Stealing the Deals

January 29, 2011

This morning Lauren and I slept in while Marissa and Danielle woke up early to go the San Lorenzo market to try and barter on the streets. Danielle finally found some boots that she liked and came in the apartment prancing around in them. Marissa also found a bag that she liked which is purple and leather and has different straps with it to wear it in different ways. I started getting ready as soon as I woke up though because we had planned to all go back out the actual stores to catch the end of the sales like we tried to do yesterday. I got all ready and looked around and everyone looked like death and had pj’s on, so I decided to go out shopping on my own – at home I always find the best deals when I’m by myself anyways. I had planned on just going to a couple stores located near our street but found myself in and out of all the small shops on the few streets surrounding our apartment. 

It didn’t take long for me to find the good sales or to find the dressing rooms to start trying on clothes. It’s so funny to walk in the stores and hear the craziest American music playing…at the one store I was excited to hear “Whip My Hair” – too hilarious! I ended up buying this cute grey sweater dress with this cool design and belt, an awesome dark brown leather coat with a side zipper, this cool Italian-looking green shirt, a “designer” school bag, and a few leather bracelets. I can’t express to you how good of deals I scored because the total for all of the things I bought came to: 57 Euro! I came back with all these bags and my roommates were like “Where did you go!?” because we definitely didn’t have luck like that when we were out yesterday. I put all my stuff away and made a hot ham sandwich because I had been gone practically all morning and didn’t realize how hungry I actually was. 

I relaxed for a little bit before Danielle and I headed to church. I’m starting to think that I would like to find a different church to go to because I can’t really get into the mass at the Duomo, even if it is in English. So I think that is going to be my quest for this upcoming week. After church Danielle and I went on a hunt for some Tupperware and found a set of 3 different sized bowls at the 99 cent store! This reconfirms how much I love the 99 cent stores! When we came home the house smelled heavenly and we discovered that Lauren cooked one of her pre-made pizzas that we got from the grocery store, which then spurred my want to make one of my little frozen pizzas. I debated between spinach and pepperoni and went with the spinach pizza – what a great choice! It was so delicious..and for one euro I definitely think I’ll snag a few more before they aren’t on sale anymore! 

After dinner we decided to try and find something to watch on t.v. and found the show “If You Really Knew Me” in English on our MTV channel! It was pretty exciting to watch t.v. that you can actually understand, but your excitement came to an end once the show was over and an old episode of “Teen Mom” came on which had Italian voice-overs. It was funny to watch their mouths move in English and hear the faint English words in the background. I did talk to Kaila briefly on facebook and she said her wine tasting in Chianti was amazing, but extremely muddy! So she recommended we wait until it warms up and dries up before we went on the tour if we were interested, so that’s good to know! We didn’t do much of anything for the rest of the night because with everyone trying to get over their sickness nobody wants to venture outside of the apartment and I don’t feel comfortable going out on my own at night. So cross your fingers that this sickness goes away soon before I go stir crazy!

Cleaning Frenzy.

January 28^th, 2011

Even though I didn’t go to bed til the crack of the dawn, for some reason I woke up at 10:30! But it worked out well because me and my roommates wanted to go shopping all weekend to catch the end of the sales because the start of February ends the month-long “black Friday” here. We walked all over, but we couldn’t really find the type of stores we were looking for. I think we were too far into the richer/nicer part of town so things were either out of our price range, or they were these department stores that were so huge and overwhelming. We decided to just come back home even though nobody ended up buying anything because the girls that were sick started to not feel well, and those of us that went out and were up late started to get tired and cranky. I tried to lay down and take a nap, but realize I really wasn’t tired. So while the girls were either sleeping or in Marissa’s case skypeing with her cousin, I decided to clean. I swept and mopped the entire apartment! I was amazed by how much dirt and dust/hair balls were on the floor! And when I mopped I emptied by bucket halfway through the apartment and there was soil lining the entire bottom of the bucket…GROSS! I honestly should have emptied the bucket after each room. However, once all of the girls started walking around on the clean floors they could tell the difference and thanked me over and over and over again because now their socks aren’t black on the bottom from walking from their bedroom to the bathroom. I thought mopping was a good idea not only because you could feel dirt under your feet as you walked around it was disgusting, but also because I’m hoping it will make a difference in the health of my deathly sick roommates! 

