Fifth Grade in Italy (written by Ray)

written by guest blogger Ray

This is me in front of my school

Elementary school is way different from Bellevue.  It’s all in Italian, it’s six days a week and I get out earlier so I can eat lunch at home.  I’m in fifth grade here.   I go to a different school than Tom since he is in middle school.  I like my teachers and my classmates.  School starts at 8:10, which means I have to wake up a lot earlier than in Washington.  When I wake up by a “beep beep” of my alarm clock, I am tired.  My school is only five minutes from my apartment walking.  When I get to class, my classmates say, “Come va?” which means, “How are you?” So I say, “Bene.”

One time my entire class went to a classmate’s birthday party.  We saw ICE AGE 4 in a movie theater.  Today I got another invitation to a birthday party on Saturday, but I can’t go because I’ll be in Rome.

This is my Italian and History teacher. I call her “Maestra.”

I have five teachers but a lot of subjects.  Every week I have History, PE, Math, Italian, Science, Art, English, Geometry, Geography, Music, and Religion.  Math is my favorite subject.  I understand it because it’s all numbers basically.  Right now, I need help in about everything but Math and English.  Whenever I say, “Non capisco,” everyone tries to help me understand.  Sometimes I get different assignments than the Italian kids.  One time, I got a worksheet that asked me what I eat for breakfast.  There weren’t very many choices.  The options were like chocolate, cookies, cake, sugar, coffee, milk, and jam.  I told my class that I eat cereal, and so my teacher added it to the list.  She wrote “cereal and sugar.”  But I told her I don’t add sugar, so she added the word “no” in front of “sugar.”   That was hard for everyone to believe.  No one here has milk without adding sugar.  And another thing weird, no one ever eats eggs for breakfast.

This is my assignment

One time in my Italian class we were talking about fall celebrations.  We had to write about our favorite holiday, so I wrote about Halloween.  The Italians don’t have Halloween.  It would be hard to go trick-or-treating here because everyone in the city lives in apartment buildings instead of houses.  Instead of Halloween, Italians celebrate All Saints Day and All Souls Day.  Those are vacation days, so I don’t have school for four days next week!

Translation: “I am an American. I would like to describe a holiday in the United States. The 31st of October in America, we celebrate Halloween. The kids dress up like ghosts, vampires, witches, zombies, and skeletons. They walk around to houses, knock on the door and say, “trick or treat.” The people give candy to the kids. This is the most important holiday in fall for American kids.”

The teachers are a little more strict here.  Sometimes when my Italian or Geography teachers get mad, they bang the roll of duct tape that is on the desk.  It makes a really loud sound because the duct tape has a hard piece of cardboard in it to keep the roll of tape in a roll.  Today my teacher brought a whistle to class and blew it loudly when we talked.  If we are working in class, they don’t want us to make a single peep.  Another thing that happened today was my Italian teacher left the classroom for about a half an hour.  I don’t know where she went, but the kids went crazy.  Everyone got out of their desks and talked.  One of my friends went to the front of the class and pretended to be the teacher. She wrote names on the blackboard.  Some of the other kids were watching out for the teacher and told us when she was coming back to the room so we all got back into our seats.

School is out at 1:10.  When school is done, I walk home with my mom, dad, and Tom.  Two times a week I have tutoring.  My tutor’s name is Paola.  She helps me spell words, pronounce words and understand words.  I like her.  She has made me better in school.

me and Signora Paola

This is another assignment I did. I had to draw a picture and write about myself. I said, “I am 10-years-old,” “I live in Perugia in Umbria,” “I have five teachers,” “I am in fifth grade.”