Foggy Weather, Foggy Mind

We have two more weeks of class before the course ends and we go back to our own life back in our home country. Some of us were already lamenting how quickly time flies and were trading email addresses during class. Mirlan even reminded himself to bring his camera for a group photo.

Yesterday we started class at a saner hour of 10.00 am, though we ended at 6.00 pm, with a lunch break at 2.00 pm, just enough time to finish up the left-overs of the Mensa, which closes at 2.30 pm.

Santo seemed to be in his argumentative mood again. But honestly he just could not understand the difference between the two types of condizionale –condizionale presente for giving advice (darer consiglio) and condizionale composto for giving reproach (rimprovero). And he was honest and brave enough to ask and clarify. It is just that the way he asked, ‘’why isn’t it possible…’’, ‘’why couldn’t he have done his shopping…’’ made it sound like he was debating over metaphysics and getting philosophical. This is the only time I wished that we were allowed to use English translation. I wanted to tell him (but could not as he was sitting far from me), that darer consiglio is ‘’still a possible action’’ as it’s like, ‘’If I were you, I would do my shopping’’; but rimprovero is something that could not be done now: ‘’you should have done your shopping’’.

Marina our teacher was sympathetic and offered to set aside time later to give him a one on one explanation. ‘’Your mind is as foggy as today’s weather,’’ she joked. But seriously, four consecutive hours of grammar from 10.00 am – 2.00 pm can be too much even for grammar aficionados. At one point, when we were discussing something which I had already learnt back home (mi piace, mi dispiace) I also fell into the confusion trap and asked a real silly question. “By 1.30 pm my mind just shut and refused to think,” said Kayoko. “I know, hungry, right?’’ I winked at her.

You guessed it. After lunch we began lesson with more prepositions exercises. Santo stopped at one sentence and asked ‘’why is lamentarsi a reflexive verb? You lament to someone, not to yourself.’’ The only answer for this type of question should just be, ‘’because Italian is different from English lah!’’.

Maybe Santo’s philosophical mood is infectious. At one of the sentences I got hopelessly entangled over its meaning too and asked if the book was in English or in Italian – was it translated from Italian or into Italian and was it originally in English and can we use ‘’in’’ instead? As expected the culprit was ‘’dal’’. (Ho comprato un libro inglesse tradotto dal (or in?) italiano)

Oh well, at least I asked, and Maria said it was a great question and off she went to elaborate further! Wei Wei from China, who sat next to me, just clammed up as usual and frantically searched his dictionary instead of asking. And when he could not find a particular word (vuole) in his dictionary, he asked me in Mandarin. In the process he had lost a big chunk of the teacher’s explanation of the applications of the phrase ‘’ci vuole’’ – a phrase which you can’t find a direct translation in English or Mandarin!

The weather has not been pleasant. The day before it was non stop pouring rain and thunder. Yesterday it was foggy.

When we ended at 6.00 pm and walked towards the city centre, the whole place felt so eerie, like a scene of the haunted countryside on TV.

‘’Isn’t it nice? I like it,’’ enthused Kayoko. She was the only one in the group who could appreciate it. I suddenly had an idea! Why not take a picture of this scary scene? My camera was not with me and the one on the cell phone registered an even more eerie blur. Her camera produced similar result.

Perhaps some scenes are meant to just remain in the heart, never to be recorded.