Ohh chicken croissants!

February 1, 2011

So today must be the day for crazy pants. Our Roman Achievement teacher was wearing these brown corduroy pants with those crazy mismatched hair pins. She’s so funky I love it. And then once Roman Achievement ends in walks our Italian teacher Gloria wearing these bright pink pants which I think were corduroy as well. Going with the theme of the day you would think that we would walk into Italian Art and find Rocky wearing crazy colored corduroy pants, but of course he was looking classy as always. This morning I could have sworn that I saw him driving in this white beater car near the school, but the girls told me that they couldn’t imagine Rocky driving a beater, more like a beamer or some fancy car. I guess we’ll never know. But after class we planned on going to the Florence For Fun office to buy our tickets to the soccer game in April against Milan, as well as the Venice Carnival trip. We got there and found out that we can’t get our tickets any earlier than after the soccer game that precedes it, but Marissa and I were able to sign up for the Venice Carnival weekend, so now I guess we need to keep our eyes open for a mask that we like so we can join in the festivities and parades of Carnival. 

We came back to the house and I was really anxious to start cooking dinner even though it was only like 3 o’clock. But I decided it might be a good idea to start cooking the chicken because normally when mom does the chicken for croissants she leaves it in a crockpot all day, and quite frankly we don’t have crockpots here. We also don’t have Campbell’s soup, nor do we have many of the typical American soups here. So instead of using cream of chicken soup I had to buy this dry cream of mushroom soup mix and I made it last night so it would be thick and set up to use today. I felt a little disappointed that I wanted to make chicken croissants so badly but I’m not even using like any of the original ingredients! Once the chicken was done and I started picking it apart and shredding it I realized it was getting close to dinner time so I started to shred the cheese and put together the “croissants” and lined them all up in a pan. By the way they also don’t have like glass baking dishes; they use those tin foil throw-away containers. I put together the green bean casserole with the remaining mushroom soup and threw both of the dishes into the oven. While everything was baking I had bought a head of romaine lettuce that I washed and tore up into a bowl while Marissa cut up some red onion, Danielle shredded some carrots, and Lauren cut up some tomatoes. We threw everything together into a big bowl with some cheese and as I was tossing it the timer went off. I pulled everything out of the oven and dinner was served! Everybody loved the croissants, although I felt like they tasted completely different from the typical chicken croissants that I’m used to. I told the girls that once we get back to America and I have all of the regular supplies on hand I will make them the real chicken croissants. However, I must say that we are making some mighty fine dinners here and nobody goes hungry! 

Marissa is finally feeling up to par so we convinced her that it was time to go out and have some fun! We got ready really quick so we could catch some of the happy hour specials that end at 9 o’clock. We first went to the Shot Café where Lauren and I each got a beer for 3 euro (that’s a good deal here for in a bar!), and Marissa and Danielle got a pitcher of Long Island Iced Tea for 10 euro (another good deal!). We have been dying to go to this place right around the corner from our apartment called the Dublin Pub, so we decided to leave the Shot Café and go there. When we walked in there were so many locals (men) watching the soccer game. They had like all of the tables and chairs turned so they could watch the t.v., it was so funny, but they are really into the sport here. Lauren got another beer, but Danielle and I found a coupon in the paper for 3 long drinks for the price of 2, so Marissa, Danielle, and I got three Tequila Sunrise drinks – they looked extremely pretty, but I felt like that was the wrong type of drink to get at this type of venue. Lauren and I went to the bathroom which was so gross, and let me just tell you that I got an intense thigh and ab workout trying squat over this toilet that had no seat with water all over the floor. But we had to walk through a group of American boys who were playing darts in order to get to and from the bathroom, so when Marissa and Danielle went to the bathroom once we got back, the boys ended up asking them to bring Lauren and I over to play a game of darts. We ended up making friends with these kids who were friends with the boys who were playing darts, and were sitting right before we got to the dart board. Cameron, Gabby, and Andrew are their names, and they’re from a school in California. As we were talking this man walked through to go to the bathroom and was like wow English speaking people! Here this guy from Australia is traveling around Europe partly by himself, and was happy to find some English speaking people. We ended up having a good time just talking the night away; the kids from California actually go to school really close to our school, so if we don’t bump into them at the pub again we might bump into them walking to and from school. They also taught us some slang from California and asked us some Ohio slang words and we blanked completely – do Ohioans have slang? I’m not sure! Marissa ended up being convinced to do an Irish Car Bomb (half a pint of Guinness, Jamison, and Bailey’s), which she loved, and Danielle and I ordered a beer – I had my first Guinness! We ended up coming home and I decided to sleep on our couch (which is currently located in our kitchen) because it is so much softer than my bed, and Marissa was skypeing one of her friends in our bedroom when I wanted to go to bed. What a great and comfy night!