To Travel

First of all, the quote of the week:

In breads class the other day chef was playing around with some decorating bread (able to be shaped into braids etc.) and made one into the shape of a fish. After tweaking some part of it, a fellow student said, "Ah no chef! What are you doing? It looked better before!" and so on and after a moment or two of thought chef said, "...eets just a fucking feesh!"

Anywho, this weekend was a nice change of pace because I really haven't been out of the city much yet. On Saturday we signed up for a trip through our school that took us through Parma and Modena to go see Parmesan being made, a Prosciutto factory and a place that makes fancy Balsamic Vinegar. Being a bunch of nerdy foodies, we were pretty stoked. Parma is about 3 hours away by bus. The countryside was lovely and the little Parmesan establishment in Parma was pretty adorable. It was small and the cheese makers wore cute little cheese making outfits and there was oh so much cheese. Thousands of pounds of cheese. We saw them cooking and stirring and shaping it and then how it was cured and stored for the 2 years before it is sold. At the Prosciutto factory, we walked into what was actually an impeccably clean facility. They showed us the different storage rooms at different temps where the meat goes before/ after/ during the curing process etc. I have never and will never again see that much meat in all my life. A vegetarian's nightmare, behind each door were racks sky high with Thousands of legs of pig. They said they ship aprox 50,000 (what do you call them... pig butt/leg combos?) around the world each year. They then led us upstairs to our lunch where (a vegetarian would pass out) each table setting was complete with a plate entirely covered in meat. Different kinds of prosciutto, salami etc piled in front of every chair. Full to our throats with meat, we then headed to Modena where they make a special kind of balsamic that takes years to ferment. There is nothing in the vinegar but grapes. No sugars no added acids, no wine, just grape juice and time. We tasted vinegars that were aged up to 25 yrs and sold for 78 euros for a tiny bottle.

So the trip was interesting and informative- BUT may I now point out its downfalls. It contained a few of us who had chosen to come on the trip + about 50 who were forced to be there. 80% 18 yr old girls who said things like, "it doesn't even taste good" after tasting just about the most perfectly made Parmesan cheese that can be made. Or girls who would walk into a meat factory (which smelled surprisingly little) and would plug their noses in disgust as the tour leader/ owner was proudly showing us around. Turns out I can't stand American teenage girls. Yeah I was one not long ago... but whatareyougonnado.

Sunday was a welcomed relief. My friends Michelle, Kim and I took a hour and 40 min train south west to a town called Castiglioncello. An adorable little beachy getaway, there were lots of people on the beach but actually almost no tourists. Almost everyone was Italian. The beaches were beautiful but you simply HAD to purchase a lounge chair/ umbrella to sit on. Not because it was required but because the sand was so hot that even while sitting on your towel, the sand would literally burn you. Now granted, my threadbare, Snorkelsaurus towel was probably made in 1982 and has been used generously since then, but I wasn't about to try to tough it out. And something about this sun makes you sweat more intensely than sun usually does. Moments after getting out of the water you would be dry and a single moment later you would be dripping again.. but with sweat. Wonderful and relaxing though regardless of some horrid tan lines I acquired. But there will be time to even those out next week when I'm in GREECE!

Friday marks our last day of Italian 1 with Francesca (I'm actually gonna miss her) and breads with Chef Gabriele. We then have a week break in which me and two friends are going to the Greek island Kos for half the week then parting ways to do a little more European sight seeing before school starts. I'll be coming back to Florence because my dear friend Jenny from Seattle will be in town! And I'm oh so excited to show her around.

But now it's time to study and get things ready for the trip. Wish me luck! (Pictures from last weekend are up on my snapfish for anyone curious).

An Improvement

When I woke up this morning and my paper thin linen sheet wasn't shoved to the bottom of my bed in anger (my thought process in the middle of the night- "why would they give us such heavy bedding in the middle of the summer?"), I knew it was gonna be a good day. I was actually comfortably wrapped in my sheet, the night having proved to be slightly cooler than usual. Usually we must choose between nearly dying of heat stroke with the windows closed or get eaten alive by swarms of mosquitoes and listen to the unnecessarily loud buses all night with the windows open. But thanks to mosquito spray, an incense that repels them and a plug in that periodically releases mosquito repellent, we were finally OK with the windows open and were so tired from lack of sleep, the buses weren't even a problem.

Next we skipped our way to Italian class to take a test. We bubbled with excitement because, who doesn't love irregular verbs? (slight exaggeration). Francesca was especially silly today spouting such gems as "when I have time to think about activities to do in class, I can be dangerous," or "the song was sappy and horrible... I wanted to- " and made a wrist slitting mime. PC-ness is not a concern of the teachers in Italy. She has certainly told us "I kill you," enough times (I can tell though. She's bluffing). She then read to us a few passages of a newspaper article which she thought was particularly hilarious. We didn't understand the Italian at all and when she translated it into English it was really not at all funny... however seeing her have to hold onto the table because she was laughing so hard at really mediocre statements was quite a show. But the best part was her surprise. She was so excited when she sat her gift bag on the table that we had to be excited too. Out she pulled a 2 ft tall American flag on a flag pole (to celebrate the 4th for us), But Wait! There is more. She then pushed a button on the base of it and it started playing "our country tis of thee" and the flag waved. She told us "I love things like this." I can just imagine her kitschy apartment full of Lisa Frank erasers and year-round Christmas decorations.

