L'Itagliana

The concert yesterday was soooo good.
Wondering when it'll stop raining. I mean, seriously? It's JULY. We don't need summer storms after the suckiest winter ever seen here.

Like every year, there is a storm brewing on the Italian soil, which spurs strenuous political debates and provides a good pretext to the Left wing and the Right wing to spew accusations of incompetence to each other...I'm talking about the cost of textbooks.

I ordered today my books for the approaching school year. I attend the Liceo Classico, which may be translated as classical lyceum, a type of secondary school where we are taught Latin and ancient Greek and that gives us bragging rights over all the other types of Italian high schools, cuz we're weird like that.

I just read somewhere that it costs roughly $ 500 to outfit an American student with a complete set of textbooks for his whole high school experience. Just let me say, you are lucky. We pay € 350/ € 380 ($ 490/ $ 530) every year, minus the first year because we have to buy dictionaries thus leading to a rise in costs. I paid around € 600 ($ 840) for my first year.

At least we get to study interesting things this following three years. Chemistry, Biology, History of Art and Philosophy begin this year, and we'll start reading Latin and Greek original masterworks after two years of mindblowingly annoying grammar. That's a plus.

Oh the joys of school.