Working on Our Language Skills

This trip, as on many others, we continue to work on our Italian, and for a fifth time we are at the Florence branch of la Scuola Leonardo da Vinci, but we're not in classes this time. After last spring's stay in Villefranche-sur-Mer, where Steve had private lessons from the teacher our friend Joan has been going to for several years, he is a convert to the benefits of private lessons. (I had been having such lessons for the previous three trips, twice in Florence and once in Paris, so in Villefranche I required no conversion experience while I had lessons from his teacher's partner.) Here we are each having private lessons arranged by the Scuola, at our different levels. Each of us is having five lessons of an hour and a half, each with a pleasant and skilled young Italian woman. Five days were all we could manage in this two-week stay in this city, given our jet lag at the beginning and the four-day Easter weekend that is coming up, and then our departure for the next city--Siena--next Tuesday.

We're happy to be back at la Scuola Leonardo, where, when we first arrived last Friday, we were met with delighted cheek-kissing by the school's long-time registrar Patrizia--she knew in advance that we were coming then, as it was she who scheduled our teachers--and later by one of the teachers who taught Steve's class at least twice over the years and who is, we think, involved in the school's administration in some way. It's a comfortable place for us to return to.