NOW WE ARE GETTING SOMEWHERE....

Tuesday is my Italian lesson and it is great and I will never starve in Italy because I know how to order anything to eat and drink, add up the money, get change and be very polite. I can tell you who I am, why I am there, when I was born and whether or not I have my passport/ drivers licence/ a booking/ lots of friends/ lots of money/ lots of or a few of dozens of things! I can tell you if I play a sport or a musical instrument and what type of wine I like, what colour car I have and what I like to do in my spare time. BUT, until today, we have not learned one word about growing vegetables / seed saving or treading lightly on the planet.

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NOW though, I can at last say one very important thing.....Ho quattro galline...which means....I have 4 chooks!! Yippee! I can venture alone into rural Italy with this phrase and be certain to find my way somewhere appropriate...well, eventually! You may hear me from where you are, practising this phrase out in my vegetable garden or chook yard tomorrow.....say it with me (don't pronounce the 'h'; say the rest each syllable at a time)...ho quattro galline...

Chooks of Italy take heart, I am on my way! Well, some of them might not be too pleased as I intend to eat a few! And maybe I will be able to post to this blog from there, next year....standing there with happy and vibrant Italians all around me, all raising their glasses of limoncello and saying with me..."Ho quattro galline!" or something more appropriate like "Hooray for chooks", in Italian! I must ask the Italian teacher next week how to say that!

I pity the poor lady I sit next to in the Italian class because I am always saying something that makes her laugh, when we are supposed to be practising Italian together. Today when I said "Hooray at last we are learning something useful I can say about my chooks", when everyone else was saying "I have a dog or a cat or a fish", she laughed so much I thought I would be expelled for causing such a disruption!! Often I say something in Japanese, accidentally, or on purpose or even in French and she just waits until I get to the Italian; I wonder if she wishes she had sat next to someone else that first day??

Today we went down Hutt street to get a coffee afterwards and managed to order our stuff in Italian from the bloke serving who looked Italian, in the Italian cafe. That was quite fun to do but he didn't seem interested in my 4 chooks; I wonder why not?

Tomorrow it will be back to '501 French Verbs'. Ian, my French teacher, seems to think I should love this new book I have bought but it has no mention of chooks in it anywhere, so I think he doesn't know me well enough yet! And the only vegetable I know in French is cabbage - how English is that! Give me some names for bok choy or okra or Chinese broad-leafed spinach or Lemon Myrtle or Muntries please Ian!