Latin and wicker
I had my first Latin class last night. I’ll admit to being a little disappointed. The guy teaching it used to teach Latin at junior/senior high school level. I can see how the kids would have adored him, but he doesn’t change his approach when dealing with adults. For example, last night he tried to get us to sing along with “Follow the Yellow Brick Road” for some declension or another, and next week he promises to do magic tricks for us.
There are perhaps ten of us in the class. Half of the others have already had Latin, and so I’m getting left in the dust already. One husband/wife couple is particularly obnoxious; they spent most of last night attempting to prove that they knew more than the teacher. We were supposed to repeat certain words after the teacher, but this couple kept saying the words with the teacher, usually pronouncing them totally differently. This made figuring out some of the pronunciations really confusing. Then, to top it off, when he gave our class a break midway through and left the classroom briefly this pair kept going on about how they knew more than he did and how he wasn’t saying things properly. *grumble* I’m hoping they don’t show up again next week, but I suspect I won’t be that lucky.
We also have a professional singer in our class who has been singing Latin for years and wants to understand what he’s singing. We have an Austrian au pair in our class who is very quiet but has a lovely accent. There’s a kid who wants to go back to school for a masters in classical history, and a pre-med college kid whose own school doesn’t teach Latin but who wants to learn the basics. I’m going to try and sit with that bunch next time.
Meanwhile, I have to review some basic English. It’s been a long time since I had to worry about cases, present perfect tense, and direct versus indirect objects. This is mostly stuff I know without knowing, but I’m going to have to relearn what to call a few things again.
By interesting coincidence, The Professor’s Monday evening class is only about five classrooms away from where my Latin class is. It runs an hour later than my class does, so after I was done, I went hunting for the room. I found it, door open, with The Prof sitting at the desk at the front of the room, overseeing a test. He was wearing a black tee-shirt, hair just a little disheveled, concentrating on papers in front of him. These past weeks at the gym have given his arms some nice muscle definition, and … well he looked good. As I was sneaking my peak in at him, he looked up, saw me and smiled. melt
After trying unsuccessfully to con a friend at DD into taking my old wicker furniture off my hands, I sent one last email off to the ex telling him that I’d found no takers for the wicker. That, interestingly enough, finally elicited a response from him. He wants it, and will pick it up the weekend following this one. YES! Out with the old, in with the new. It is going to be so nice to have a real sofa and chair. I just hope the cats don’t damage them too badly too quickly!