Our first school visit

January 12th: Today was our first visit to the school, Scuola Caterina de Ricci which is a secondary school. The students are aged between 12 and 15. We(Domenica, Adriana and I) arrived on foot at 9:00 accompanied by Cathy who is a teacher at the university. The school is located within the heart of the historic centre. We met a few of the teachers and took two lessons and then sat in on an English lesson. The students have four lessons a day, beginning at 8:00 and finishing at 1:00. There is very little in the rooms in way of resources but all of the students were lovely and very intested in our lessons, most of which we conducted in Italian. We did a lot of group work and looked at the states of Australia and the animals. I also did a presentation on the family in English. We had a few competitions but all of the students went away with something. You can see Domenica in action above. We also met with the principal, Nadino, and I handed over the Australian flag and some books. He is going to make a display in the main corridor. During la pausa (the break) we had coffee and biscuits in the staffroom. We also had a tipple of alcohol which is not something we could do in our schools. Tomorrow the staff are bringing special pastries which apparently you dip into the liquor. We had a fantastic day. In the afternoon we had two shorter lessons at the university and then celebrated Carla's birthday. The huon pine container I brought from Tassie ended up being her gift but I think she really wanted Goretti's koala. Later that evening we went to the cinema to watch Ti amo in tutti le lingue del mondo.