Pero, Ho Qualche Domande

Watched the RAInternational - or RAIUSA, as they now call it - broadcast again this morning. Basked in the beautiful Italian language with my Webster's New World Italian Dictionary at my side, as usual. Like so many others studying Italian, the strongest aspects of my skill at this point are nouns and adjectives. When trying to express myself in Italian, I mostly just utter nouns and point emphatically like a cavewoman, since my command of verb conjugation is miserable. Of course, like a typical American, I also have a varied library of expressions that sound like I know what's going on: Ottimo! (Great!) Davvero? (Really?) Certo. (Of course.) These just usually get me in trouble when Italians start off in a stream of regular conversation that I can not yet follow.
Still avoiding any meaningful focus on verbs that would allow my language skills to jump forward exponentially, I instead prefer to obsess over the sentence connectors (conjunctions, for the most part) that they use most often. The word "quindi", for instance. I hear it all the time. Turns out, it means, "therefore, so, or then".
The word "qualche" also pops up alot. Qualche means "a few".
With words like these that come up in my own speech patterns so often, it is amazing that I wasn't able to determine their definition in context (since I can, at least, figure out what they're talking about from the nouns).
Then there is my favorite: "pero". The o should have a small \ over it, but I can't get my blog to make that letter. "Pero", with the emphasis on the last syllable, means "yet, but, nevertheless, so". I can't seem to commit it to memory, and I look it up every single week.
As frustrated as I am with my inability to string whole sentences together in an appropriate tense, I still get a great deal of enjoyment out of sitting in front of my cable TV with my dictionary. Someday, when understanding Italian conversations is not so hard for me, I think I will still smile at the long and odd journey I took to get there.

Watching Movies for the Italian Scenery

I had the opportunity to watch the movie Angels and Demons this weekend. Of course, I read the book years ago, and am a big fan of the mental imagery Dan Brown conjured with his writing. The movie is a feast for the Italophile's eye, as well. Sure, I was drawn in by the suspense, by Tom Hanks' compelling performance, and by the thought of being in the presence of the treasures of the Vatican archive. But, the scenery is what made me sigh. I miss that country deeply. When I'm not in Italy, I'm thinking about Italy.
I'd watch that movie again for the story, but I'm just as likely to watch it on cable with the sound off, to wish and to dream.
I can't be the only one...