I don’t think I shall ever tire of seeing Italy’s breathless panoramas. Last weekend I went with a group from my school on a “Tuscan Getaway” trip. We spent Friday in Siena, visiting the “most beautiful cathedral in Italy.” Apparently, the people of Siena used to have many wars with the Florentines, and so had a fierce sense of competition bred into them. Therefore, when Florence claimed to be building the biggest cathedral in Italy, Siena decided to challenge them. They had built the skeleton of a huge addition that would have doubled the size of the cathedral when the Plague arrived, and all their workers died, and construction was forced to stop. After the Plague, they revised their goal, and decided that if Florence would have the biggest cathedral, then Siena would have the most beautiful. And so it is. Mosaics cover the floor, and while these are usually covered with protective cardboard most of tourist season, they were luckily uncovered when we were there. Siena is also where Saint Catherine was born and spent her years. She is an important saint, as she was the first women saint who claimed to have the power to speak directly to God, and she also convinced the Pope to move from his exile in France to Rome and the Vatican, which was another bold move that women had never been allowed to do. When she died, the Vatican claimed her body, but the people of Siena protested and so it was decided that her body would be exhumed, and divided to please everyone who wanted the honor of housing her body. So Siena has her head and her right pinkie in the church where she was a Domenican. Of course pictures aren’t allowed, so you’ll have to see this oddity yourself someday.

Then from there we drove to our agriturismo in Volterra where we spent both Friday and Saturday nights. We ate dinner at the ristorante at the agriturismo, drinking wine and sharing thoughts. The ristorante wasn’t as cozy as the agriturismo I went to with my Creative Writing class – it didn’t have the immediacy of knowing exactly where the food came from, and the down-to-earth, simplistic style of eating as the other one. However, it was cozy, the food was good, and the compagna (countryside) surrounding this agriturismo was the most beautiful that I have seen. I’m aware that I keep saying that with every new weekend at yet another countryside place, and every new blog that accompanies it, and I’m sure I’m losing credit as a writer here, but honestly, this was the most beautiful scenery I’ve seen yet. At the risk of boring you with yet another waxing description of the countryside, however, I will restrain myself, and let you imagine it with help from the pictures. It was in the Chianti region and I could see San Gimignano’s towers protruding through the haze on a distant hill. The quietness of the country speaks to me more clearly than anything else. So I’ll try to be quiet here, and even though pictures hardly ever give a beautiful place justice, or at least mine, I’ll let them speak for themselves.

The next day we spent in San Gimignano, standing looking up and out, with our mouths gaping, “catching flies,” as my grandpa Lyle used to say. The towers are amazing, the punti di visto, or points of view, even more so. It was very touristy, and there were lots of shops that had the same sort of gifts, but I enjoyed it, because many of those shops had local handpainted ceramics, which I have become obsessed with. The Raffaellesco style is my particular favorite. Perugia has a ceramics “market,” if you could call it that – it’s tiny, with just a handful of people, but they carefully display ceramic plate after plate on the back steps of the cathedral, the colors popping out against the drab stone steps. I’ve already spent money here, and while I can’t buy any more lest I not have a way to get them home in one piece, I still stop by to admire the new creations whenever they’re out.

We left the agriturismo in the morning on Sunday and made our way to Cortona, but first stopped at a tiny little village called Monteriggione. It’s like a magical moment caught in the generations past – the town hasn’t grown past it’s tall, imposing city walls, and it’s so tiny it’s amazing it even has city walls. We stayed for about an hour, and got coffee, gifts, and had just enough time to see a bride draped in a very traditional-looking crisp, white wedding dress, hooking arms with her father to walk into the town church and down the aisle. Fitting goodbye for this fairy-tale town from the past.

Then on to Cortona – this was again, pretty touristy, and had many English-speaking people wandering about the various shops, but it surprisingly didn’t have gaudy, dime-a-dozen tourist trap shops that so many cities have. Instead, it had more artist’s shops and galleries, not only ceramics, but watercolors, leather-bound books, photography, and other artsy trinkets. I loved Cortona, as it was a city around the same size as Perugia, but felt less stuffy, and, even more amazing, had grass! In Perugia, it’s almost all pavement and cobblestones, but here, there were houses with little square patches of grass-lawns! Cortona is nestled in the side of a big hill, yet another Italian city that you have to wind around and around in your car, getting green with carsickness before you reach the beautiful punto di visto at the city center, which of course, is always at the top of the hill. From Cortona, you can see the glimmering reflection of Lake Trasimeno in the distance, and the hazy blue, spongey mountains crowding the horizon. I drank in all the beautiful views and fresh air that I could before climbing back on to the miserable bus for another queasy car ride back to dear ol’ Perugia.

