I’ve arrived in Perugia!

I’ll be talking more about my trip in my next entry; I don’t want to spoil anything!

I’d like to explain instead in this entry how my blog is going to work this semester.

I plan on videoblogging–in Italian. For every entry I will be trying my very best to explain everything that I can in the best way I know how, using as much Italian as possible, with only a couple of notes to remind me what I wanted to talk about. No script, just talking. I will be providing subtitles on the video so English speakers may understand it.

There are a few reasons I’m doing this:

1. The main reason is to track my progress over the semester. My biggest goal that I wish to achieve here is to learn as much Italian and to improve my skills as much as possible. This will be a way to see and follow my progression–not only for my benefit, but also for the curiosity of others. I think it’ll be a fascinating experiment–seeing not only how much improvement there is in my speaking abilities, expansion of my vocabulary and grammar, and overall fluency between my first video blog and last one, but also because everyone will be able to follow the process, day by day, week by week, month by month.

2. It’ll improve my Italian. It’ll force me to talk, learn new words, and evaluate my mistakes.

3. As Schreyer student and a Film-Video major, I will be working on my thesis here, which will be a documentary about my participation in the full immersion program. The videoblogs may very well become a part of that documentary.

4. It can become a tool to help others learn Italian; maybe you’ll even pick-up on some while watching!

5. It’s more interactive and exciting, which is exactly how I want to share my adventures and experiences. Well, at least I think it’ll be. I’ll be integrating pictures and video into them as well.

6. I’m a big fan of keeping journals; I have hundreds of pages of journals saved on my computer from when I was in high school, and I really wish I had continued it into college. I absolutely want to document my stay here, and I’m excited about experimenting with this new way of journaling.

If you’re not interested in watching me ramble in Italian and having to follow along with subtitles, that’s okay. I’ll hopefully be posting the transcript of the video in English in the entry as well, probably with fixed grammar and some embellishments to make it more understandable and in-depth. I expect to mess-up a lot in Italian, not to mention that I simply don’t have the vocabulary to explain everything precisely. I’ll probably be looking up some key words that I’ll know I’ll be using before I make an entry so that it’ll be easier; I’ll learn new words this way, too!

Since I expect each entry to take perhaps a couple hours to make, I’ll probably be blogging only once a week, sometimes maybe twice if a lot happened and I have the time. I’ll pick a day once I receive my schedule this coming Monday.

It appears that if you don’t have a Penn State account, you can’t comment on the entry. I’ll be posting these videoblogs on YouTube and then link them here, so if you’re not a Penn Stater and want to comment, you can comment on the specific YouTube video.

Well, I think that’s it for now! I’ll hopefully be posting soon!