it's a matter of opening the door. but where's the key?

Well I’ve done quite the sporadic job of maintaining this blog. Originally I made a hazy goal of updating at least once a week, but now I see that was an unrealistic expectation. The primary explanation for why I’ve posted so few entries is because of the electric speed with which time has jolted by. I’ve been so busy with class and life here that I’ve barely processed my experiences, let alone had a moment to write my thoughts down. However our midterm break provided a much needed chunk of free time, in which I did some serious evaluation of my first two months abroad.


I was at a particularly low point ten days ago before the break. I felt like an abject failure in terms of my Italian speaking skills. There were many contributing factors to that sentiment, but the main reason provoking this disheartening conclusion, was a particular conversation in Italian held with some students from the Elementary class. It was utterly frustrating to feel like my Italian was only moderately stronger than theirs. I’ve been studying Italian for a year, while they have only taken a month-long intensive course! I’m glad for their quick grasp of the language, and need to take into account their fluency in Spanish, but I still can not help feeling upset that I haven't had a similar drastic improvement. What exactly is it that’s holding me back? Why don’t I have better proficiency in speaking Italian yet?? Ugh. Grammatically I’ve improved, but what I can write on paper doesn't come as easily when attempting an actual conversation with a person.
Maybe I placed too high of expectations on myself, but I still can’t help feeling that my spoken Italian has plateau-ed to some degree. It is difficult for me to envision the near-fluency that I hoped to achieve by the end of this semester.

However, when it hit me today that I have less than two months here, it makes me all the more motivated to work even harder at getting my Italian to the level I want it to be. Part of the challenge will be to somehow foster friendships with Italians- which has proven to be more difficult than I realized (that topic in and of itself deserves its own post to go into more detail about later).

Va bene, well after that little rant, I have lots of reading to catch up on but will try to devote an entry later in the week to actually discussing how my midterm break in Barcelona and Prague went. All in all I'm staying positive and have more to loaf about soon!