"I felt like a brand new person!"

February 2, 2011

Today in Italian Gloria taught us how to speak about the weather even though it isn’t in our textbooks. She seems to want to let us learn the textbook stuff on our own since it is pretty spelled out, and instead teach us stuff in class that is useful for us to communicate and understand on the streets. It’s so funny when she teaches us stuff though because she draws the silliest pictures on the board to relate to the words, but it actually is really helpful. For example today when she was trying to tell us the word for windy she drew a stick figure girl whose hair and dress were blowing far away from her side, or for the tornado she didn’t just draw a swirl, she instead drew houses with their roofs in the air and trees uprooted with this massive tornado coming through. Basically, Gloria is great! After class we finally were able to pick up our workbooks for Italian and as I was grabbing mine Jesse was like “Kala I heard you saying something about how your back was killing you and I could crack it if you wanted me to.” My eyes lit right up because after sleeping on a crazy hard bed for almost a month and then sleeping on a soft couch for just one night my back was all sorts of crazy and sore. Jesse is such a tall guy and when he picked me up to crack my back I swear I felt cracks from my toes to my head…I felt like a brand new person! I was walking on air! Thanks Jesse!

Later on we had European Issues and today was our first presentation, done by Stephon, and it was nice seeing someone else go before I have to present because I now know that she will be pleased with just about anything. She also interrupts and further explains things throughout the presentation, and loves video clips, so I now am not concerned the slightest bit about doing my presentation in there. However, today we only had about 5 minutes left of class after Stphon’s presentation and she was like “okay, so let’s finish our lecture on Germany..” and we ended up going over like 7 or so minutes, but at least we’re done with the section on Germany I suppose. 

Tonight was Danielle’s night to make her dinner, which was chicken zucchini alfredo. She was so concerned she was going to screw everything up because we had to improvise a little bit on the ingredients because we couldn’t find evaporated milk anywhere, so we thought cream would be about the consistency of evaporated milk. And on top of that we don’t have measuring cups or measuring spoons to determine how much half a cup would be and so forth, but everything turned out so fabulous! We made another salad to go with dinner which we decided to eat at the end of our meal like the Europeans do. Definitely a delicious dinner that I’m going to have to keep and use in the future! We all definitely went away with full bellies!

For some reason I thought that tomorrow was my morning that started off late, so I stayed up skypeing mom and then my friend Max Wagner from school, but once we ended our conversation and I got a shower and was climbing into bed I was like “shoooot, I have Roman Achievement tomorrow morning at 9:15!” But oh well, anytime I get to see and talk to people back home I think it’s worth more than the proper 8-9 hours of sleep :]

Pictures of the Apartment

Since our internet is crappy and I can  never take people on tours of our apartment via skype, I thought I would take some pictures to try and give people a snapshot tour of our humble abode!

The entry room on our side of the apartment.

Entry/sitting room.

Our apartment is basically a really long hallway with all of the rooms off of it.

Bathroom #1

Bathroom #3, although bathroom #2 is just the mirrored version of bathroom #3.

Our 2x2 cubicle shower that is shoved behind the door.

Add caption

The kitchen! (notice the washer placed underneath of the drying rack
for the dishes...not such a great idea!)

The view from outside of our kitchen window. Plus a couple of lines to hang our clothes.

Our living room, which is off of the kitchen, and contains the drying rack for our clothes.

Our little t.v. in the living room, and you can see the kitchen connected.

Me and Marissa's bedroom!

The little balcony off of our room.

The view from our balcony, plus a few more clotheslines.

More view from the balcony.

Our beds! (mine has the red blanket, along with a couple things tacked up on
my bulletin board from my friends back home at Kent)

The chandelier and armoire in our bedroom. (notice how tall the
armoire is...we have to use one of those poles like in clothing stores to put
our clothes on the top shelves!)

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!

Meatloaf in Italy!

January 31, 2011

This morning Danielle and Marissa went to the school a tad earlier than usual so they could print out their boarding passes and information for their trip to London which is coming up in a couple of weeks. As Lauren and I were about to leave the house Lauren gets a call and it’s Marissa saying that our Italian teacher Gloria is sick and we don’t have class! Score! However, not having class til 10:45 makes for a late start to the day, so now that we didn’t have to go to the school til 1:30 in my case, and 4:00 in the other girls’ case, we had no clue what to do with ourselves! But last night before we went to bed Marissa and I were talking about dinners that we could make this week, so we all decided to go to the market and get some fruit (because stocking up on Vitamin C is still necessary in the sick household!) and look for the different ingredients we needed for our dishes. Marissa has decided to make meatloaf, mashed potatoes, and corn for tonight, while I have decided to make chicken croissants with green bean casserole for my dinner tomorrow night. 

