Tuesday, September 25, 2012

Carboverloading

Last weekend might have been the best weekend ever. We had Friday off at school, so lots of girls in my group took weekend trips. Some friends and I decided to go to Cinque Terre! Now, I didn't know a whole lot about Cinque Terre except that there are lots of pretty pictures of it on Pinterest pinned to people's "Places I want to go" boards. But that was enough to tell me that I should want to go - Pinterest never lies, right?
Now, you've heard of carbo-loading - when marathon runners stock up on carbs so they will have the energy to run 26.2 miles. Well, we took that concept a little too far this weekend. We carb-overloaded. Cinque Terre is known for its focaccia and its pesto. We took advantage, to say the least. But we were preparing for our hike?
The day we arrived, we stayed in the first little town, Riomaggiore. We explored the colorful little town, swam at the beach, and ate at an adorable, delicious restaurant overlooking the Mediterranean Sea. It was like a dream!





It turns out, Riomaggiore keeps the tourists away by setting their clock tower to chime for five minutes straight at 7 in the morning. Go figure. We got up and got our hiking gear on - heavy backpacks and all. Even though I normally despise hiking, I was pumped for this one - how many times do you get the chance to hike the Cinque Terre?
Before we left Riomaggiore, we ate breakfast at what we have dubbed the best bakery in Italy, maybe all the world. It was called Panificio Rosi, and everything in there looked amazing. We picked our pastries and climbed on some rocks by the shore to eat.


I'll never feel the same about breakfast.
Then we set off on our hike. Cinque Terre's cruel secret is that the hike between each town gets significantly harder as you go on. Normally hiking straight up the side of a cliff when it's a billion degrees and 100% humidity wouldn't be my cup of tea, but the views were amazing and I had a blast! The whole time, I just kept thinking how blessed I was to be there. Plus, I think we managed to work through about 1/8 of the carbs we consumed. And each town we came to was adorable and somehow unique - I was in heaven.



After we hiked all the way to the last town, Monte Rosso, we had a little bit of time to cool off by the sea, grab some focaccia, and jump on the train back to Siena. I loved every minute of our trip, and if I ever become super rich, I'm buying a colorful little apartment in the Cinque Terre. And a gym membership.

Tuesday, September 18, 2012

Florence, round one

For my Humanities 201 class, we took a little field trip on over to Florence yesterday...

Firenze!

It was beautiful! And the view was well worth the 400+ steps to the top of the duomo. Not to mention I had the BEST panino yesterday - prosciutto, brie, and sun-dried tomatoes. We will definitely return on our own time so we have more time to explore. As gorgeous as Florence is, though, I am grateful to live in Siena where everyone's a little more relaxed.

Siena has a McDonald's...

As fun as Rome was, I am so excited to be in Siena! Except I don't love homework. But besides homework, it's great! Okay, besides homework and trying to figure out laundry. But there are a lot of things to love about Siena, and I would say two of the most obvious are the abundance of dachshunds and pigeons! Haha seriously, though, I have never seen so many dachshunds in my life. And there are pigeon feathers floating down from above, like, all the time. I think I might be in heaven. No wait, it's just Siena.

The world's cutest pigeon

How cute is that pigeon?? It flew down and landed in the Campo near us and I think I almost had a heart attack because it was so cute! Look how fluffy it is! Okay, enough about the pigeon. The world's cutest pigeon. That was just chilling on the ground, taking a break next to us. With its fluffy feathers. Okay, really now, enough.

I love my host family! My roommate, Katie, and I live with a couple right outside Siena. Our host dad raised two Palio horses and our mom cooks the yummiest, hugest dinners! So huge that Katie and I are in physical pain after we eat and we have to take a nightly passegiata to try to digest. I started out really nervous to speak Italian to my host parents (shocker), but I am getting better! I still panic a little when they talk to me, and all the Italian words I've learned turn into English or French...  But they are really nice and try to slow down and speak up. My host dad always says, "ANNE! COME VA? VA BENE?" They are so cute!

We don't have internet at our home, so we only have the school as a source for internet. But it closes on the weekend, which was a problem because we desperately needed wifi last weekend. After a long day of walking and exploring Siena on Saturday, we realized Saturday evening was our last chance to find an internet cafe or something. But we really didn't want to walk all the way back into town because we were tired and our feet hurt (when they told us Siena is hilly, they weren't kidding). Then we remembered that there is a sign for McDonald's near our house, and McDonald's always has free wifi! So we were like, "Let's just walk to McDonald's - the sign says it's two minutes away!" Sounds easy enough, right? WRONG. For a more detailed story, you should read my roommate's blog, but let's just say, it's by no means two minutes away. Maybe by spaceship or something. The only reason we kept going was the Big Mac wrappers strewn on the grown that signaled that we must be getting closer.



