First Week of School, First Week of School!

Since the intensive italian weeks have finally come to an end, this week it was time to begin our other classes. Long story short, this will probably the easiest semester ever. For example, 15% percent of our grade in Art History is a 300 word paper on what we think about a painting. Not very stressful. It's cool though because we get to see things first hand and I can tell we'll learn a lot, we just wont have any stressful homework or anything. The other class I'm taking (aside from Italian language, of course), is cultural anthropolgy, but I don't have any strong thoughts on that as of yet.
I also started my volunteering teaching  on monday... well, sort of. I was supposed to be there at 2:30, but since Mike was running late dropping everyone of at their different schools I got there way late and only had time to say hi, really. They're cute, although originally I was assigned to 4th graders and it turns out I'm actually teaching 1st graders, which means they know waaaay less english. The teacher wants me to use their english workbook, so hopefully I can figure out how to use it well.
And today it rained. It simultaneously made me miss Portland, since it rains all the time there, and made me miss California, where it's warm. Allora.  
Other than school, this week I've just been trying to get comfortable being here. It's wearing to be constantly out of my element. Also, it's odd that things look familiar but it still isn't my territory. It's impossible to feel completely comfortable not knowing the language, and it's surprisingly hard to practice, since we're always with Americans. It's an odd situation because being with Americans makes it hard to talk to Italians but without someone else it's hard to do anything. It's odd. I also have a hard time understanding how people can become completely fluent in another language. There's such an incredible amount of nuances to know, it seems impossible to remember everything. I'm definately not going to come back fluent in Italian, but it's nice to know that already I know more than enough to get around successfully. I know I'll learn more but again, I think we're all a bit hindered by the fact that this is in the end an American program. And that's fine with me, I'm just going to focus on learning what I can, of course as much Italian as I can, but I also recognize that that's not the most important thing for me this trip. It would be nice to know Italian well but even if I don't I know I'll have picked up other more important (and honestly, more useful) things.