I have some gossip. Yesterday, while Giada was cooking pasta (she made a pasta with a tomato sauce with tuna and peas. I can't say it was delicious, but it wasn't bad), she turned to me and asked if I thought Francesca was nice. I of course said yes. She replied that she doesn't think so and that Marc agrees. When I asked why she said - and this she said in English - "She behaves [pause] like [pause] a baby." Now, Francesca has only been nice to me so far, so I don't want this to influence my opinion of her, but I may be able to see what she's talking about. I'll keep you updated.

I also found out that Marc actually chose me to live with them. Apparently, he went to the office one day and they handed him a list of the students and asked him who he wanted to live with. Last semester it was him and four girls, so he knew he wanted it to be guy. He said he chose me because of my Italian name. So it seems that the housing form I filled out was absolutely pointless. Oh well. At least I like it here (If that ever changes, we know who to blame).

In other news, I started class yesterday. I'm taking and Intensive Italian class and an Italian History class. Both professors are really nice and speak slowly so we can understand them. History looks boring, but I have the difficulty of taking notes in Italian to prevent me from falling asleep. OK, I'm boring myself, so I can only imagine how you must feel. Next topic.

Judgments! Now, let me begin by saying that I really don't like judging people, but I feel (and I hope you agree) that the things I judged people on are totally legitimate. I'm not going to use names since they're useless to you anyway.

-The girl I thought looked annoying turns out to just be loud. So I take back my comment.
-One girl I met at dinner was really uptight at first, but after a little bit of wine she relaxed and was actually rather pleasant.
-One girl (for those of you that helped me judge people over facebook, she's the one with the puckered lips and the breasts) turns out to be nice, but I cannot stand the pessimism. It's not even a funny pessimism. It's just annoying. For example, at dinner she complained that the restaurant must hate her because every dish she got wasn't put together nicely like everyone else's (something about there not being a pretty leaf in her tortellini) and that they must think she's fat because they keep giving her smaller proportions. Ugh. Apparently she's already counting the days until her return to the U.S.
-One guy seems rather odd. Every time we pass a McDonald's he comments about how there's a McDonald's here. This would be fine if he didn't then proceed to comment on the fact that he comments about there being a McDonald's here every time he passes one. So yeah.
-OK, this one really, really bothers me. So there is this girl in my Italian class (there are only six of us) who must think she is Queen of Italy because I heard her telling this girl that she wants to try and switch out of our class to a more advanced one so she can improve more (I wanted to tell her then that there is no more advanced class. All the classes are the same (except one lower level class) and do the same sort of things: read a book, watch a movie, read Italian magazines and newspapers, etc.). Now, this wouldn't have bothered me if her explanation for why she needed to be in a higher level class wasn't this: "Yeah, because, you know, I've already read an Italian novel." OK, first of all, the book she read is Io non ho paura which is told from the prospective of a child, so it can't be the most difficult book in the world. Second, does she really think that completing one book makes reading a second useless? What? Ugh. Now I'm not saying she isn't good at Italian. I'm sure she is. But honestly, who thinks that way.
-I want to close with a positive one: I really like Marc and Giada.

Alright, I'm afraid I have to go. We're going to the museum and then to meet our language partners.