This weekend, I simply stayed put. It was a relaxing weekend, even though it was the weekend before midterms. However, I already had my Italian midterm, and the midterms that were due Monday for me were a large charcoal drawing for my Drawing class, and a six to seven page paper for my Creative Writing: Italy of the Imagination class, both of which I considered to be “fun” assignments. I spent four hours on Friday doing my drawing – I’ve come to love this class. I can go into the art room a wound-up ball of stress, and after three hours of drawing, I come away humming and smiling as I bounce home. I wrote the rest of my paper Saturday and Sunday, taking my time, letting it digest, allowing time for re-writes. I tentatively started a fiction piece after finishing the beautifully written “Under the Tuscan Sun” by Frances Mayes. I discovered Philip Rothdke’s beautiful poetry while surfing poets.org, and later, listened to the classic Fleetwood Mac, covering all genres, capturing all moods. I worked out, something I’ve started up again since coming to Italy – it’s nothing drastic, just the half-an-hour conditioning routine I did when I was in gymnastics. Just something to make me feel less guilty about the occasional gelato and crepe con nutella!

Saturday I got the craving for my mother’s bubbling, crumbly apple pie, for Grandpa Lyle’s sweet, heavenly, quickly-eaten apple butter, for tongue-warming, chunky applesauce. Unfortunately, I do not know how to make apple butter, and ovens are a rare find in Italy, so pie was also out of the question. So I decided to make applesauce. However, I didn’t have all the ingredients, and of course, by the time I realized this, it was dead-smack in the middle of la pausa, when all the shops close down from 1-4 pm for lunch.

While I waited, I decided to make torta al testo, the simple Umbrian flat bread that I learned to make at an azienda one of my first weekends here. All it takes is a couple handfuls of flour in a pile on the table, and then make a hole in the center of the mound. Pour into this hole a package of yeast. Around the edges, sprinkle a teaspoon or so of salt, and then drizzle a bit of olive oil over the flour. Then start to mix it with a fork, pulling the outer edges in towards the center, adding water as needed. When it gets doughy, knead it for a little while (not long, probably five minutes tops), and then roll it out with a rolling pin, or in my case, an olive oil bottle, as my beloved rolling pin is currently sitting safely at home with all my other kitchen things. Next, sprinkle a little flour on both sides before putting it on a testo, which is the cooking stone that Italians use over an open fire, or, in my poor college student fashion, a huge frying pan over the stove - works just fine! Just let it bake/cook for a little while on one side, then flip it when necessary. The whole process takes all of about 25 minutes, and is considerably cheaper than the torta al testo-style flatbreads I could buy in the grocery store! When it’s done, you can slice it open and melt cheese in the middle with vegetables or anything your watering mouth desires.

Italian pasta was created to cling to my hips. During my first month in Italy, I have eaten mouth-wateringly raw Florentine bistecca, a heavenly meringue dessert called semi-freddo, flavor-oozing grilled lamb, and miles and miles of unforgettable bruschette smothered in fresh tomatoes, just-picked basil, and moist mozzarella. Yet the primo piatti, the first course, usually consisting of pasta, is always what I, during that first chaotic week, and my happily plump hips, remember best.

The first week or so that I was here, I ate at a cozy little restaurant in Perugia called La Lanterna. Their dishes are mismatched, with different sets of silverware at each table setting, and the collection of knick-knacks decorating the restaurant are a distracted group of paintings, local hand-painted ceramics, and old relics you’d see in an antique store – they seem to follow the rule that if things are mismatched enough, they begin to match. Being the cheap college student that I am, I only ordered one course aside from the bruschette that my friends and I shared, and of course it was pasta.

The dish, Tagliatelle della Lanterna, was tagliatelle pasta with a happy medley of vegetables in creamy, white sauce, not too much that it overpowered the vegetables, but just enough to smooth over any rough edges of taste. There were diced zucchini and carrots, fresh tomatoes mixed in with lightness of the barely-there cream sauce, all working together to balance the heaviness of the pasta. Each bite melted my over-stressed body into a gooey mass of bliss. All my anxieties about being in a new city, new school, new country wobbled and disappeared, and instead was replaced with a goofy-relaxed euphoria that one can only get by eating orgasmic pasta.

