After a day on the beach, I went to Piazza Maggiore to watch an old movie outside, “under the stars”.

Bologna is famous for its  “Sotto le stelle del cinema” festival.

For a few weeks, every night an old movie, so you can improve your Italian while  sitting outside in the piazza. [Read more…]

Dear Mom, Dad and everyone at home,

Here’s an update on my first month in Bologna!

Week 1

Two minutes at the bus station and I’ve already met an Italian guy who wanted to help me. The stereotypes of Italian guys are true! But the atmosphere here is so friendly.

Week 2

Near my school, Madrelingua, the girls from my Italian course and I discovered a cooking school, “Vecchia Scuola Bolognese”.

We also love spending time with our teacher, who knows everything about Bologna and its cultural events. [Read more…]

A song on the radio reminded me that “Per ogni cosa c’è un posto” (There’s a right place for everything). Which set me thinking about how the places we visit affect who we are, and what we say.

One of the first things I noticed when I came to Bologna to study Italian was the fact that people here love to talk, talk, talk. And about everything! But it soon became clear that the topics of conversation vary depending on where exactly in the city you are.

As do the phrases you’ll need to know in Italian to join in. [Read more…]

Aga is taking an Italian course at Madrelingua Italian Language School in Bologna, and was happy to be interviewed about her experiences and to answer all my questions!

Thank you Aga…First of all, let’s talk about your expectations and your first impressions when you arrived here… [Read more…]

Late last night, when I realised last night that the brand-new, sparkling website to which I had devoted weeks of hard work over the summer of 2012 was “down”, it was hard to avoid panicking!

No website means no page views, no enquiries, no bookings and, in a few months, no students in our Italian classes.

Teachers to pay, but nobody to teach. It’s one of my worst nightmares!

Srraight away I messaged Stefi to tell her the bad news.

“What next?” she messaged back, “I can’t take any more!”

Then on to the website of our (wonderful) hosting service Synthesis . They promise a 30-minute response to problems like this, and they were true to their word.

“It’s not us. It’s your DNS – Godaddy.com has been hacked!”

When you type madrelinguaitalian.com into your browser, or click on a link in search engine like Google, your browser sends a request to a Domain Name Server (DNS) basically asking “Where do I have to go in the world to find this domain name?”

The DNS replies with the IP address (like a phone number) and your browswer “calls up” the server and downloads the files which go to make up our website.

And that was not happening. Not only for our primary site, but also for a series of other sites I run for friends, and apparently for millions of other websites all over the world.

Which, in a way, was rather comforting. I could go to bed knowing that it wasn’t just me facing economic meltdown, and so with the expectation that something would quickly be done.

Which it was. By morning Godaddy.com had restored normal service and my sites were all working again. But how fragile the balance between normality and disaster!

And a reminder of the importance of word-of-mouth. So what if our website’s down, as long as our clients are happy with the improvement in their Italian langauge skills, people will still choose our school in Bologna to study Italian!

Which reminds me, check out our new Testimonials page. If YOU have studied at Madrelingua and would like to add your comments, we’d be very pleased to hear from you.