After our test was over, Michelle and I celebrated by going to our favorite sandwich shop where the owner is stoney faced man whose neutral look seems to say, "I could mess you up." The sanitation in this country would make our chefs at home (well the American one) cry. They make your sandwiches, take your money, set different kinds of meat on top of each other, and gloves? Ha! If you can't handle the germs, get a better immune system... is what they imply. But this place has unmatched sandwiches. The crispy toasted bread cuts up the inside of your mouth like it's been through an epic battle but it is oh so worth it. And though the owner could kick me apart, he'll grace you with a brief smile from time to time (usually when I mess up my Italian) and again it's worth it. It's a tough love sandwich shop.

Nursing my mouth wounds we walked over to the Boboli Gardens to hang out during our nice obnoxious 3 hour bread between classes. The gardens are across the river, about 30 min from our house. It's beautiful and much less touristy on the south side of the Arno which makes for a nice little getaway. After a relaxing hour or so in the garden we walked home marveling our lack of sunburns thus far, during which we each developed nice little shoulder and cheek sunburns. (Just moments ago Michelle cut up cucumber slices and set them on my shoulders. Soothing. I just realized they were still sitting there though, like those little Sgt Pepper jacket shoulder thingies....?)

When we got home I was sweating on every inch of my body and we both collapsed on our beds about 10 minutes before we had to leave again for class. Putting on a uniform and baking bread just did not sound like fun today. We both seriously considered ditching for the first time. We never had before... what could one day hurt? But we knew Mark, our other fellow South friend in the class, would give us crap and after a minute we sucked it up and went. We were glad we did because apparently the rest of the class had the same thought and No One Else Showed Up. Just Mark, Michelle, me 'n Chef Gabe. The other 9 decided to ditch apparently. If we'd actually decided not to come, Mark would have given us more crap than we realized! He'd have been the only one. But as it was, the class ran more efficiently than ever before. We got more done in a shorter amount of time, joked with chef, and made the best breads we've made yet. Suckers. It was even relatively cool in the classroom with 9 less people. AND after telling chef that I was an actor, chef told us about this little old town not far from here that has a medieval festival in just a few weeks with what he described as the best street performers in Italy. There are puppet shows, stilt walkers, fire eaters and other carnival type acts that go on in little secret secluded courtyards all over town. He said it was amazing but hard to get to but if we were all interested he'd help us find a way to get there. Yup. Best breads class so far.

A good day.

One more note- a interesting thing I've found being here is, I expected to perhaps start saying a few Italian words/ phrases without thinking, just like in New Zealand. You just hear them so often that they work their way into your vocab. Well... that hasn't really happened. What has happened is I find myself occasionally starting to say/ think phrases in broken English- the way they talk to us. I've had to stop myself from talking back to them the same way a few times. I don't want them to think I'm making fun of them, it just comes out.

pictures

For those of you without facebook, here are some pictures.

http://www1.snapfish.com/snapfish/thumbnailshare/AlbumID=2906178015/a=146803481_146803481/

Block Party

After a long day of museum viewing (the Accademia to see David and the Uffizi to see everything else) I was ready to swear off walking for about a week. Last night, however, was the last night in town for one of the two teachers from South who came with us to Italy (the other left a few days ago) and so it was necessary to have a last hurrah for her. It was her idea to attend a block party in her neighborhood- a quieter/ less touristy part of town on the south side of the Arno river. Hearing this party was going to last until aprox 4am, we dragged our lazy tired legs over to Catherine's (we're only allowed to call her that here) place at about 9 planning on staying a good hour and then collapsing to bed. Instead, amongst the food, music and booze, Catherine (who is in her late 50s by the way) encouraged us to drink more and stay out later and soon enough we were dancing in the street and it was 3am. The life of the party, she had older Italian men dancing with her and people buying her drinks and everyone could have cared less about dancing with us younger folk. But after taking a few shots with her, Catherine decided it was time to slur her way to bed since her taxi was coming in t-minus 2 hours to take her to the airport. That's the most partying I've done yet since I've been here. Who knew it'd be Miss Phipps that encouraged it.

Maestro

I'm beginning to get used to the teaching styles of my new profs. They're offbeat, but once you understand their code, it's not so bad. It's just like solving any other confusing riddle except this one is in charge of your grade.

With Chef Gabriele you need to understand that he often gets "years" and "days" confused. He has told us on more than one occasion, "and if wrapped properly this bread will last up to 15 years," to which the class lets out an audible, "woooah." And after a few seconds of pondering he says, "oh days. Days. No not years. No no." He also explained to us today that you could really use a lot of different kind of olives for olive bread as long as you debone them first.