My love affair with pasta started young. As mischievous little kids, my twin brother Michael and I had a fetish with dried pasta – we would sneak into my mother’s kitchen cupboards when she was in the bathroom, or outside in the garden, and would open the plastic bin that held the dry stalks of spaghetti noodles, and steal a handful each, giggling as we’d crunch away feverishly, frantically depleting my mother’s always-disappearing supply of pasta. While Michael still to this day enjoys the satisfying crunch of dried pasta, my taste for it has heightened dramatically – pasta al pesto, any kind of pesto, with any vegetable under the summer sun – torrid tomatoes, of course, grilled eggplant slices, diced zucchini, sweet red onion, fresh thyme or basil, and supple summer squash. Pasta with meat sauce – I once had a meat sauce made from every part of a rooster’s meat, organs, everything, and it was one of the most delicious meat sauces I’ve had with pasta – it was somewhat salty, with a kick of red pepper to keep things interesting. With my dish at La Lanterna, I found something simple, yet completely delicious, something mouth-watering that was not so pretentious that three-hundred sous-chefs and myself couldn’t create it. Rather, this pasta dish was something approachable, something conquerable, something inspiring. With the first taste of this pasta, I began to create similar dishes in my head, and during the following weeks, enthusiastically tried, tossing away the mistakes with a carefree attitude, and instead, trying new tactics and discovering a new, even better dish. Like the lonely student I was in a new place, my palate didn’t want to meet the famous and gorgeous, but possibly snobby Catherine Zeta Jones right now - no, I wanted the comfort of my boyfriend Todd, my family, or my best friend Megan, who are the most down-to-earth, loveable people I know. My palate wanted comfort, it wanted familiarity, within this first week. And while I have since been able to venture out and appreciate the famous flavor of Florentine bistecca just like I have been able to respect the genius of Michelangelo, I was glad to have my age-old friend, pasta, there to start my journey off! Together, we have and will continue to embark upon many a tasting adventures, conquering the famous, and surrendering to taste-bud bliss.

So I realized that I've mainly been writing about my weekends, which don't have much to do with Perugia, as I'm traveling the majority of my weekends. Therefore, I'm failing to give you an accurate picture of what my day-to-day routines are here. So this post is my first step in righting this imbalance. Following is an essay I wrote for my Creative Writing class about my neighborhood gelateria, which let me tell you, has a lot to do with my day-to-day routines! Enjoy!

There is a little gelateria that veers off of Perugia’s main Corso Vannucci onto the quieter Via Bonazzi, near my apartment. Its name is Gelateria Gambrinus, although this is of little importance; I only just found out today, as I walked home and made a point of remembering it so I could write about it. But it’s not the name that means something to me, or even just the gelato; it’s something much, much more.

Coming to Perugia, I quickly noticed that the native Perugini tend to walk around with determined, slightly annoyed looks plastered to their otherwise Michelangelo-beautiful faces, and have earned a reputation for having, as my Italian professoressa says, una mentalità chiuso, or a closed mentality. But upon entering this gelateria on one of the first sweltering, sticky days of being here, I shivered in delight as its cold, refreshing chill dissolved the sweat from my brow, and my fingers tingled as I was met with a warm smile and a friendly greeting.

The gelateria itself is not pulsing with gaudy colors or flashy signs to catch the eye of passers-by. It doesn’t have tables brimming with welcoming chairs to lull eager tourists in, and if you do decide to sit on the handful of red plastic stools scattered haphazardly about the tiny space, you risk having other jolly customers brush their bottoms on your arm as they squeeze past to buy their cono piccolo with after-eight e nuttellone. Instead, the focal point of the store is what it should be: the creamy faces of the gelato flavors peering up at you through the frosty glass partition, beckoning in all their delicious delight.

The fatty cheeks of gelato lie lazily in metal pans that have mismatched labels, all written on a different day, it seems, with whatever scrap of paper was handy at the moment. The labels indicate the usual suspects: the cheerful mint-flavored After-eight, which is one of my favorites, there is the sinfully dark Ciocolatto, the sensual pleasure of 300, of course the fresh, cleansing flavor of Limone, and the chunky gooeyness of Kinder. In addition to gelato, in the cooling fall months when frozen gelato doesn’t seem to do the trick, I have seen other dolci surfacing in the store window. My favorite of these new dolci is the crepe con nutella, made right there in front of you, or if you’re feeling especially delicious, un crepe con gelato - you choose any flavor, and he wraps it up in a warm, melted heaven that is enough to make your knees buckle and eyes water with pure love.

