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Published: September 5th 2007
I don't remember the name of the children's book where the French man eats the magic figs and wakes up without his clothes and it's Bastille Day, but I was strongly reminded of it today. Last night I unknowingly ate my first fresh fig at Altromondo, a restaurant we were taken to by the people from the Institute. It was sort of a second welcome dinner, and also served the purpose of getting us together to sign a few more papers. They divided us up into about six groups for these dinners and took us out to different restaurants. It was a lot of food, but very good. Erica, one of my roommates, and I went for gelato afterwards. I was stuffed, but I was glad I had the gelato once I tasted it. Hopefully this doesn't become a problem.
Tomorrow is the last day of the intensive week of only Italian classes. I switched into intensive Italian today. I'll complete approximately two semesters worth of work in the time that I'm here. This means I have 6 hours a week of Italian, instead of four. I think I'll be okay. I just want to learn as much as I can. I also don't anticipate my other classes being overwhelmingly difficult. I suppose if it's terrible I can work something out as far as dropping one of the classes that doesn't apply to my major. Anyway, I went exploring a bit later, and got lost, but it was no problem. I'm trying to figure out the center of town as much as I can. My cell phone arrived this afternoon as well, which will be really nice; pretty much everyone else has them. On my way back to the apartment I stopped in the fruit and vegetable store on Garibaldi and bought two tomatoes and saw the label "fichi" (the plural of "fico," it's pronounced with a hard "c") which I know means figs because I've been looking for them. I asked if they were good and told the woman I've never had figs before. I bought two, came home, and ate them. They were delicious.
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Joe Nigro
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The Sweetest Fig
The book is The Sweetest Fig by Chris Van Allsburg. "Sacre bleu, what has happened to my clothes?"