Flashback:
I always wanted to travel – had Australian pen pals in grade school, met all the exchange students in high school, graduated high school with three years of French and three of Spanish. Continued with Spanish in college and added a year of Italian. I was finally going to go abroad my Junior year in college, but I dropped out and life took detours.
In 2011 my kids were all out of college and my responsibilities dropped to mainly me, so it was time.
Thanks to my old college, I got the student apartment in Bologna, Italy, for a week that summer. I brushed up on my Italian with Rosetta Stone and took off for Europe–and had to change planes in Frankfurt! I managed to pull up “Sprekinzee inglich?” (spelling phonetic) and, fortunately, the official-looking young man replied, “Of course I speak English. I work in the airport.”
Here’s a YouTube I made of Bologna.
Archiginnasio