The usual routine in my gelateria consists of me going in, being greeted with a Ciao, bella! or Buona sera, bellissima! from one the two male store owners. I believe them to be father and son, judging by their similarities in physical appearance (same goofy smiles, same crinkled eyes), and general sweet-natured way of greeting me. After exchanging ciaos, I then proceed to order: Vorrei un cono piccolo con kinder e amarena, per favore! Grazie! It even took me a while to notice the cash register – it is small and has been painted a dark barn-red, and the tired hand-written price signs attached to it are peeling off in corners where the scotch tape has begun to get worn and dirty. Instead, I usually just hand my 1,50 euro over the counter to the owner, and giggle as we both say grazie at the same time – again! If you decide to stay and devour your messy-gooey crepe in the gelateria, they cry out and passionately insist you sit down and enjoy it first, and pay later. This practice is common among bars and caffès in Italy, but never have I had it been insisted to so vehemently!

The father, who looks to be about 70, works the day shift, and the son, who is about 50, takes over, sometimes with another sulky teenage employee, at about 7:00 pm for the dinner rush. The father is more eager to please, and likes to chat, although they both speak solo italiano! The son prefers to tease, and while his face is more shadowed and a bit more stern-looking, he is quick to stretch into a sloppy smile at his own punchline.

While I have since met many more friendly and charming Perugini in the days and weeks I’ve been here, these two were the first open-armed, welcoming natives that I met here, and they’ve treated me like I was an age-old friend since the day I first walked in. A few weeks ago, I was trudging past on my way home with three bulging grocery bags in tow threatening to spew tomatoes, pasta, risotto and onions all over the sidewalk, and I looked up to see the father standing in the doorway, looking out. Upon seeing me, he quickly chattered in Italian, “I’m so glad to see you buy groceries, too! I was worried!” We share a friendly, knowing laugh, and on I walk, back to my apartment, giddily smiling the whole way, because for the first time, I feel like I know my neighborhood, and that it, the tiniest bit of it, knows me.

Chianti Region and Roma, prima volta!

Friday, September 26 – Culture of Food in Italy class field trip:

My food class made its way over to the beautiful Chianti region, where the famous wine originated. I thought of my dad often during this trip, because I could feel how exhilarating this area would be to him as I looked out the window of the bus to see rows and rows of vineyards combing the tumbling hills, the neat rows contradicting the scattered, absent-minded groupings of fields they grow in. It looks as if a toddler had been given the task of creating these hills, and then, left unsupervised, had taken a giant hair pick and scratched it wherever his three-year-old fancy struck. There were the ever-abounding thinner, darker green rows which are the grape vines, and then the lighter, thicker rows that were the color of mint-blue – these were the olive trees. Almost all of the grapes had been harvested already, except for one variety of red grapes (San Giovanese, possibly?), but the olive trees are still weighed down by their harvest, as they don’t get picked until the end of October. My professor kept telling us that if the ancient people who had first lived here could see their land today, they wouldn’t recognize it at all, because in their day, there had been many diverse crops covering the area, but now specialized farming has taken over, and it’s only grapes and olives that you will see driving around the Chianti region, and much of Italy in general.

Spatterings of villages cling to the hills, villages so old that the buildings seem to grow out of the land themselves. They cling to the hills like barnacles stubbornly cling to an aged, jagged rock on the shore. One of these villages was the azienda that we went to for the first leg of our field trip. The azienda was named La Fucina di Poggio Antico, or “The Forge of Ancient Hill,” the name echoing the antiquity of the surround terrain. This azienda was all organic, and the community that worked the land was connected by one thing: they all had been “called” there by God. Lucio, our guide, told us that he had had stomach cancer some 30 years ago, and after he survived, and it went in remission, he felt called by God to give back to the earth, and so he came to this community’s azienda and has been there ever since. They were also all vegetarians, and the animals they had, (cows, goats, cavallini, or “little horses”, i.e. ponies, chickens) were all used for their by-products and manure for the natural fertilization that is necessary for organic practices. I have a picture here of some of their cows – they had all different breeds of cows, because they didn’t believe that one breed was better than the other, just like not one race of people is better than another. They also believed that animals, because they were so much stronger, absorbed all our negative energy through their horns. Ahem. So, it was a bit bizarre, but even though my philosophies didn’t exactly coincide with the community’s, I was still able to appreciate the tranquility of the respectful relationship these people had with their animals and the earth. We got to taste various types of cheese, both from goat milk and cow milk, and some of their apple and grape juice that they made there on the farm. I also bought a jar of pear preserves from this special type of enormous pears that they grow on the farm, which I hope to enjoy when my family comes! :)

