Fiestas Patrias, Italian and root words

My thoughts have been with all my friends in Peru who just celebrated the national holiday known as “Fiestas Patrias”, essentially all of last week. As I am now enjoying a relaxing summer, with my first year of teaching all done, I am pleased to have time to write to many distant friends, and catch up on Skype! Just about every time I connect to Facebook, someone from Peru writes a message (a kid from one of the workshops, or a former colleague), and the message usually goes something like…
–“Hola señorita. ¿Cómo está?” (Hello Miss. How are you?)
-Then I reply, ask how they and their family are doing and then, usually immediately…
–“¿Cuándo regresa?“ or “¿Cuándo viene a visitarnos?“ and “La extrañamos.” (“When are you returning?” or “When are you coming to visit us?” and “We miss you.”)
-Then my heart glows, and I feel a bit bad when I explain that for now I am gaining experience as a teacher here in Vancouver, that I would like to visit soon, and plan to do so next year (2018).

It really is annoying that Peru is so far away! But the distance isn’t impossible to aguantar thanks to modern communication technology. ¡Menos mal!

* * *

During my first month off as a teacher, I spent a wonderful nine days with extended and immediate family, surrounded by the beach and nature trails. Then, I returned to Vancouver and have been fitting as many yoga classes as I can (which feels so amazing, there are no words).
And, I just started Italian a few weeks ago, as it had been 5 years since I did an exchange in France and learned French and Portuguese. I figured I might as well enroll in the pre-intermediate class, because why would I volunteer to be bored in a fun summer class? It has been probably the best decision of the summer as now I can language-geek out with new irregular verbs and prepositions and direct and indirect object pronouns, and have fun with my peers once a week. 🙂
Last week there was an exhibition opening in the museum of the Italian Cultural Centre, with delicious free food to be enjoyed in the new exhibit about the Jewish ghettos of Venice in the 16th century. Most people didn’t seem to know about the topic in the scope of that time period –I didn’t– so it was really very fascinating. See below, I mean…shouldn’t we all understand where the word ghetto came from?

Plus, there is nothing like hearing and reading Italian in an interesting context
in the 10-minute break in the middle of a 2.5 hour Italian language class, right? 😉