6 April - Italiano, Italiano, Italiano......

Cycling to school is like a scene from a Fellini movie; the sun shines, the backdrop is timelessly classical and the Latin atmosphere is tangible.  We are blessed.

It was another day of Italian from the moment you entered the school to the moment you left with only the occasional snatched conversation at break time with other English speakers, although even here Italian is often used.  The afternoon's optional 'cultural' activity was a walk along the path of an old aqueduct that used to feed this city so it was a quick turnaround at lunch for both of us in order to meet up with our guide and others from the school.

Of course the guide spoke only in Italian.  However, it is strange how it dawns upon you that you are understanding the sense of what is being said, if not indeed a large part of it in some detail.  Granted, it is not without a lot of mental effort and a small lapse in concentration will leave you completely lost.  But it is a sobering thought that three days ago you would have heard nothing but a foreign and incomprehensible language and now you are measuring yourself by just how well you have grasped the meaning.

We walked for a couple of hours in the sunshine, following the line of the aqueduct into the Tuscan countryside, before resting in the shade of some trees prior to returning.  It was a real mixed bag of people: English, Australian, Argentinian, Spanish, American.  One of the latter is in Lorraine's class, a semi-retired lawyer and a quiet and gentle man, who is so determined to try and learn he will speak only Italian, whoever he is speaking with.  He insisted on buying us a drink on our return to Lucca and although desperate to take a break from Italian it was hard to be frustrated with an octogenarian American so determined to learn a foreign language that, even when with two Brits, he insisted on using it.  We spent an hour or so in a bar near the station with our basic appreciation of the language often using words that to our common Anglo Saxon ear sounded Italian but probably no local would recognise.  Nevertheless we managed to have some form of conversation; a conversation that took us an hour but would have lasted less than 15 minutes had we chosen to use our native dialect.  After having walked Bill back to his guest house and then being side-tracked on the way back to our flat by a cocktail bar, Lorraine and I failed again to do any home study.  Once again we are going to be well prepared for the morning....