After leaving the azienda, we made our way to Strada in Chianti, a little town where we ate a delicious meal at Ristorante Palledina. Our meal included the famous Florentine steak, probably the most raw and most delicious steak I have ever had the pleasure to eat, and the region’s characteristic meat, chicken, more specifically, rooster. The rooster was cooked with all the parts of the body (instead of just the meat as we would do at home), and it was in one of the most flavorful sauces to accompany pasta ever! I feel as though I keep saying “it was the best meal ever” but these dinners really do keep topping the next, each new flavor becoming my new obsession, trying to pick its elements apart to discover the secret to Italian cooking . . . mmmm, how I love food!

Saturday, September 27 – Roma con i miei amici!

My usual posse of Lauren, Carly, and Angie and I decided to take a last minute day-trip to Rome, as Lauren had to go for a class, and we wanted to see some of the sights so we wouldn’t have to cram them all into the one night, two days that we will be there in November. We ended up seeing the Vatican museums, including the Sistine Chapel, saw the exterior of the Basilica (the line was so long that we would’ve missed our bus if we had gone inside), and the Piazza del Popolo, or the Pope’s Piazza. The Vatican museums had an overwhelming amount of paintings – by the end of the Sistine Chapel I couldn’t really take anything else in – visual overload! I did, however, get an illegal picture of the ceiling in the Sistine Chapel – shhh! I got the famous Creation of Adam painting in it, too! I was taken aback by Raphael’s famous painting of all the philosophers – I had studied that in my Intro to Visual Art class freshman year of college, and couldn’t believe I was seeing it!

Despite all the wonderful history and breath-taking art that covers all of Roma, I’m content with my decision to study abroad in Perugia instead. Perugia is so much cleaner! And it’s also not tourist-driven, and it has a more intimate feel, being a much smaller city.

The bus ride back from Rome was where I felt most inspired, however. I know all this art is fabulous, but essentially, all art derives from nature, from people, from other art. My writing follows this as well, and is inspired more by landscapes and nature than city skylines, despite my love of the city. I think this must just be a product of where I grew up, and where I feel most at home. It’s an amazing thing to get a feeling of homesickness, or rather, not even homesickness, but a feeling of love for a home in a place that’s oceans away from your actual home. I watched these home-love-inducing scenes pass my window as the light darkened, and night snuck stealthily across the land. The mountains by Roma are deeply beautiful – they are always a dark, fuzzy blue, like time has taken a sponge and scrubbed away the vibrant, jagged points of youth, and patiently smoothed over the round tops, and covered it instead with a wise blue that echoes across the distance. Their calm beauty reverberates in a comforting way. Their dark blue just waits for night to come when again they can blend in with the sky and go to sleep on the quiet earth.

My first day at the Torre Colombaia Agriturismo in rural Umbria was a rainy one that challenged me to find good in something that doesn’t look too promising at first glance. The visual stimulation of the surrounding terrain of romping, playful hills hugging the horizon, and wise, age-old gardens spreading their motherly arms over the land was lost among greedy layers of unrelenting fog and the constantly sulky drops of rain. However, instead of clinging to expired expectations and allowing my disappointment to join the fog and rain in dampening my weekend, I looked for the good amidst my soggy clothes and cold feet: like a blind person who adjusts for their lack of sight by heightening another sense, I let my sense of taste guide my rainy day at the agriturismo, with a seven-course meal that included some of the most flavorful lamb I have ever had (and believe me, I've had my share of excellent lamb growing up on a sheep farm!).

