June 10, 2009
Today was the end of the first week of class. It is nice to know that we have the weekend so we have a bit of time before the intensity of class starts up again for the second week, even though we will both have to work on Italian over the weekend. I feel as if I am slowly making progress although since I spent weks working on Italian before we came, I think I shouldl be doing better than I am. So much for Rosetta Stone.
This afternoon we ran into a friend at the Frari. She is in Italy doing research on her second book and we are having dinner next week with her and a group of friends before she leaves for Rome. Her son, who is in the US, is recovering from a mild case of swine flu but she says he is doing very well.
In the late afternoon we met friends from the university at Campo Santa Margherita for a drink and a close encounter with pigeons, a constant hazard in Venice. I had a more than close encounter last year at the Jewish cemetary on the Lido but this year both Laura and I manage to escape serious bombardment. It was really great to see both of the. We could talk about travel, politics, television, cooking, etc.--just the usual things you talk about with friends. That is one of the nice things about coming back to Venice. Most of the time when we are abroad we are just tourists, but here we feel that we have a little bit of community. We will see Shaul again on Tuesday, and if we are lucky, maybe again before we leave. And we will see both of them again in April when we come back for the RSA. So I guess Venice is in our past, present, and future, no matter what other travel plans we may make.
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