Day 17: Bambina

Today was a busy day!

This morning Alessandra had to leave early for court. So after clearing up breakfast I spent some time with Bea helping her with her English book. Her English grammar homework book is like 400 pages long. Big pages like A4 size but not quite, the weird textbook size pages. Luckily not all 400 pages are required to be completed by September but she still has so much to do. Today we looked at adjectives, comparatives and superlatives and negative comparisons. Studying English Language for two years put me in a really good position to help her!

One exercise was quite hard to fill in though. Differences between elder/older eldest/oldest and further/farther furthest/farthest? After thinking long and hard I came to the conclusion that if there ever was a difference between older and elder and further and furthest noone cares about it now because I hear and use them interchangeably. Though I did some research and found that 'farther' refers to physical distance like miles or feet and 'further' refers to non physical difference like effort or time. Like I said I think they are now pretty much interchangeable although I hear further a lot more than farther. With elder and older, elder apparantly refers to differences between two people e.g Hannah is Lucy's elder sister whereas older refers to age only e.g John is older than me by two years. I think elder just drops from use too archaic and old fashioned sounding. Plus I think the religious connotations scare people from using it.

After that, me and Fede went to Elga's house 10.30 till 12.30. I tutored Francesco and Federico first today, well Fede mostly sits there and does his Italian work because he has finished his English book and Elga is paying for France (pronounced Franky) not Fede. So I practiced with him the trouble words we identified yesterday and then we did some more exercises in his book. We also looked at labelling the body or il corpo in English with a rather badly illustrated child that I drew. Then we finished off reading Peter Rabbit and made a start on Hansel and Gretel. Same process for Alessandro. Ale had made a huge improvement on his words although he still pronounces find with a shorter I sound so it rhymes with tinned. We were looking at telling the time in his book and then we started reading Hansel and Gretel.

We came back for lunch, and then after that went to visit Alessandra's friend Laura at the hospital. She had given birth to a little girl a few days ago. The baby was so sweet and tiny only 3500g (3.5kg) she was very small! But so cute. Italian hopsitals are quite like English ones though less plasticised they actually have real walls. Though the floors are covered with the weird lino stuff, and yes they smell the same I don't really know how to describe it except for it being a sickly hospitally smell. We stayed about three quarters of an hour Fede wanted to go to the park and Bea had a friend she wanted to see.

Bea went off to see her friend, and me Fede and Alessandra took a little tour of the surrounding area. We walked through a large green park area, past the public university which was orignially a hospital built by Duke Sforza. After it was bombed it was remodelled into a university. The architecture was lovely I like all the white marbly stone they use everything looks so fresh.

We carried on walking, saw some more old Romanesque style churches and went into the usual park. Luckily lots of Fede's friends were there to play with. I sat on a bench and carried on reading 1984, I think it is a book I am going to have to read over once I have finished as I am not entirely understanding what is going on. Ironically about twenty minutes in Fede complained wanting to go home! He who had begged so hard to come to the park. We left journeying home past Massimo's and of course went in to get ice cream. I usually get Mandarin but they didn't have any so today I had passionfruit. It was so lovely. They make it all from the actual natural fruit and the flavour was strong and sweet. It's a pity I can't bring the ice cream back with me because it really is something.

For tea we had PIZZA. I think I have had pizza every week since I have been here but I am not complaining Alessandra makes a very nice pizza.

I also taught Alessandra how to use google hangouts. She has an aunt who lives far away and only contacts by email so now she can hangout her which will be better!

Ciao.