The sun decided to come out the second day, and my Creative Writing class that I was taking the field trip with, was able to walk around the land. I did an amazing amount of introspection this day - the following is basically my journal entry from the day:

The first crisp gusts of fall snuck up on me today. It was a beautiful fall morning to be in the Italian compagna (countryside); it was one of those mornings that awakens and stirs parts of you that you have repressed, or just not expected to surface on this particular day, this certain morning. I don’t know what exactly is it about fall that moves me so – there’s just something in the sound of dry, fallen leaves scratching against a gravel road, something about the subtlety of sunlight. The shyness of autumn sunlight – I could write a paper on it! It’s not as abrasively, purely white as spring light, or as lazy and steamy as summer sunlight; rather it’s a darker, golden tint, and its beauty quietly creeps up on you. If summer sunlight was custom made for beach scenes with garishly colored beach umbrellas, then autumn sunlight was created with country-living and the harvest in mind. It is the sunlight of memories, the golden warmth conjuring up images of past autumns; for me, the first fall image that seeped into my mind as I walked through the agriturismo grounds was pressing cider with apples from our old apple tree on the side of the road. Suddenly, unexpectedly, I was crying, overcome with an overwhelming sadness as I missed my grandpa Lyle with such an acute pang, it was as if he had just passed away yesterday. I didn’t expect this memory to trigger up such a forceful reaction; I guess it was because the last time I made apple cider, Grandpa Lyle was there, with Grandma, Don and Mary Lou, my parents, David and his girlfriend, Jen - it was such a perfect fall day to remember Grandpa with, and one of my last weekends with him, as it was a few weeks before he passed away. I miss him terribly today, and I keep thinking of a thousand things I’d like to tell him, about Italy, about Todd, about my life. So I guess I’m writing in memory of him today, and in warming memory of that perfect fall day.

My time at the argriturismo reminded me of the beauty of the land that my family roots are so deeply buried in. Being in Perugia, caught up in the rush and whoosh, the excitement of city life, all the while learning a new language, making new friends, and just trying to keep up, it’s easy to forget, or lose touch with nature, and the cycle of seasons. But this weekend, I was gently reminded: the beauty of fall in Italy’s countryside has enveloped me fully – it reminds me of home, and I wish I could just spread my arms and let myself sink into the soil beneath me, so I can absorb the quiet, wise patience of the generous Terra Madre, or Mother Earth. I lose myself in the panoramic views of fields of sunflowers, once bright and happy now bow their darkened heads, ready for winter’s slumber. There are the once neat but now overflowing rows of grape vines in the midst of being harvested, and the healthy heaviness of the olive trees patiently waiting for their turn in the harvest season that remind me of the necessity of death in order for life to keep on in the grandest of cycles.

Even the houses here seem to echo my wish to blend into the earth – they are all made with earthy materials of stone or brick, covered in sturdy clay roofs. Agriturismos themselves are an attempt to pay homage to the gracious earth – they are government subsidized farms that save old, historic buildings and ages-old farms that are re-equipped to use solar power, organic farming and gardening methods, and always fresh, locally grown produce and meat for their hearty seven-course meals! There is no better place in Italy to be able to appreciate the first signs of fall, and the harvest that autumn is all about. Here amongst this calm beauty, my tensed neck muscles release, and I stand still as I let my weight sink into the earth, patiently waiting for the sound of falling leaves that whisper softly, fall is here.

Word of the day: soppresso. It means “cancelled,” and in the case of an-all-too-frequent Italian sciopero dei treni, or “train strike,” this also means that a headache is coming on! Italian laborers go on strike ALL THE TIME, and this weekend there happened to be a train strike for any trains going in/out of/through Firenze from 9 pm on Friday to 9 pm Saturday. My friends Lauren, Carly, Angie and I were planning on going to Pisa and Cinque Terra, so we made sure we left before the strike on Friday to get safely to Pisa, and then figured we’d be fine going to Cinque Terra the next day since it’s not a train that goes through Firenze. We had a hostel for 2 nights in Pisa, and were just planning taking a train to Cinque Terra Saturday morning and coming back Saturday night. Friday night, we got to the hostel, which was very clean and nice – we had our own room with two double beds and our own private bathroom. The only thing was that the hostel was on a really tiny back street that had a bunch of abandoned apartment buildings with broken windows and smelled like a variation of pee/poo/vomit. But thankfully the hostel itself was very clean, had lots of locked doors, and was next to a little piazza on the other side of the building, so there were always people there! That night we grabbed some pizza and went to the Leaning Tower of Pisa while it was getting dark – it was actually pretty neat to see the Tower all lit up in the dark, but the cathedral, cemetery, and the tower itself were all closed.