By the time I got done cleaning everyone woke up and was ready for dinner. I made some pomadoro rice from a packet and was afraid I making it wrong because I couldn’t read the instructions on the back..but I must say it turned out mighty yummy! I also accompanied it with a couple scrambled eggs because I thought eating only tomato-y rice for dinner was too plain. Marissa tells me she loves watching me cook dinner because she said my choices and combinations of food are so unusual and unpredictable, but I know she’s just jealous :] 

Once again we invited people to come over to our apartment, and once again nobody came. However, when we invited people to come over we invited not only kids from school, but also the girl Kaila that we met in Pisa. And unlike all of the lame kids we go to school with, Kaila still wanted to come over even though I told her it would just be her and us. But she lives with a girl who never does anything but read, so she was more than happy to come over and just chat with us. She’s a really awesome girl and I think we should start inviting her to like every single thing we do and introduce her to the kids we know from school because it sounds like she’s so lonely and does everything by herself. We ended up going to get a little thing of gelato from the place near our apartment where I got the peanut butter gelato. This time I got 3 flavors: peanut butter, nutella, and ambrosia. The ambrosia was an experimental flavor which was yogurt with cinnamon and honey…it was sooo yummy, so I hope they will keep it as a flavor and not toss it to the curb! I don’t think I could eat a whole cup of ambrosia because it has a really strong flavor, but it was definitely good mixed with other flavors. We came back the apartment and talked for a while longer. Kaila told us she has so much excess crap at her apartment that we are free to use if we need it, which I’m definitely going to take her up on because she has EXTRA PILLOWS! And a lot of them she said! Yes! Hopefully that will mean I will stop having an achy body and neck when I wake up in the morning. All of a sudden we realized it was around midnight and she said she better get going because in the morning she was going to Chianti on a wine tasting tour kinda like what we did. I hope she will have as much fun as we did, and I hope to see her again soon (especially to get a pillow)!

Cooking lessons at In Travola!

January 27^th, 2011

This morning in Roman Achievement we compared the U.S. government with the Roman government and it was so surprising to see how the two were so similar! It seems as if the two governments have roughly the same idea in having executive, legislative, and judicial powers, with roughly the same number of representatives in each branch, but the term for the representatives is where the governments differ – in the Italian government many officials will only hold office for like one or two years, but many can continue running for the same position multiple times unlike our limited two term Presidency in the U.S. Once again, I’m surprised at how much I enjoy history and this class here! After Roman Achievement we had our first Italian quiz and I think I did extremely well! The only thing I didn’t know was how to say “downtown,” which I have learned now is “centro.” 

For art history we had to meet in front of Santa Croce today for our ‘on-site’ lecture. Rocky sat our class down on the steps outside of the church and explained the different dates and background information of the church before we actually entered. Once we did enter though everyone’s jaws dropped. The church is massive and the ceilings seem to extend for forever and there is even painted decoration on the ceiling panels! The church had a ton of tombs inside of it and contained the frescoes explaining St. Francis of Assisi’s life, which we learned about on Tuesday. Back in the day families wanted to be buried in the church..it was a huge honor, and the richest families were able to buy the “better” burial spots which were the ones closest to the altar. It was kinda creepy walking around the church because it is hard to avoid walking on top of tombs which are resembled by these marble rectangles on the ground, and some of the rectangles had a smaller oval which could be removed to put the next deceased member of the family in the same tomb. Some tombs were on the walls, some of which are popular people in the past like Michelangelo and Galileo! The frescoes of St. Francis were really neat, especially because we weren’t blindly looking at them…we actually understood what they stood for and the meaning behind them. This fact makes me think of how many famous statues, monuments, buildings, paintings, etc. that I have walked by here and it was probably something so important in history and I just was like “oh that’s pretty.” I really don’t like not knowing the history behind things and makes me appreciate history so much more! I forgot to take my camera, so I definitely want to go back, even if I do have to pay to get in next time, just to document the beauty and ancient history of the church. 

