I am actually so busy I am lacking time to plan my Italy vacation as finely as I would like but I am sure I can dig up some time in the next few weeks. I have less than a month and a half to go before the trip. I have started to try to refresh my Italian using audio cds. We'll see if it helps at all. I took 2 years of Italian in high school but it was fraught with issues in that the original teacher had a heart attack (she lived but she couldn't handle the stress of teaching so had to stop). They replaced her with a brand new teacher who was not remotely ready for high school students and the learning sort of stopped along the way. The high school decided the Italian program had then become a waste and they canceled it. Since I was already invested for 2 years they didn't force me to start another language program but it meant I lost 2 potential years of learning.
Of course I haven't really spoken Italian since and the truth is that native Italians speak so fast I suspect I'll be able to pick up one word in every 20 if I am lucky. In any event I hope to have a few moments to post some of my plans for the trip soon.