Saturday morning the excitement began: we got to the train station really early, and EVERY SINGLE train, except for ONE was soppresso! We didn’t realize that either they expanded the strike to almost all the trains, or that almost every train going through Pisa also went through Firenze at some point. There weren’t any buses to Cinque Terra, and the one train still going to Cinque Terra we didn’t want to take it as we didn’t know if we’d get a guaranteed train back to Pisa, so alas, no Cinque Terra for us! We had to stand in a tediously long line to get a refund for our tickets - but just to prove how tiny the world really is, while we were waiting in line, we started talking to the people behind us, and two of them happened to be nurses from Saint Paul! Small world, indeed!

So instead of Cinque Terra, we walked down the main pedestrian street in Pisa and browsed through the artists’ and clothing vendors. We then went back to the Leaning Tower, and saw the cathedral there, and took stereotypical touristy photos - the cathedral is gorgeous and FULL of paintings depicting different biblical stories. Finally, after not eating lunch, we were getting quite hungry, so we ate gnocchi at a little, cheap restaurant by the Tower, got the best gelato I think I’ve had so far, and went home properly stuffed! It ended up being a relaxing weekend, and we got to see more of the Tower, along with it being a cheaper weekend than if we had had to buy train tickets to/from and around Cinque Terra. It also was cloudy and a bit rainy, so the beaches wouldn’t have been too comfortable.

The other good thing about this weekend was that it got me out of Perugia long enough to where I was relieved in coming home – although fun, Pisa is a much dirtier and sketchier city in some parts. It was also full of tourist venues, which is fine, but made me appreciate the lack of such things in Perguia! So taking the train back to Perugia yesterday felt more like going home, which is good – it means I’m finally settling in!

Otherwise, classes have been going really well – the only one I haven’t had yet is Drawing, which I will have Tuesday. They all seem really interesting, if not maybe a little bit more difficult than I had thought! That’s ok with me – I’m always up for a challenge! :) My Culture of Food in Italy class is going to have a lot of history involved in it, along with a class trip where we go to a traditional Tuscan restaurant and have a huge, multi-course meal. We also have a wine tasting day, a bread tasting day, and finally, but not least, an olive oil tasting day! We don’t actually do any cooking – it’s all about the effect culture has on food and vice versa, with an emphasis on Italy and its food! My Italian class is with the same professoressa that I had for my week of Intensive Italian, which is great, because I love her! :) My Creative Writing: Italy of the Imagination class is going to be the easiest class, I think. I was really excited about it, because that’s what I would have liked to major in if the U of M had an undergraduate program in Creative Writing, but I think the teacher is pretty laid back and is going to grade easily, possibly because there seem to be a lot of people in the class who think that the class is just an easy A. This frustrates me, of course, because it’s not EASY to write well, and I’d rather have a teacher who pushed us, but oh well. Maybe she’ll turn out to be a harder grader than I thought! And either way, that doesn’t mean I have to take it easy! :)

So there you are – caught up on everything! Hope all my friends in school are having a great semester back home – I’m starting to miss the U of M – I love the campus feel it has. Here we only have two buildings (only 150-200 students in the school), and the two buildings are in completely different areas of the city center, so there’s no campus feel. Having only 200 students max in the school also make me pine for the huge student population of the U of M campus which makes for endless new friend possibilities, and you don’t have the drama that comes with smaller college communities. Oh well – it’s still a good school, and I’ve got a great little group of friends with Lauren, Carly, and Angie, so I’m satisfied! :) Everyone else, hope you’re having a great fall, and EMAIL ME!! Keep me updated – I miss you all!

Hello everyone! Phew! Since a lot has happened since my last post, so I’m going to split this up into two separate posts; the first one is my scary story, the second one, about a trip I took to rural Umbria. Bear with me while I catch you up!

I can’t go any further until I tell you about my night before my first day of intensive Italian classes. My roommates and I went out for gelato and a walk at about 9 pm and then Natalie and I came back around 10 pm and went straight to bed. The other two stayed out with other friends and didn’t get back until midnight or so, but went promptly to bed after getting back. All of a sudden, we were all awoken by someone pounding at our door, and a man’s voice yelling at us in Italian! Naturally, we all are confused and drowsy, but also scared out of our wits, as then this Italian man tries to open our door! Thank god we have approximately five locks on our door, all of which we lock at night, but still! We weren’t about to open the door, and we don’t have a peephole, so we yelled through the door to see what he wanted. Apparently it was just our neighbor, informing us that we had locked the main door to the building from the inside earlier today and had locked someone out. Of course they blame it on the stupid American girls, and even though chances are, it was us, as the doors here are modeled after medieval times and, as I said before, have about five locks each, even though you only have a key for one . . . but even if it WAS us, the man didn’t have to scare the bejeezus out of us in the middle of the night!

