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Published: November 16th 2010
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Ciao Tutti,
It has been a while since last time I wrote. I think that's a good thing though, it means I have been talking to people more than being on the computer.
I will start with a quick sum up of the last couple of weeks. Katie and I wanted to start a women's studies club, but there are no clubs on campus here so we decided to have a general meeting just for Italians and Americans to interact. First we met with two students who organize events on campus, we spoke broken Italians and English with them and managed to organize a meeting. We were a little nervous for the meeting, not sure what to expect. I decided we should play charades, in teams of one Italian and one American, I also brought a snack of about 10 baby bananas, just to keep it healthy. But when people started streaming in, i hid the pathetic bunch of bananas and our plans quickly changed. In total there were about 15 Americans and 30 Italians. We introduced ourselves then got into small groups to just talk. The following week we had another meeting to figure out language partners. I
now have two and Katie has one girl and they are all friends and really nice.
Now onto Olive picking! We met our cuisine teacher at 9:30am the day before halloween, so she could drive us to her house. She has an apartment within the walls of Viterbo but she was taking us to her house about 15 minutes away. It was beautiful, with a lovely garden, she is also a gardner, wonderful view, fresh air and of course olive trees. There was about 10 of us and only about 6 trees to pick. We used two green nets, which we pulled tightly against the trunk of the tree and laid on the ground, then we dove in. Each person claimed their spot of the tree and we pulled the olives off, letting them fall to the ground. Richard, our teachers husband was climbing the tree to get up higher, I was a little jealous since I have been tree deprived, so by the last few trees, I was the one climbing. We finished in about two hours. We went in the house and helped our teacher, Christina, cook and prepare the lunch. The food was amazing of course,
we has a hardy soup with beans and rice to start. For the second course we had fresh pasta with a pepper and pomodoro sauce. Third course was Chicken, baked fennel root with bread crumbs, potatoes and amazing cabbage. For dessert we had an apple and blackberry cobbler. Then we took a walk to a small Etruscan castle, picking herbs along the way of course. We also went in an Etruscan tomb and Katie laid in it, while i left early because it was scary. It felt so great to be in nature, first in the olive trees then taking a walk, it was beautiful. On the walk back, Katie and I lingered behind, I was on one side of the road picking more olives off of some ones tree probably, and I looked over to see Katie picking rose petals through some ones fence. I couldn't help but crack up, no matter where we are we are always doing something weird and slightly illegal. I told her that every bank robber starts out this way, they may be picking olives and flowers one day and next thing you know...
I will quickly skip to tuesday. I had my cuisine
class at 5:30. We made ravioli from hand with only flour, egg and a fancy pasta contraption. We stuffed them with squash, mashed up cookie and parmigiano, with a walnut and parsley sauce. We also made spinach ravioli, we literally rolled cooked spinach into the original batter and after 10 minutes of rolling, it turned green. We stuffed these with parmigiano and ricotta. After we made tiramisu, my favorite, and it wasn't very hard. We also got to try the fresh olive oil from the olives we picked. It was a beautiful green color and tasted wonderful.
Va bene, onto the juicy stuff, like pumpkin carving! We managed to find four cute pumpkins to carve. Katie and I started, then Denisa joined in and later Alessandro and Daniele joined in the fun. Katie and I finished pretty quickly, Denisa got sick of hers, meanwhile, the boys were working intently on theirs. It was a collaboration. It took Daniele about 30 minutes to find the perfect design online, then it took them both about 30 minutes to draw out the plan then about 30 each to carve their part, Daniele on the eyes and Alessandro on the mouth. It was
very funny and sweet. Alessandro didn't want to let it go and held it on his lap after dinner. That night Katie, Denisa, Daniele e io watched the shining on my bed, Alessandro was tired and wanted to go to bed, but about an hour into the movie he jumps into my room with his lit pumpkin. When Katie tried to take it to her house for the party, he asked us to take it in the second trip.
So Katie and I planned a halloween party for Sunday night. Italians don't really celebrate halloween so we thought we would show them one of Americas consumer holidays in hopes that they would assimilate to our culture. We invited all of the Italians from the meetings and others we knew, as well as the Americans. We spent all day setting up, decorating the house, baking, and getting delirious off of sugar. The house looked awesome! I made pumpkin pie from scratch, cupcakes with frosting and spider web decoration, and caramel apples with what i think was caramel taffy, the candy selection is very different here, i couldn't even find kisses. People started to arrive around 10. We bought 3 jugs
of vino, two 2liter jugs of biano and one 5liter jug of rosso, they looked cool. We set them up at our little bar area. WE told people to bring a snack or some alcohol and I didnt really expect them to but everyone brought something, it was great. There was a lot of food and our bar was overflowing. All of the Italians dressed up, some put together really great costumes, I was very impressed. Katie, Denisa and I were gypsies although origionaly I wanted to be a food item, as we are in Italia. But Gympies were the easiest, although Katie and I felt bad enforcing stereotypes about gypsies in Europe. Our language partners and all of their friends came, our friend Chiara and all of her friends came, Daniele, Alessandro, and his friends and a lot more, there were probably 80 people throughout the whole night. The music was good in my opinion, finally music we could dance to, rap/hip-hop but then Italians kept coming up to me asking me to put something on they could dance to. It's funny, the music preferences for parties are really different here. I had a lot of fun at the
party, Katie and I were running around painting on everyones face who didn't have a costume. There was a group of guys who definitely needed paint but when we tried they were not very friendly and open to having paint on their faces. Turned out they were a group of fascists, who, about 10 minutes later started chanting. All of us Americans just thought it was normal party behavior but we didnt know who they were and what they were chanting. Alessandro told me what was going on and then Katie started yelling at them and pushed them out with the help of some of the other Chico students, ironically. The atmosphere seemed much more relaxed once they left, i think people were relieved. Also after they left, it seemed to create a bond between everyone who stayed and it was a good feeling.
I left with Daniele and Denisa at around 3. it was so much fun.
Ok that is enough, Love you all, ciao baci baci
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