After walking for hours to get there, we had about 15 minutes to use the wifi and we didn't even have time to order our Cokes before we had to turn back to go to dinner. But we've never felt so patriotic! And this isn't the first time I've gone to ridiculous lengths to find a McDonald's - the Frankfurt airport with my family comes to mind. Maybe the saddest part of the story is that later that night, we found out we can get wifi by sitting on the steps to our school, even when it's closed.

p.s. This post's layout is a little weird... But I'm too lazy to fix it! Enjoy!

Friday, September 14, 2012

Arrivederci, Roma!

I really should post on my blog more often, I have so much going on! We finished up our two weeks in Rome, which I will miss dearly! I had a fabulous time. I really enjoyed trekking all around the streets of Rome with 23 other American girls and observing the many double-takes we attracted. And, you know, the masterpieces were pretty cool too. However, you can't always take pictures inside museums. But you can always take pictures of your amazing new friends!

At the Rome YSA dance (HA),  outside Villa Borghese, and waiting for the bus

I am so going to miss spending all day every day with these girls! But it's not like I don't see most of them every day at school now, haha. But we were seriously blessed to have such an amazing group!

You know what you can also take pictures of? Food. And since I felt too weird pulling out my big camera to take a picture in a restaurant, most of them are low-quality iPhone pics that I tried to snap inconspicuously. Which didn't really work. Oh well!

Bucatini all'Amatriciana, GNOCCHI, best Fanta ever,
fresh tomato pizza, Indian food, and Carbonara!

Oh gosh. It's hitting me how many carbs I have eaten... Whoops! This doesn't even include any of the breads and pastries we had for breakfast at our hotel. Speaking of our hotel, I think I'm going to miss it! We had a great time giving the staff funny personalities that probably weren't their real personalities. But we didn't actually speak to them much, so we just had to guess. Anyway...

Our hotel, our waiter, and the chef...
Okay, so our chef wasn't really Haymitch from the Hunger Games. But he looked just like him, so we called him Haymitch behind his back. Good ol' Haymitch, always so stern - but he's a real softie. And then there was our waiter, who we were pretty sure was like fifteen, but we had some good times with him anyway, haha. I didn't include a picture of the front desk guy, because we only had creeper pics of him. But we had a pretend personality for him too, haha.

Rome was a blast. It was exhausting, but so amazing. It was an experience I will never forget - especially because I now have it documented in about ten different ways. And now I am in Siena - more on that later. Ciao ciao!

Sunday, September 2, 2012

Mangio mangio mangio

Rome has already changed me. For one thing, I have stopped doing my hair. The Italians don’t seem to care much about their hair, and you know what they say: when in Rome, eh?
I have been living the dream. Everything here is amazing! I can’t believe we have two weeks to tour Rome. The fact that it can be this hot and humid and uncomfortable, and I am still having the time of my life is almost unbelievable. That’s how awesome it is here.


The food. Is. To die for. We eat breakfast at our hotel, which is a spread of breads (rolls, croissants, sliced bread), meats and cheeses, yogurt, and cocoa. And various other delicious, kind of strange little things. Then for lunch, we go out and find whatever we want. So far, I’ve had a few panini, some pizza, or bread and fruit. Then for dinner, so far we eat at our hotel. They serve us in courses – how cool is that! Our first course is usually a yummy al dente pasta or a soup. Our next course is meat, vegetables, and some form of potato. And then we have dessert. Most the stuff they’ve fed us has been delicious! And we keep our waiters well entertained… In a couple days, we’ll be on our own for dinner, though, so I’m sure there will be more foodventures.


Then there is the Great Gelato Debate of 2012. Basically, it boils down to quality versus quantity. Do you go with Old Bridge and get three large, yummy scoops for 1.50, or do you go with San Crispino and get a tiny, leveled off cup of the best gelato in all the world for 3.00? Or do you get both?


Just kidding, Mom. I have never gotten more than one gelato in a day. In fact, I don’t even get a gelato per day.
Today, we went to church! I wasn’t expecting the ward to have its own building, but they actually do have a nice little church building – the same exact layout of the one my family went to in Spain at Christmas. It was great meeting some of the members and the missionaries. Everyone was really welcoming and they had translators set up for those that wanted them. I tried to listen without translation, though. I understood surprisingly well in relief society! I was pretty excited about that. I think they tried to talk slower, haha. The other meetings were a little harder to understand, but I picked up bits and pieces. And I straightened my hair today!



This first week in Rome has been incredible, and I’m sure next week will be too. And then we’re off to Siena for some hard core learnin’!