Al fino

Finally, I am almost done with the Fall Semester of 2008.

It seriously blew. I didn't do my best, I took 21 hours of class, and I let myself (and to some extent my professors) down. 

However, I did pretty well in some aspects. My Italian has improved, I've gotten a bit better about being proactive in regards to readings and homework, if only a little bit, and I didn't party. 

I had Japanese yesterday which was surprisingly long but not too bad. I slept when I got home, woke up at midnight, read, then did some homeworks to be resubmitted for the end of the semester. 

I got a box of candy for my professor since she was really kind. She went so out of the way to help me. I love professors that come off as stern and serious at first but turn out to be the most interesting, kind and amazing people ever. 

Now I'm off get ready and go to school to study for my last final. Wish me luck. 

いよいよ、ほっと出来る様にになると思う。

Il cerchio

We've started and finished Dante. I really like his stuff, and it's really interesting to see how his body of work reflects his life at the time. Of course, as it's literature, you can't parallel everything to a real-life event as there's no auto-biography written by the great author himself.

It's amazing to see how he wrote all of these beautiful works in the dolce stil novo period, and then gets hardened, and goes so far as to write in poetry in hard sounds and in a really hard, tormented manner. 

Of course the Comedy in and of itself is layered with morality, personality and emotions. He almost condemns his past work in Canto 5, which we read. 

In other news, I had a presentation that went far too long in Japanese, I have a Japanese accent when speaking Italian, and cronica gialla are not fun at all because I can't do thrillers in English, much less Italian peppered with Sicilian vocabulary.

I went to a show on Thursday night and got much drunker than expected, though the cab ride to my friend's was safe and much faster than a trip back to my own home. I'll  be doing that more often.

Off to do absolutely, positively nothing.