For as unorganized as the Italians are, they sure do know how to plan a strike. Basically every form of public transportation is having issues at the moment, so they plan strikes weeks in advance and only have them for a few hours at a time. For example, this morning ATM, the metro company, went on strike from 8:45 AM to 12:45 PM, so I had to come to IES two hours before my class started so I wouldn't have to take a cab. I'm not sure what they accomplish by having 4 hour strikes, but hey, whatever works for them.

This week all of the IES classes start and I have Italian class for four hours a week instead of fifteen. I had to move my schedule around a little because of some conflicting classes, and I am taking

Art in Northern Italy from the 50s to the Present: The Laboratory of the Contemporary
Beginning Italian
History of Italian Opera (Independent Study)
History of Italian Theatre
and my voice lessons

...for a grand total of 18 credits. It should be good. The best part is that I have no class before 11 AM, which means I don't have to leave the apartment until 10:30.

Le Nozze di Figaro (The Marriage of Figaro) opens at La Scala tonight and runs for all of February. I think we are going to try to get in on Thursday by doing student rush for 12 euro. This is a pretty good deal considering the best seats at La Scala are about 210 euro. I am probably too excited to see it, and I may even go twice if I can get in.

Today I have a voice lesson at 3:30. My voice teacher thinks that I am potentially a tenor, so she is giving me a lot of new music that is higher than I am used to. We'll see how that goes. The other day I bought a voice recorder at FNAC, the Italian version of Best Buy, for 60 euro. Kind of expensive, but it will definitely be worth it to record my lessons with Patrizia and save them on my computer.

The other day I had my first Italian interaction where I don't think the other person knew I was an English speaker. It was short, I was just ordering lunch in a cafe, but it was great. And yes, there actually are some blond native Italians.