#10 When using the elevator, realize that the four person limit relates to the fact that literally only four people can fit at a time. Also, there are two doors — an outer door connected to the floor that you’re on, and an inner door attached to the elevator itself. Be sure to close both of these, or the elevator will not work no matter how long you stand there stabbing the fourth floor button impatiently. Upon leaving the elevator — assuming that you have room to scramble around trying to figure out which of the two possible exit points will actually open — make sure you have again closed both the outer and the inner doors, or you will leave some poor soul, undoubtedly late for class, standing on the ground floor frantically pushing buttons for an elevator that will never arrive.
#11 It is quite warm in Florence, if not atrociously hot, and your host father and brothers will wander through the house without shirts on during these. It can be a little disconcerting, but most of the time, you’re about to die of heat stroke yourself, and so don’t have the energy to notice.
#12 There is no need to study Italian before traveling to Italy. All you need to do is take at least a year each of Spanish, French, German and Latin. Between the first three, you should be able to piece together the entirety of Italian grammar, and between Latin, Spanish and French, Italian vocabulary becomes a matter of pronunciation. Some confusion may, of course, still occur as to which language you need to draw a grammar point or vocab word from at which given moment, and you may at times find yourself speaking a weird conglomeration of Italian and Spanish that leaves everyone bewildered, or simply lose the ability to speak any language — this has happened relatively frequently to everyone on the program in the past month – but for the most part, all these confusions, somehow, always seem to get you farther toward the goal than you were before.
#13 When your Italian teacher assigns homework in the form of writing a paragraph about some topic or other, make sure what you have written is as ridiculous as possible and in no way fits into the framework of reality. This way, when you are inevitably called on to read your butchery of the Italian language to the entire class, at least the teacher won’t be laughing just at you.
And, of course, always remember the two most important phrases in any language, I don’t know — No lo so — and I don’t understand – non capisco.
