Buondì. It’s Monday, thank goodness, so peace is temporarily restored a casa nostra, Roomie having been safely delivered to her petting zoo, there to be cared for by energetic professionals until 4 p.m. Normal schools are all closed today, so we feel fortunate indeed. This because it’s a ‘ponte’ in Italy, the word literally meaning […]
Archives for October 2022
It’s not FOR that
Buondì. I’m pretty sure I’ve written this article before. And I’m 100% sure I’ve written something very like it, many, many, many times in reply to polite comments left by EasyItalianNews.com readers. But as we marketing wizards know, you have to keep repeating the message if you want to get it acrosss. So here it […]
Listening to the adults talking
Buondì. Like many energetic small animals, Roomie doesn’t like being in the car. Yesterday morning we let her take a plastic guitar with her. She was engaged, plucking at its steel strings, for at least ten minutes of the twenty-minute trip, then kept herself occupied banging it on the passenger seat in front of her […]
Would you risk your head for a beautiful Chinese princess?
Buondì. Would you risk your life to win the hand of a beautiful Chinese princess? I guess as a headstrong younger man I might have done. I certainly did plenty of other reckless things, such as giving up a safe government job to travel the world, then eventually settling in Italy, for which I’m still […]
Friday’s top tip
Buondì. I’m going to keep this very brief, as I have the usual other Friday things to do, but also something new, which is exciting! For several years, the only language-learning materials I’ve paid for out of my own, very modest, pocket have been subscriptions to two newspapers, Le Monde (French) and El Paìs (Spanish), […]
Spotting the mistake in the recipe
Buondì. This evening we have some people coming to dinner. Like me, they’re foreigners, but local pride obliges me to show them some of the best home cooking that Emilia-Romagna, where I’ve lived for 25 years, has to offer. Deciding on the menu took a while, but in the end I opted to go with […]
Where to find discounted ebooks for learning Italian
Buondì. OK, so opera is a niche thing, I get it. Thanks to club members who bought a copy of Verdi e il Va’ pensiero and/or Nabucco, while they were on offer (until last night.) Let’s just say there weren’t exactly hordes of you. But that’s fine! I enjoyed putting them together, finding about about […]
When everything else has been abandoned, what remains?
Buondì. I’ve been lamenting all the language-learning activities that I used to do (and perhaps am still paying for) but which I abandoned for lack of time or energy. Roomie, our young house guest, is a big cause of so many elements of my former life falling by the wayside. Nowadays I spend up to […]
Are you just TOO OLD to learn Italian?
Buondì. Good grief, it’s mid-week already, time is ticking away, the days, the weeks, the months, the years, all seeming to pass ever more rapidly. It’s quite alarming! On the plus side, this second week of October would normally be when I’d start teaching English for the 30-week academic year, ending in early June. But […]
Presenting… Giuseppe Verdi and his Nabucco!
Buondì. I spent a good chunk of Sunday watching my first ever opera, on Youtube. It was Verdi’s Nabucco, ate up nearly two and a half hours from my precious ‘catch-up with-work Sunday’ (Roomie was briefly at the coast with my wife), and suprisingly, I enjoyed it! Why was I watching opera on a Sunday […]
