April 30, 2014

April 30, 2014

Lorraine Yu

            We took our Italian midterm this morning.  It was short and mainly consisted of greetings/introductions, articles, and food vocabulary.  It wasn’t too difficult, but I did have some trouble remembering a couple of words.  After the midterm we had a short lesson that consisted of translating paragraphs into English.

            After a one-hour lunch break, we had class with Stephanie.  We talked about immigrants’ struggle with Catholicism as the dominant religion, especially in schools.  This is something that I can really relate to since I attended a Catholic school from Kindergarten up until I graduated from high school.  I felt like Catholicism was forced upon me, especially when I had to write essays about my belief in the religion.  However, I think the big difference between my experience and that of the immigrants is that my family chose to send me to this school.  If my parents were extremely uncomfortable with learning about Catholicism, I could have attended a different school.

            We had a half-hour break between class with Stephanie and our guest lecturer.  Some of us really needed some coffee to keep us going through our long day, so Stephanie took us to her favorite bar (coffee shop) in Campo dei Fiori.  It reminded me of the coffee shops back in the States because there were lots of tables where you could sit for no extra cost, a rarity here in Rome.

            For our last hour of class, we had a guest speaker, Silvio Daneo, come in.  He talked to us about the immigrants’ experiences taking religion classes.  Someone asked whether he thought religion classes should be mandatory for all students, regardless of their personal beliefs.  His opinion is that they should learn the history of Catholicism but the teachings of the faith should be left out of the curriculum since they have their own set of beliefs.  All in all, I really enjoyed his lecture and agreed with a lot of his ideas.