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.