After we walked around the church a little more once our class was dismissed we came back to the apartment to relax before our cooking lessons! In the time we had before our cooking lessons we ended up booking our hostels for Paris and Barcelona so those trips are officially all planned which is so exciting! We had to meet at the school at 7, and our one faculty member Petra took us to In Travola so we could start learning and cooking! There were about 20 of us that went and we were split into 4 groups of 5, and each group had their own countertop and cooking ingredients. There were 3 private chefs that taught us, and my group (who consisted of me, Marissa, Danielle, Lauren, and Chris) was taught by Fabrizio..the boss! The first thing we made was Tiramisu because we had to let it chill for an hour before eating. We made personal size things of tiramisu which was SO EASY to make..like why have I never investigated making tiramisu before!? But then we started making our appetizers which were called Vegetable Millefoglie. We took an eggplant and sliced it into about quarter inch slices, and in a bowl mixed some finely chopped zucchini, a potato which we pressed through this thing and made it kinda into mashed potatoes, salt, pepper, oregano, and olive oil. We then put down a slice of eggplant, rolled a scoop of the mixture into a ball, put the ball on the slice, put a piece of cheese on top of the ball, and then put another slice of eggplant on top and pressed it flat. You ended up doing that again so there were 3 slices of eggplant high in total, sprinkled some parmesan on top with some olive oil and then we baked them. I didn’t even think I liked eggplant, but they turned out so beautiful and were so incredibly tasty!! For our main dish we made gnocchi by hand!! We basically had to make the dough which is basically just potato, flour, cornstarch, an egg yolk, and tad of nutmeg, salt, and pepper. We were going to end up eating two different kinds of sauce with the gnocchi, but my group would be making one, and another would be making the other. We made the tomato, basil and garlic sauce which was just basically as the name says: we chopped tomatoes into large pieces, threw them in a pan with some olive oil, 2 things of garlic whole, and some basil with pepper and salt…that’s all! The other group made Ragu alla Bolognese (meat sauce). Both of the sauces were AMAZING!..I honestly couldn’t pick one over the other, although all the girls who were meat eaters said they enjoyed the ragu better. Once we finished our appetizers and main dishes we finally got to eat our tiramisu which was out of this world!!! I’m pretty sure that I’m going to have a feast for everyone when I get back because we got a copy of all of the recipes and it will knock everyone’s socks off! 

After we left In Travola we all decided to go out together so we ended up going to two different bars and a dancing club. The first bar was a karaoke bar and it was so American…and supposively each college from the states that has had students studying here has a specialty shot at the bar..so of course I had to get a “Kent Stater.” The second bar we went to had a crazy entertainer behind the bar who was dressed like a pirate…he was so crazy but so much fun! And the dance club we went to was super packed, but it was a lot of fun and played a bunch of good American songs. From the church in Santa Croce to homemade tiramisu to dancing the night away…it was a FABULOUS fabulous day! BUT to top it all off, when I came home from the club I got on my computer real quick and my one friend Brittani who I will be living with next year started skypeing me and we skyped until it was 6 a.m. here! This time difference is seriously getting to me!

"Chef" a.k.a. Chris was the master folder of our tiramisu mixture.

Our mini tiramisu!

The filling to layer inbetween the eggplant for our appetizers.

Danielle's eggplant eyes. Who says you can't have fun in the kitchen?

Vegetable Millefolie (pre-baking)

Vegetable Millefoglie (post-baking)

Mixing the gnocchi...it looks like I should take up DJ-ing as a profession.

Our gnocchi!

Gnocchi with the tomato, basil & garlic sauce that we made.

The gnocchi with the Ragu sauce.

Jesse and the pirate-looking entertainer at the one bar.

Another night at Gato.

