Snow Emergencies in Italy.

So I'm currently writing during my lovely siesta on a cold afternoon in Italy. Yesterday/last night it snowed probably about 3-4 inches (I'm really bad at estimating that kind of thing, so just go with it). All that matters is that there has been significant accumulation, preventing us from doing anything outside of Tuscania. Our trip to Viterbo that was rescheduled from last Friday was cancelled again due to snow! AND...we were supposed to go to Umbria and Orvieto for an overnight trip but that was cancelled as well. Marisa keeps telling me that I brought the snow...and sadly she is probably right. The Callahan family struggles in the luck department so I'm not surprised! Although it has been disappointing, I have seen some funny sights in the snow. First off...moon boots. Apparently I need to get a pair because every Italian (or every smart Italian) has a pair of gigantic obnoxious moon boots. If you have not seen them before...check them out.

Every time I walk down the street I can't help but chuckle, even though they are probably laughing at me for wearing the most inappropriate footwear because I WASN'T EXPECTING SNOW! Oh well. The other thing that is in style is one piece jumpsuits. Typically in America you wear snow pants when you're going sledding or to play in the snow, but Italians like to wear them casually for the whole day. I think they might just be a little excited because it hasn't snowed like this in like 30 years. I wish I was prepared because then I could really show them how I handle a North Country winter in Canton. It has been cute to watch the little kiddies play in the snow when they are all bundled up.

So..here's a brief overview of the happenings of this week. I watched my Giants beat the Patriots in the SuperBowl Sunday night (12:30 AM-4:00 AM). Luckily I did not have class until three on Monday, so I slept in until noon, had a great lunch then strolled to my cinema class. We watched a movie called Novecento (1900) with Robert De Niro when he was like 20. It was about the relationship between landowners and their peasant workers during the period of Fascist Italy. It was a 5 hour long movie so we had to finish it on our own. It was quite gruesome at points...

Tuesday was Allie's birthday so after our Italian class we went to the pasticceria for pastries. I also had my travel writing class. We went for a little walk to find some inspiration for writing, but our professor   decided it was too windy and took us into a bar to buy cappucinos for all of us. She's so cute! Marisa made an amazing dinner that included bruschetta, spaghetti, pork, wine, spumante, and cake. I was in charge of getting candles...so the night before it was quite the process of communication between Marisa and I. Pretty comical.

Wednesday I spent the entire day watching the film for my class and then I had cooking from 6-8:30. We made pumpkin soup, onion rings, and zucchini flan. DELICIOUS yet again. I was in the group for pumpkin soup and I must say it was lovely. Don't worry everyone...I will be teaching Italian cuisine when I come home (for a fee of course :) kidding).

Thursday I had Italian and wine. I unfortunately had a very clutzy moment during wine class. The chairs we use at school have plastic desks that flip up...so I decided to move my chair back and flip up my desk so that I could be further away from the bright light of the projector. As I flipped up the desk, it hit the table in front of me causing my glass of wine to shoot across the table and all over Kelsey who was unfortunately sitting across from me. And yes of course..it was the only red wine we were tasting that day. It was all over her sweater and books.....let's just say I still feel bad about it and definitely paid for her dinner on Thursday night! Fortunately it wasn't $100 cashmere sweater or anything. The best part about it was that we hadn't even tried any wines yet!!! No alcohol in my system.....super embarrassing. My teacher, being the cutie he is, thought it was hilarious and just kept telling Kelsey that this was a good omen and she would be great at the course (he didn't comment on my fate). I apologized profusely after class but the incident didn't seem to phase him at all (thank goodness)! I'm sure he's seen it all before. Thursday night, Kelsey, Allie, and I went out to dinner at del patata and it was awesome. There was some confusion when we ordered, but we did manage to order the litre of wine correctly :). The pizzas were HUGE: Sicilian, Peperoni, Prosciutto, and Eggplant. We were very happy campers after that meal.

Yesterday, we ventured into the snow and walked around with a bunch of students from school, and we went out last night. Nothing too crazy! Today, when I woke up, Marisa had almost finished shoveling the entire walkway. I felt terrible!! I told her the other day that I'm an expert shoveler from home and she got a big kick out of that. Today we made lots of dolce which means sweets! One was kind of a pastry with orange marmalade, one was a cake that we eat for breakfast (choc and vanilla), and the last was my favorite...can't remember the name but it was basically a cookie with walnuts, chocolate, and a wine flour. Awesome. Here it is:

That's all for now!

