giapponese?

so sickness has been spreading around the accademia. no matter how much i tried to avoid it, it was inevitable that i would get sick too. so here i am. cold and rainy saturday and in bed. i ventured to market this morning, but ended up taking the bus home after only a few hours because it was so rainy and freezing. and i was mistaken for a japanese person today. i mean, 5 ft. 9, dirty blonde, its understandable. so, now we've got japanese, finnish, and irish. why does no one here believe that i am an american?

this week was incredibly long, three of the five days we had 8 hours of class a day. and all of a sudden a bunch of work sprung up on us out of nowhere. but it'll get done. i've never had to generate so much solo material in such a small amount of time.

my roommate jess has turned out to be such a wonderful person and awesome to room with. shes a great listener, hilarious, modest, so in tune with others, and incredibly respectful. i consider myself very lucky to have her as a roommate, not that the other students aren't incredible, but jess and i are a really good fit for one another. most days when i'm freaking out or stressed, she's the only one i want to talk to about any of it. not to mention, she can impersonate almost any person/character at any time. she introduced me to the drunk girl skit from SNL, which she can do flawlessly.

i'm hoping that this coming week is a better one, this week i just didn't feel like myself. the dancers had to take a voice class with the theater students, which was challenging for me because i hate singing. the first portion of the class was fun because we made goofy noises and played silly games, but when it came time for us to sing, and i was called on to sing along, i completely freaked out. its just not something im interested in doing again. im glad i tried the class, but i dont know if its something i would want to do again.

we also had our first dance performance class with giorgio. hes a goofy middle aged man, and he moves like water. his movement is just so loose and unrestricted. i'm having difficulty in that class though, only because some of his metaphors and corrections dont always translate very well. i am able to learn a lot from him by watching, but when it comes to discussion and him talking us through exercises, a lot of it goes right over my head. but i've always been the kind of learner where i pick things up quickly through watching rather than speaking or listening. so i guess i'll just take from him what i can and learn to adjust.

all in all, not speaking italian is the most frustrating part of this trip. i actually find that my spanish is coming so much more fluently here, not that its helping me at all. since the accademia is so tiny and we see so much of eachother, when we go out on weekends all i want to do is communicate with others, but it always turns out to be a lot more difficult than i'd imagine. we're moving quickly through italian class, we have italian for about 6 hours every week, but there are so many practical things that we still do not know how to say. it would help if i remembered to bring my pocket italian dictionary, but i always forget.

it's weird that tomorrow is the super bowl. i miss american coffee, you can't get anything to go here. i also couldn't find marshmallows or peanut butter. cream of wheat/oatmeal is also rare. if i could bring anything home for everyone to try though, it would be the cheese. or the olive oil. yum.