So, finally, he left, and we went to bed, shaken, a little freaked out, but tired. About an hour later, I wake up to a BLOOD-CURDLING scream like someone is being murdered, and immediately my next panicked thought is about the British Study Abroad student who was murdered in her apartment in Perugia last year, for which her American roommate, the roommate’s Italian boyfriend, and a drug-dealer are STILL all in jail, waiting for the trial that actually starts this week. SOOOOO, after I check to make sure I haven’t wet myself in fright, I get up and it turns out it was one of my roommates who was having a nightmare about someone attacking her in her bed. So. Relieved it wasn’t one of my roommates going psycho and murdering someone, but successfully freaked out nonetheless, I attempted to go back to bed, but didn’t actually get to sleep until somewhere around three or four in the morning.

Of course I started class the next day, so I had to get up at eight. Class was fine – it will be a challenge to pack all the Italian in, but I’m excited for it, and am in the perfect place to practice using it! We had class from 9 until 12:00, when we had break for lunch, and I just bought yogurt next door at a convenience store before going back to class from 1:30 to 3:00. During that last hour and half of class, my vision started to get blotchy for some reason, then I started sweating inexplicably, and then a skull-splitting headache came on. Finally, a wave of nausea hit me full force – I had to excuse myself once from class to, well, you know. It was all I could do to not spew the rest of my lunch all over my classmates for the remaining 30 minutes, and I practically ran home to finish the job. It was awful. But no worries, after that, I took an ibuprofen, took a three-hour nap, and woke up feeling fine. Must’ve been the yogurt, I’m guessing, or the lack of the sleep, or the fact that my nerves were fried from the night before!

So that did not make for the best first days in Perugia, but since my mental and physical health have GREATLY improved! J

So the pictures accompanying this post are from a trip to rural Umbria, the province that Perugia is the capitol of. It was a big group of us who came here through Arcadia University in the U.S. Anyways, we went to a big azienda, or a big farm where they grow EVERYTHING! It was about 130 acres total, including rented land, and they grew olives, grape vines, hay, faglioni (a legume), horses, and pigs. The pigs they have are black with a white stripe down their front end – apparently they are a common breed here, and have to be raised in the open air, not a barn like in the U.S. Here, as you can see in the pictures, they put them in the vineyards and olive-tree fields because they are cleaners who eat all the weeds and such, and also because they fertilize the land. The owner just clapped his hands and a bunch came running for the food he threw them that you can see them all huddling around in one picture. We also saw a three-month-old colt named Gibri, (I think) which translates into desert wind. Another mare somehow got her scent on him, so his own mother wouldn’t claim him. The owner of the azienda feeds him from a bottle, and plays with him, since he says the colt thinks he is his mother. He even played calico (soccer) with the owner!

After taking a tour of the grounds, we went into the kitchen with all the Italian women of the town who taught us how to make some sort of flatbread – torta di testa, which is the name of the pan that it is cooked on. The dough just consisted of flour, salt, yeast, olive oil, and water, and after kneading it, you rolled it out and baked it on the stove-top on this pan. You can cut it open after it’s done and put cheese, tomatoes, olive oil, or anything you want in it. Then, my favorite part, they showed us how to make homemade pasta! The picture I have here is of one of the girls from our group cutting it after it had been rolled out and then rolled up. You have to let it dry out for half-an-hour or so before you can use it. If anyone has any interest, I’ll show you when I come home!

After all of this, we had a four course lunch with all locally grown and cooked food, consisting of more of the pigs we saw today, tomatoes grown in their gardens, along with the pasta and flat bread that we helped to make! They also had local wine for us to drink that they had made there. It was a red wine, pretty sweet, and relatively strong – reminded me a lot of port. It was a wonderful lunch – I completely understand why they only use the freshest and local ingredients in their food here – it all tasted so fresh and full of flavor! But after eating all four courses, and getting extremely tired, I also have a new understanding as to why they have la pausa here, which is basically an enforced siesta, when all the stores in Perugia and some other areas close from 1 to 4 in the afternoon.

This Wednesday we start our regular classes, and this weekend I am going to Napoli with a few of my friends, so until then, hope you all have a wonderful week, I miss you all, and I hope I didn’t bore you too much with all my stories! :) Ciao!