We looked around the market for the meat, but we thought that buying meat at a supermarket is probably going to be cheaper, so we headed to Conad and looked at their meat selection there and Marissa was able to buy about 1ish pounds of ground beef for 2.50 euro and I found packs of 6 chicken legs for 3.20 euro…we thought that seemed like a lot more reasonable prices. I couldn’t find croissants because here in Italy we don’t have Pillsbury rolls of croissants or biscuits like at home, so I ended up buying these little rolls that looked like croissants and thought I could just stuff the pre-baked roll because I don’t think I really have any other options. Everyone was able to get everything they needed, but I still couldn’t find any cheddar cheese for my croissants! So after we came back home and dropped off all of our groceries I headed back to the market and looked again at the cheese stand when this woman started speaking to me in English – I must have had a look of concern on my face, and she could definitely tell I wasn’t Italian – so I asked her if she had any cheddar. She said she only had one block of cheddar that was approximately .436 kilograms, which is about one pound of cheese. I figured that one pound was about 2 cups, which is how much I needed, if not a little more than that, so I she started wrapping it up for me and she gave me the cheese and she told me it was 9 euro! Holy crap! Cheese here is so stinking expensive, and I guess for a cheese that is pretty rare around here that was a good price, but still, I don’t think I’m going to be making anything else with cheddar cheese! 

I brought the cheese home and then headed back to school by myself for Comparative Media. Once we all got into the classroom Fabio told us that we were going to watch a movie, so I got all excited, but then he told us we were watching Fahrenheit 451 and I got a little bummed – we read Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 in high school and I didn’t mind the book a whole lot, but then we also watched the movie after we read the book and the movie is so old and crazy that the movie kinda ruins the book for me. But we watched the movie (well most people we were in and out of sleep), and luckily I sat by Ryan who kept me entertained throughout the movie because we would make fun of different things all throughout the movie. Watching a movie in a small little class really made me feel like I was back in high school again! In European Issues nothing really new happened, but I signed up for my presentation on March 9^th, and my presentation will be about Turkey’s ruler. Each kid in the class has to make a presentation on one of the people on this list of leaders in Europe or the European Union, and the presentations are all throughout the semester. The first presentation is on Italy’s prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi, which is Wednesday. 

On our way home from school walking down one of the main roads before the Duomo we heard this crazy noise in the street and the closer we got we saw about 15 men dressed in these baggy pants and crazy outfits dancing and chanting and playing music. Danielle, Lauren, Courtney (Lauren’s best friend), and I were all laughing when all of a sudden one of the guys grabbed Danielle’s arm and started swinging her around and around and she’s screaming my name for me to help her, so I start going towards her when all of a sudden I get sucked in and this guy is spinning me around and around and around. We finally like break free when all of a sudden they change the direction and grab our other arms and swing us around and around until the song ends. We walk away and are extremely dizzy and can’t walk straight and I didn’t stop laughing for at least 5 minutes. Like nowhere in Kent would I be able to walk down the street and get sucked into dancing with this group who is chanting and playing music on the side of the street – I love Italy! 

Danielle and I stopped at a Tabacchi shop because I was told in some of them you can find folders and Danielle was thinking about buying stamps – we realized that the Tabacchi stores are like gas station stores with the most random things in them! Neither of us found what we were looking for, but on our way out we saw this checker board that had shot glasses instead of the round checker pieces..how funny is that! We were almost home when Marissa calls me screaming, “WHERE ARE YOU GUYS!? DINNER IS READY!” We walked in the door and it smelt HEAVENLY in our apartment. Danielle and I both rushed to put our stuff away and get to the table because Marissa had the table set with the food all ready – it looked and smelled and tasted so delicious! We laughed though because we thought it was funny to eat such a comforting American dish in Italy, but of course we don’t care! Earlier in the week I found spicy ketchup at Conad and put that on my meatloaf..it was so so so good! We praised Marissa’s cooking skills and her and Danielle claimed they ate so much they couldn’t move, so I did dishes and cleaned everything up. As soon as I finished wiping off the table Marissa and Danielle told me to put my shoes on…it was time for gelato! Of course I couldn’t resist and the guy at the gelato shop down our street of course knows us by now because we are there all the time, but we discovered this cone in there that is 15 euro and is HUMUNGOUS and I said that the last day I’m here I’m going to buy it and devour the whole thing…everyone is holding me to it!

