Inspiration, Motivation - GO!

Today I am going to buy a book - a text book - to learn Italian.

I just finished reading Eat, Pray, Love (late to the party, I know!) and the first third of the book is devoted to her being in Italy. I'm a person who is interested in whatever language is around me that I don't know, so as she's talking about una buona forchetta and parla come magni and attraversiamo I can't help but get so excited that I read the passages written in Italian two or three times before going to the English translation. I want to figure it out and know all of its inner workings.

Also, in my feeble attempts to find websites that will conjugate Italian verbs for me, I realize that even if I learn verbs, I don't have any nouns to use with them. I won't get so far just saying "I like" or "We eat" or "You think" without saying what we like, eat or think.

So I'm going on the hunt for a real text book that will  teach me some of the basics.

After all, I'm not trying to have a deep, philosophical conversation about the meaning of life. I'm trying to communicate! And if philosophy comes in to play I'll just switch back to Spanish. And then probably back to English, because Philosophy is hard. (One of three classes in my life where I earned a 'C'. The others were Political Science in college because I hate politics and English in third grade because I didn't fill out my day planner. I still don't fill out my day planner or talk much about politics. Or philosophy.)

Ready? Let's go! ¡Vamonos! Andiamo!