Franco

I awoke on Monday April 7^th after 11 hours of sleep. Finally totally over jetlag and feeling great. I had made an appointment with Franco who I had met on the web and with whom I had a number of conversation with Skype. So this was the first meeting face to face. I don’t remember his exact age but he’s in his early 50s and lives and works in Borgo Panigale which is actually a part of Bologna but pretty far from the center. His job is in a nursing home there for people with either mental or physical disabilities. As a side note I had been to Borgo Panigale once before when I visited the Ducati factory there on my first extended trip to Bologna.

In any case, Franco is quite a serious student of English. I don’t know how he finds the time but he does a lot of things on the web and has introduced me to a number of web sites that are very useful for study of languages as well as an app that I downloaded to my iPhone that is useful for extending my Italian vocabulary. He also told me about a way to download movies and Italian subtitles and connect them so that I can watch Italian movies with Italian subtitles. It’s a little complicated so I need to spend some time with him to set that up but it would be extremely useful.

In any case we met in the center of Bologna at the the Fontana Nettuno (the famous Neptune Fountain), had some coffee then lunch. I usually don’t eat much at lunch but Franco, who is quite fit, put away an amazing amount of food. He said that his friends call him the “wolf” for his ability to eat a lot. We spent almost 3 hours together speaking mostly in Italian but some in English. He is always very helpful with my Italian and I help him some in English although his English is already quite good.

My apologies to Franco for the poor photo but I will either replace it or augment it with a better one in the future.

So far my schedule has been quite full. I am having to keep a list of all of the things that I need to do, buy, people to see, volunteer work to do do, etc. No school during this soggiorno (visit). I’m seeing people and speaking Italian, doing volunteer work and seeing doing touristy things (churches, museums, etc). I plan to join a gym while I’m here. So it’s going to be the story of life in Bologna. I also want to set aside time to do blog posts so you can expect to see quite a few of them. I hope that you enjoy the description of my life in Bologna.

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