Gotta love the fam :]

January 30, 2011

Today is Sunday, which is another pretty laid back, boring day. When our landlady came over she told us that our internet connection would improve if we got an Ethernet cable to plug our computers directly into the internet modem, so this morning while Danielle made us some delicious french toast I was looking up places to go that might have Ethernet cables. However, here in Italy they don’t just have a Walmart that has everything you’re looking for. No, they have individual specialty shops that cover all the different streets – you think this would make it easy to find what you’re looking for, but believe me it’s not. I wrote down two hardware stores, two computer stores, and three internet stores as well as their addresses which were fairly close to each other, hoping that one of them would have a cable. So Danielle and I got ready and set out in the rain with our umbrellas to find these shops. We found the streets that I wrote down perfectly fine, but in Italy there are blue numbers along the street indicating residential places and red numbers indicating the business places. It can get extremely confusing because it can go blue 12, blue 14, red 46, blue 16, and so forth if there are a bunch of blue numbers in a row it’s hard to figure out if you’re on the right block for the store you’re looking for or not. We ended up realizing that a bunch of the stores we were looking for were closed – haven’t I learned my lesson about stores not being open on Sundays!? Some stores we were searching for looked like they weren’t even in business anymore, and the one store that we did find to be open was an internet café place where you just go in and pay to use their internet – not quite our meaning of an internet store. 

We ended up just giving in and coming home because the rain made things quite wet and miserable. When we got home I took off my new boots I realized that there was a crack in the back of my boot and my sock was soaked as well as the entire bottom of my boot…not cool! But that makes sense why people say to not buy the more expensive boots unless you’re saving them for home because the unevenness of the cobblestone has been ruining all of my shoes as well as my long toes! I swear my long toes are broken because they are the only part of my feet that will typically hurt! After warming up for a little bit I went grocery shopping at Conad (what’s new?) because I knew a couple of their sales were going to end soon, and I wanted to get a couple more of those 1 euro pizzas as well as some of their soup that happened to be on sale. Walking on my way to Conad I noticed this little internet shop kinda like the one I had stopped at earlier, but this one had different little adapters and trinkets in the window, so I stopped in and asked if they had an Ethernet cord. The little lady looked at me, looked at her husband, grabbed an Ethernet cord, handed it to me and said “7 euro.” I was pretty stoked I was able to find a cable right down the street from my apartment when I was walking all over the town for a cord earlier. I got the few things I wanted from Conad, and right before I checked out I noticed that these cakes that all of my roommates gaze at were still on sale, so I bought one as a little treat after dinner – 2.90 for a whole little cake that we are going to split is a much better deal than spending 2.50 on your own cup of gelato! (Although I would never replace gelato with cake in my ranking system of deliciousness!) 

I ended up cooking this soup for dinner which was like a dry mix inside of a packet that you just boiled with a certain amount of water – it was so delicious! I also found some Ritz crackers, but here they are all thrown in one large bag inside of the box instead of individual sleeves. It was a perfect dinner for a cold rainy day! And then was the moment I had been looking forward to all week – skypeing my entire family! My mom invited my entire family over for lunch, but before they ate she was going to bring me up on skype so we could all see each other and they could ask questions and whanot…it was awesome! It was so funny to see everyone and to hear the questions they had, and I’m pretty sure they were entertained by my answers as well. One thing I have to do though to please them: take more pictures of the cute boys I’m with, learn how to use the bidet, and take pictures of the apartment! I also need to write a list down of the things I wanted to say because once I saw them I forgot everything I wanted to tell everyone! I can’t forget to tell Aunt Maryann that I found Pepperridge Farm cookies here! I was so excited when I found them, but refuse to pay that much for them! I hope we can arrange more family skype dates in the future because I definitely miss them! :]

p.s. I guess my search for an Ethernet cord was worth it because mom said my picture on skype was much clearer and our connection remained at a good level for most of the time!