Culture Vultures (Part I)

I paid a fair whack to go on the language course, but then again I got a room in a flat, four hours of class, five days a week, numerous outings, and four special cultural classes. We'd be warned, sorry told about these during our introductory meeting. They would each cover a different part of Italian culture: opera, the Romans, the Renaissance and one I have conveniently forgotten.

It was this (together with the guided tours around beautiful towns and cities) that enabled the school to advertise the course as language and culture. Gaby and I decided we would go; Bree and Lynette agreed because, after all, we were paying for it - there'd be no sense in not doing.

The first of these was set to coincide with our trip to the opera on Friday night. We had the opportunity to see Madama Butterfly by Puccini in Macerata, a beautiful open-air theatre. This was at an extra cost (naturally), but one that was worth it - in our view at least.

So I went to this class to hear all about Puccini. It wasn't that interesting as I wasn't passionate about opera. From a musical perspective it was informative and Puccini was really quite a clever bloke. I made some notes, but then decided to just listen and enjoy it - it wasn't as if I was going to get tested on it.

The ironic thing was that I never knew how useful that information would prove to be, but you'll hear all about that in due course...

So that evening, following on from the success of the night before, Bree invited us back for another movie. This was not Puccini or opera. We were treated to one of the films from the Saw franchise. From what I'd heard of the films (and we were launching in at number two) it was a lot of people getting injured in lots of different ways. Boke.

I don't know whether I didn't want to offend my new friends or whether there was no alternative, but I acquiesced and we started to get to grips with one of the most gruesome films I'd ever seen. You know it wasn't that bad. There was much more of a plot that I thought there would be. I would even go as far as to say it was clever.

I went home that night (I managed to get home safely without being kidnapped by someone seeking to exact moral vengeance on not-so-innocent members of the public) and dreamt of a mixture of refined Puccini and refined ways to kill people involving complex contraptions. Zzzzzzz...