I've been listening to Italian musicians recommended to me by my friends at work. I've been enjoying the band Maneskin, which is also quite popular in the U.S. Music is a great way to immerse yourself in the language and pick up new words!
One perk of being a Fulbrighter is that the Italian government gave us all a Museum Card from the "Ministry of Culture". It's a card approved by the government that says we can enter any museum in Italy for free! Using this card, I went to the Museo Civico Archelogoico di Bologna, the local archaeology museum. There are many amazing and famous museums in Italy, like the Uffizi Gallery of art in Florence or the Vatican Museums in Rome, but I love being able to explore smaller museums at my own pace, enjoying the pieces without large crowds. It's also been good for my language learning, as this museum had descriptions of the artifacts in Italian and English. Most of their displays were from Bologna, which used to be a Roman city, but they also have objects discovered during archaeological excavations sponsored by the city. This means they had Egyptian sarcophaguses and items from Asia.
This week I found a used bookstore that had books that I read during my childhood, but written in Italian! I bought the Italian equivalent of Diary of a Wimpy Kid, which you may recognize. I loved these books when I was in elementary school and thought that it would be good language practice to read this book in Italian.
