don’t know enough words to answer her...

My sport teacher is unlike any of the other sport teachers I’ve ever had. She seems quite happy to spend the first 20 mins of class chatting with us and then we do stuff for 30/40 mins and then she's like 'lesson over, do whatever' for the rest of the 2 hour block... they boys generally play soccer or basket ball and the girls and the namby pamby boys hit around a volley ball. Fortunately this is one fo the sports we've spent the most time on at Penrhos and thus I do not epic epic fail at it as I do everything else...

IRC is religion... I forgot to mention that before now... the teacher is really sweet and always says hello to me and tries to talk to me. I don’t follow much of what is happening but she's given out a few worksheets that I spend the next few classes translating so thats quite fun. Currently it appears that we are doing a cross between sex ed and the morals of abortion... we watched Juno ( a film) a few weeks ago which was a nice break from my conjugations.

Uffa! Who knew I had so many teachers!? Ok last one. I quite like the science teacher... she isn’t all that annoying and doesn't stop every 30 seconds to tell people to stop murmuring so we actually get though things in class. I can follow most of this, fortunately science words stay pretty much the same when they are translated (proof I have chosen a good degree at uni, its universal). I managed to read a whole passage from Greta's book while the teacher was organising interrogation (verbal test) dates. It was about how water is purified for astronauts. While I didn’t understand every single word I think I got about 65-70% and the wrest were mainly small joining words so I could work them out... I was very happy that I’d managed to read a whole chunk and be able to understand it.

I am aware that I was adamant to get 3 posts written before I went to bed but I am now well and truly into the hours of 'dumb o'clock' and thus I am going to post this one and go to sleep. I PROMISE I will write three over the week end to catch up for the one I missed from the week!