January 26^th, 2011

Today in Italian our teacher Gloria did a little review of the information because tomorrow is our very first Italian quiz! I’m pretty sure I understand all of the material, so I’m really not that concerned. Since I don’t have my Comparative Media class I was able to go back home for a while before European Issues at 4. Danielle and I both wanted to get some deli meat to make sandwiches to pack for lunch for school, so we headed to the market. From the produce market I got 3 bananas and 3 apples, and I have no clue what kind of apples I got, but they were massive! I honestly don’t know if I have ever seen such big apples before! We spent quite a few minutes searching for a butcher stand inside the market that actually sold deli meats, because most of them sell freshly butchered meats that you still have to cook. Once we got to the stand we realized we didn’t really know how to ask for a certain amount of slices or a certain weight of meat because I’m still not so great with calculation pounds into kilograms. I think the guy saw us stalling and was like “how many slices would you like?” And Danielle and I smiled at each other and both asked for 5 slices of ham which ended up being WAYYY more than enough ham! The hunk of ham must have been like over a foot in diameter because 5 slices of meat weighed almost 1 kilogram and looked like enough ham to feed 3 kids for lunch every single day for a week. But oh well…we’ll eventually get it, and it’s not like we will let it go to waste. The guy behind the counter asked where Danielle and I were from and we told him Ohio and he instantly was like “ohhh freddo!” (which means cold), and the woman standing behind us was like “si, si! Molto freddo in Ohio!” which means yes, yes, very cold in Ohio! It was funny to think people in Italy would actually know what the weather in Ohio would be like because I didn’t even know what the weather was like in Italy before I came here. But we started to walk away to go back home when he was like “Here, take one of these!” On this little plate he had “samples” and it was like a crispy piece of pita with 3 different meats layered on top and then another pita with more different meats on top with a hunk of cheese on top…it was so delicious and literally fed me for lunch because Danielle gave me some of the meat off of hers too. Let’s just say, I think we have made a friend at the deli that could be very useful in the future!

Over the past couple days my roommates and I have talked about how our teachers have these accents or say English words in a certain way that we find humorous, and my European Issues teacher is one of them. It seems like she tries too hard to pronunciate words and moves her mouth so largely in speaking and bulges her eyes when explaining things – her one most popular phrase: “Is it clear?” So supposively I have the best impersonation of this phrase and can crack my roommates up at just about anytime if I say it, so let’s just say it was hard keeping a straight face today during European Issues. Don’t get me wrong, I love our teacher, I just can’t handle the way she speaks sometimes. 

Tonight there is this special through one of the traveling companies for students to go to one of our favorite restaurants, Il Gato e La Volpe (the cat and the fox), for 15 euro and get a three course meal along with unlimited wine – a pretty darn good deal! Plus it’s a way for you to meet other students and possibly win trips through the traveling company. We had to meet on the steps of the Duomo at 8 and we walked there together as a group. We soon realized that all of the kids that were meeting there all knew each other and were from the same school which had just arrived in Florence earlier in the day. We ended up sitting at a four person table which didn’t allow us to really meet any of the other kids, but we didn’t even care because we were just unbelievably hungry and couldn’t wait to see what kind of food we would be eating! They first brought us out some bread along with a pitcher of white wine and a bottle of red wine to share just among the four us! They then brought out the appetizers which consisted of: slabs of mozzarella and tomatoes, a huge tray of a mixture of deli meats, grilled vegetables which were cold and tossed in some type of dressing, and two types of bruschetta – one topped with tomatoes and the other topped with what I think was some type of nut. After the appetizers they brought out three pasta dishes: gnocchi in a tomato sauce with meatballs, noodles in a broccoli white sauce, and tortellini filled with cheese in a truffle and mushroom sauce. OH MY WORD. Everything was so delicious (I even tried the noodles in the broccoli white sauce and loved it!) and we were overwhelmed by so much food, but believe me, the four of us ate every last noodle (along with another pitcher of wine)! I have never had such a variety of food where I enjoyed every single thing! I think I’m convinced that you cannot go wrong in ordering food here in Italy. We came back home and studied Italian for a short while before we all passed out.