At least I know what this means:

"Facciamo pausa."

I'm taking a sociology class instructed completely in Italian, and this is the only phrase that has exited my professor's mouth that I am 100% sure I understand: "let's take a break." At this point in the class I find I can finally shut my gaping jaw and unfurl my brow, giving it 5 minuti to relax before scrunching it up again for another painful hour, as if that will help me understand the mumbled and rapid Italian that is being shot at me as if from a machine gun. Sociologia Urbana e Rurale, you may very well be the death of me. Sociology is a hard subject to wrap your brain around in English, but Italian? Oh my. 

I've been to 3 of these classes so far. Let me give you a brief example of my notes from today: "society without suburbs would suck." 

Yeah, I know. 

I've written some other phrases that I've been miraculously able to capture (like a lightning photographer...these are my pride and joy), but for the most part I have no clue what is going on. At least I know I'm in the right class. Step 1: check. 

I usually pride myself on my Italian comprehension. Generally I can get 90% of what's said to me; it's been speaking that's the hardest. Well, let's just say that I think I understand maybe 30% of what is going on in this class, and that's a generous percentage. I think it's appropriate to allow myself several legitimate excuses for this dismal performance:

A. I'm obviously still learning and am nowhere near fluent in Italian. 

B. The professor uses a microphone and thus there is an echo...this makes deciphering what he is actually saying extremely difficult/near impossible.

C. He mumbles. He does this thing where he drops his voice into a much lower register and mumbles something really quickly into the microphone which then produces an indecipherable mumbled echo.

D. The Italian students in the class, aka everyone else but me, find it okay to talk amongst themselves during the lecture, making my strained efforts at hearing and understanding the professor even more in vain. 

I think my face might be stuck in a permanent state of bewilderment. Sorry, mom, I bet my kids will look like this, too. You will not be getting pretty grandchildren from me, that's for sure. Blame the Italians.