Freezing Temps in Tuscania.....55 degrees in Syracuse....Cool

The past few days have been so cold!! I can't believe this. The schools in Rome were closed Friday because of snow! We've had some accumulation...not that much, but it's freezing and super windy. When we went to the bar last night...we decided it was a good idea to run for 3 reasons 1: Stay warm  2: We would get there faster 3: We would burn off calories from dinner. Meanwhile..everyone back home is wearing shorts while I'm shivering in my peacoat. What are the chances. Lots of fun things have happened these past couple days. My classes are awesome! We watched "Una Giornata Particulare" in my film class on Monday which features Sophia Loren. We talked about the history of film in Italy and how movies portrayed Italian society at the time they were filmed (that's basically the focus of the whole course). On Tuesday, I had Italian and my Travel Writing course. Travel writing was awesome! My professor is from Ireland!!! So nice to have some Irish blood in my company. She is also a singer and writes her own songs (even cooler!). The class includes a field trip to Rome which will be very interesting I'm sure. Tuesday night we went over to our friends' apartment just to hang out and have some vino. Wednesday I slept in because my only class of the day is at 6 PM! I hung out around the house with Marisa and Costantino and I did homework. My cooking class was that night, which was incredible. The instructor was not as a I expected; he almost looked like an American football player. He gave us an introduction to cooking. We talked about the differences between extra virgin olive oil and regular olive oil, and our main focus was on stocks. We learned how to make fish stock, meat stock, and vegetable stock. Then we moved to the practical portion of the course. He went to the bathroom and when he came out....he was in a full chef's outfit! He looked extremely professional. We each received our own aprons with the LdM logo on it (so I felt pretty legit too). We got into groups and we each had an assignment. Morgan (a student from Texas Tech) and I were in charge of preparing meat stock and it was actually quite simple. Everything went smoothly....we even got a "bene" from our instructor. We all got to sip on some vino while working, just another casual night at school. Another group worked on making tomato sauce from scratch with our professor, and we all got to EAT afterwards! It was penne and meat tortellini with the homemade sauce. DELICIOUS! He even showed off with some flipping pasta skills with the pan.

On Thursday I had Italian again and then The Wines of Italy course in the afternoon. Our instructor for wine, Claudio, was so cute! He kept talking about how nervous he gets on the first day of class and how much he loves teaching. He seems very passionate about wine and all that it entails: food pairings, quality, the history, etc. We each received a little kit with 3 wine glasses in it that we have to bring to each class, because we sample 3/class. We did a brief overview of the history of wine, and then we did one tasting. It was prosecco, which is a sparkling or "special" wine from Italy. He did a little toast and explained that "we deserve the best." I can tell that it's going to be a very informative and fun class. We are going to learn pretty much everything you could possibly think of about wine. One thing that I'm very excited to talk about is the olfactory portion of the tastings. That is one of the components that we have to comment on, so I'm curious to see how it will link to my research from the past 6 months! Maybe I'll introduce wine olfactory memory to the course...I think Dr. Hornung would approve :). Thursday night was the best meal because Marisa made HOMEMADE PIZZA!!! It was amazing. She made three different kinds, plus some cheesy meat thing that was sort of like pizza. One was traditional with tomato sauce and mozzarella. One had sauce and onions and parsley, and one had had french fries and sausage! We also had the added bonus of bruschetta over the fire again.  Here's Marisa and I with some pizza (some of the pictures are a little blurry; they are still in the process of learning to work the camera :)).

Yesterday, we didn't have class because it was Friday! We were supposed to go to Viterbo with our student advisor to tour the town but it was cancelled due to snow. First, we made pizzicotti with Marisa, which are tiny little balls of homemade dough. We watched Marisa prepare the dough, but Allie and I were in charge of ripping off the small pieces (tough job). It was so interesting to watch Marisa make the dough. She basically made a mound of flour with a dip in the middle. She put one egg and a small cup of water in the dip and gradually mixed it while slowly adding more and more flour from around the circle. I watched her hands move so easily and I thought about how much food she has prepared with those hands over the years. Countless batches of dough, sauces, pastries, etc. It's so cool! I then did a little homework and went out for some shopping with friends. I got some leg warmers, but I'm still on a mission for a cheap heavy sweater or two since I didn't bring any! I came home after being outside and I was frozen from inside to out. Marisa scurried me downstairs to the fire and rubbed my hands until they were warm and Costantino shrieked when he felt my frozen cheeks. I recovered, had some eggplants, mozzarella, and prosciutto for lunch, and scurried off into the cold for a night at the bar with friends at Caffe Duomo. It was a lot of fun! Today, we had some delicious pasta fragioli for lunch. I think we'll probably go out again tonight.....more updates to come! Check out these pics from our pasta making adventure!