a series of rather fortunate events

I think I will continue in list form:


1. Thanksgiving Day.
Part One: Thanksgiving started out with a lovely trip to the Uffizi for Art History. We wandered around the huge and overwhelmingly beautiful rooms, each full of art by one particular artist or another. No big deal that we were surrounded by famous works of Michelangelo, Donatello and co. The funny thing was, take this piece for example. 

It's called a tondo and it depicts, obviously, mother Mary with baby Jesus (its real name is Tondo Doni). The idea of these tondos came from something called a desco da parto, otherwise known as the tray for the broth and liquids brought to a mother after she has given birth. Given that trays are only so large, I was imagining that this tondo would be roughly the same size. NOT THE CASE! It was huge! And when I say huge, I mean about 5 feet in diameter. Very big. And very gorgeous. 


Part Two: The rest of the day I spent eating lunch at the sede, sending Thanksgiving e-cards and shopping with my lovely Breana. We decided to stay out in the center the entiiiiire day because we had to be at Giovanna's around 7pm for Thanksgiving dinner, aka we walked for 6 hours....... So finally 7pm rolled around and we (very exhaustedly) arrived at Giovanna's with little gifts in tow. We bought Giovanna and Monica each some green tea and bath fizzies for relaxing and some chocolate with chili peppers to give them a little kick. 

Upon arriving I was embraced by the warm smells of Thanksgiving cooking and the lovely sound of Giovanna's husband playing his violin while Anna played viola. We sang Thanksgiving songs (yes, they exist....) and drank wine, and chatted and ate and enjoyed each other. The best part was that besides Giovanna, Monica and Pam, our old cooking teachers, all of our professors came! They were all dressed up and buzzed and very jolly and excited to be taking part in this weird American holiday. At the end of the night, our art history professor drove Breana and I home which was very much welcomed after our day of walking. 

Unfortunately, having Thanksgiving with everyone from Smith did not prove to be as anti-homesicking as one would think. When I got home, all I wanted was my mom's cranberry sauce and my dad's gravy. They were at a friends house for the night, so I promptly called them and wished everyone a happy Thanksgiving, thus making myself feel much more far away and lonely. But fortunately....


2. Friday rolled around! 
After doing some work, I met Breana and we went to Casa Buonarroti which is the museum of all things Michelangelo. Yet another fantastic experience, getting to see his wax models of now large and very famous sculptures and finally understanding the size of things such as Battaglia dei Centauri (much smaller than I imagined!! Projectors and images from Google just don't cut it!). 


After wandering around and finding some yummy pizza, we returned home. As I was standing in the kitchen, making some tea, I showed my host mamma that I had found some pre-made Ocean Spray cranberry sauce and some molasses. Lorenzo then asked her when I was cooking and she said perhaps Sunday. He then requested we please have stuffing and cranberry sauce that night because he wanted it. So therefore, I made it. We made the stuffing without mushrooms and with less garlic than usual, and I had Lorenzo as my little helper, cutting the prosciutto, toasting the bread, etc. Surprisingly enough, everything turned out rather well. The cranberry sauce that I doctored up tasted somewhat related to that which we make at home, and the stuffing was also pretty darn tasty. And! Everyone ate everything! The stuffing was gone very rapidly and everyone tried the cranberry sauce (the boys ate it without complaints or disgust, and Silvia and Enrico had seconds!) I was one proud mamma hen given that Enrico and the boys, especially Filippo, are veryyyy picky eaters! Successo! 


3. Lovely, lazy, holiday-time Saturdays
This morning I slept in a bit and then spent the day being productive. I ate lunch with my fam (incredible pasta with carrot curry sauce.... yummmm!) and then returned to studying, took a nap and got ready for.....


4. A Special Night Out on the Town

Tonight I got all dolled up, had dinner with my host family and some guests (including an adorable little girl named Marta... babysitting, hmm.... an idea...), and then hopped on the back on Enrico's motorcycle, arriving at Teatro Verdi in minutes. I went up the the ticket counter to pick up my pre-reserved ticket where I was informed that my seat had been changed. When I bought my ticket online, there were 5 seats left and I chose the best of the 5, which was in the second section on the theater, at least 3 rows back. My new seat was in the 4th row. Of the first section. With a perfect view of the orchestra. It was relatively magical. And I teared up... they played some Haydn and Jupiter from Mozart's Planets. It was a gorgeous concert, and since the orchestra was so small (6 first violins, 4 or 5 seconds, 4 violas, 4 cellos, 2 basses and very small winds, brass and percussion sections) you could hear everything and it was stunning. I will definitely be tuning in online to listen to their Christmas Eve concert and going to as much as I can when I come back in January! (Which reminds me, Enrico's gym gave him 4-one month passes to give as gifts and he is giving one to me! Pilates, yoga, pool, water aerobics, sauna, spa, hot tub, tanning, and regular gym usage allllll free for one month! A perfect way to avoid the semi-inevitable post-Christmas slump! Thanks host fam!)


Anyway, here I am back from the concert, snuggled into bed, ready for a long night's sleep and a productive day tomorrow, including cookie-baking!! 


Bacione!!

PART ONE or the beginning of the best week ever

My apologies for being the worst blogger ever! It has been just about a week and I am pretty sure that in order to catch you all up, I would have to write a small novel.  Each day that I walk home, I think about all the profound and humorous things I have to say to you, yet when I get home, I am forever consumed by eating, napping, trying to read Italian literature and…. Facebook… and Skype. Therefore, I have now lost many of my insightful and moving ideas but please allow me to at least give a brief rundown of the past week.

Wednesday evening
Alessio’s birthday, therefore we obviously had to go out… The whole gang: approximately 12 Smith girls and our 4-6 Italian friends. Oh man. After spending a bit of time at a little English pub, we headed t Yab, otherwise known as You Are Beautiful. There may possibly be no words to describe this discoteca. It was packed with hundreds of very well dressed people and unlike Twice, the first discoteca we went to, people were not embarrassingly intoxicated or aggressive in their attempts to dance with you (for the most part…). There were neon blue and purple lights everywhere and a pretty divine assortment of music, ranging from Katy Perry to the hottest Italian pop music. We got there around 12.30am (mind you, we had class the next morning at 10.30am) and we left around 3.00am. It was fantastic and the small amount of tiredness that I felt the next morning was eliminated by the fact that we were looking at some really incredible art in art history! The one negative thing I can say about Yab is that while I was waiting in line at the bathroom, one very drunk girl threw up on the back of my legs…. Fortunately it appeared to be straight vodka and therefore I hardly noticed. Oh the joys of alcohol.

Thursday
Let’s see… Fascinating art history class in the morning followed by an afternoon of wandering Florence and shivering as the temperature last week barely reached 55. This may not be as miserable as the weather some of you have been experiencing, but given that the previous week had been in the 80s…. big change! After an amazing dinner with the fam, we (we being the entire gang, of course) went out to our favorite German pub (http://www.braumeister.it/). We weren’t out for long as our lack of sleep from the night before began to catch up. I believe That’s about it? Perhaps I am forgetting something but I don’t think anything overly exciting occurred on Thursday!  

Friday
Ooops! Slept until noon – I never do that! Friday I met Breana, Ali, Victoria and Alessio at the Sede to get some work done. By work what I really mean is that Ali, Breana and I IMed each other the entire afternoon sharing stories and planning the rest of the weekend….. oops! (Aspetta, let’s discuss how Breana just got an internship at the Uffizi working in the library where they are restoring and documenting the old manuscripts from, you know, the RENESSAINCE, that were damaged during the big flood in the 60s…. BRAVA RAGAZZA!) I stayed in Friday night because….