Ashes Ashes we all Fall Dead

October 10, 2011

The week before last will forever be referred to as….THE WEEK OF DEATH

It was by far the most hectic week I’ve had here, which is saying a lot because I’m including weeks where I had to lug around my two large suitcases (plus an over-loaded backpack) from city to city and on and off trains.

 

List of Pains-in-the-Ass:

1. I had two oral exams for my language class. The exams here are more like an interrogation than an exam. It’s just you and your teacher face-to-face. One was on the history of Padova/Italian grammar and the other was more of a presentation on a topic of your choice. All in Italian, of course.

2. Then I had to move from one residence to another on the whole other side of town.

3. And then I had to miss class to sit for five hours at the police station to deal with some beaurocratic bullshit about the Permesso di Soggiorno (I honestly have no idea what it’s purpose is, but we had to do it).

4. AND on top of all that university classes started.  You have to shop around for classes here instead of just signing up for them on the internet like at the UC’s so it’s a lot more time-consuming.

So I missed most of our last week of language course class which means that I half-assed my presentation and crammed hard-core for the oral exam because the history reading we’d been assigned was so thick with Italian technical terms that none of us really understood it the first time around. Finally, now that I’ve settled into my permanent housing, got an A in my language course, and found all of my university classes, I can relax.