Today Francesca had something up her sleeve. She came into class (sporting, for the second time in a row, her over sized solar system t-shirt from the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum with a disclaimer saying, "not to scale") with her classic 3 parts gum to 1 part teeth smile. What it came down to is she ended up showing us this video:



And after we watched it she played it again and we all got to get up and dance to it. And by "get to" I mean "were forced to." This really happened.

Cultural Differences

Walking down the street the other day we heard a bunch of church bells ringing intensely. I looked at my watch and it was 4:43. What an odd time for church bells, I thought... but it was because Italy had just scored a goal in the world cup. They love futbol.

la classe

To begin, I'd like to recap a quick encounter that just occurred on the street. Michelle and I were walking home from dinner with our friends (across the Ponte Vecchio and past Il Duomo- both just on the way home) when a young man stops us and quickly asks us a question. Even though I've had a full 2 days of Italian class now I had no idea what he was saying and start sputtering sentence fragments of "non parlo... le? uh... l'Italiano" and Michelle calmly leaned over and lit his cigarette for him. I asked, "Oh you know how to ask for a light in Italian?" and she said, "No he asked for it in English. Just with an English accent."

Anyway, classes are in full swing now and uh... what a swing it is. I have noticed a pattern in which every important figure at my school is young and unfairly attractive. The executive chef is a cross between Fabio and Johnny Depp. The dean of students is a young, pretty, model-y type woman and everyone in between is the same. Even the older chefs have a salt and peppery charm and all the women are beautiful but almost look like they'd rather they weren't. It was really becoming rather annoying. Well, you can imagine how relieved I was to walk into Italian class Monday morning to find nothing but a neon pink scrunchy top backpack with a bright yellow and purple geometric pattern decorating the outside. I found myself wondering, I wonder what kind of young, hip Italian owns that bag? Enter Francesca. A short, skinny legged, plump bodied, shuffly type lady with lipstick that reaches far beyond her lips and an intense ear-length haircut, the likes of which I haven't seen since my peers in 4th grade (which she manages to get sticking straight up every time we don't understand something). I was especially excited to see that today she had the very same gray strechpants/ baggy blue t-shirt combo she wore on the first day... yesterday. It certainly was a good choice on the first go-round. It interests me that she is a teacher of another language because I'm having trouble believing that she speaks anything other than Italian. Hard to teach a beginning level class when you can't even break the ice in their native tongue. An example: Obnoxious Girl from California in my class, "How do you say roomie in Italian?" (Already a good start to a conversation.) Francesca, "eh.... eh?" OGC, "Oh, ha! I mean roommate. How do you say roommate?" Francesca, "I'm sorry I don't.. eh... If you can't afford the book you don't have to buy it today but that is just the one you will need sometime." Well played, Franky. She also informed us that beginning tomorrow she will be speaking only in Italian. That would be day three. Seeing as how so far we've learned numbers and how to conjugate "to be" I'd say we'll all have a pretty good time tomorrow. She has a habit of asking a question she is fully aware we won't know the answer to and grimacing at the silence. I foresee a whole lot of silent grimacing.

Breads class was next. After a nice 3 hour break between classes during which I slept and ate- what I do at every free moment these days- we put on our brand new chef jackets and hustled excitedly to our next class. At least this was something we knew. Enter our next mistro- Gabriele. Picture the count from Sesame Street in a chef's outfit with a more nasally voice. A nice guy, but difficult to understand nonetheless. After explaining biga for about a half hour longer than necessary he stopped and said "I don't understand myself when I speak English." We're right there with ya buddy. While he has some endearing qualities, the rest of the class is lacking. Two older American students (they're all American) in particular are really rubbing us the wrong way. They act like teenage besties and the male of the two- who we've nicknamed Greg- regularly partakes in such hilarious antics as tossing bread around and not catching it smoothly at all, putting a baguette and two round loaves together in the shape of a penis and taking a picture, posing inmfront of things with one finger on his lips and oh-so-funny "I'm a bad wittle boy" faces and having friend "Lucy" take pictures of him. Our poor chef is so out of his element speaking English that he does little to stop it. The class itself might be more interesting if there only about 3 of us instead of 9. Unfortunately there is very little hands on. We made some delicious Tuscan Bread and Ciabatta today but all we got to do was shape two loaves each and then watch the rest happen. The facilities are lovely but the pastry lab is small and the most of the other students are far less experienced. We're hope hope hoping that in the 2 1/2 weeks remaining, there is some pick up in the pace. I want so badly to Love that class but so far it's been mildly difficult to do so.

On another note, I had the first reaction I've ever had to my deathly last name the other day. I asked a girl at a front desk where my class was and when she saw my name she said, "LaMorticella?" and made a "I'm-being-strangled" face/ gesture combination. No one has mentioned that before. So that's a treat.

Now it's time to be harvested by mosquitoes (which are WAY bigger here and bleed all over the place when you smash them..... sick) and go to bed. So arrivederci (a word my friend has been using as Hello and Goodbye since we got here. Don't do it folks. ....It only means Goodbye. And he was wondering why he'd get snickers whenever he ordered something).