September 29, 2011

September 29, 2011

This morning I got to sleep in until 10:00 because I didn’t have class until 1:30! It was so nice to sleep, eat a leisurely breakfast, and just kind of relax for the morning. I did head to school a little early, dropped off my stuff, and took a walk down to the river and around that area. When I got back, I ate my lunch with a lot of people in one of the classrooms and then had Italian from 1:30-2:45. Right after Italian, my Medici class met and walked together over to the Brancacci Chapel. For the first half hour, we watched a video about the Chapel and the frescoes commissioned for it and then spent about half an hour in the Chapel itself, which is a very small part of a much larger church. Most of the frescoes depict the miracles of St. Peter, with the only exceptions being two frescoes of Adam and Eve…before and after the temptation. The frescoes were stunning and I actually recognized a lot of them, which was pretty cool for me. I really enjoyed it and Jodie had a lot of interesting things to say about the frescoes and the chapel itself. Fun fact- Michelangelo broke his nose in this chapel :P After our time in the chapel, we walked to a nearby church to look at the architecture as a quick introduction to what we will begin studying next week. Unfortunately, we did not have a whole lot of time there because class time was up and most of the other students in the class had to get to their drawing class. I walked back with Jodie as far as the river and then meandered my way back to the school to pick up my backpack and head home.

I got home around 5:45 and started off my doing my Italian homework for Monday. I have quite a bit of reading between my other three classes so I figured I would get that out of the way so I could focus on the other things this weekend. It’s crazy to me that we have Fridays off because it makes the weeks go by so quickly. We have almost as many days off as we have of classes! I’m not complaining though :) I do keep thinking tomorrow is Saturday, though, since we don’t have classes. Anyway, around 7:00, Daniella called me into the kitchen because she is making zucchini flower tonight! MY FAVORITE!  She remembered that I had asked her to teach me how to make it so she did just that. We just did the first part of preparing them right then because they need to be refrigerated for about an hour before you can fry them. It was a little hard to follow because she doesn’t use recipes but I think I could probably get it down after a few tries! She let me help her and everything so I definitely got to be hands on…the problem with recreating it back home is that it’s all guesstimated…there aren’t measurements. I WILL TRY ANYWAY! She told me she will show me how you fry them after they have chilled for a while so I look forward to that. I hope this is the first of many Italian cooking lessons :)

After the first part of my cooking lesson, I went back to my homework and did a little more of that. Right before dinner, Daniella showed me how to fry the zucchini flowers (fiore di zucca). We had dinner at 8:00, as per usual, and I felt so accomplished that I had actually helped make one of the dishes! Because Franzi is leaving for Munich tonight at 9:50 (she is taking the overnight train and gets back Monday morning at 6:00 a.m.), we didn’t have a pasta dish first but, rather, had both the fiore di zucca and eggplant dish (another one of my favorites) together along with bread. It was absolutely delicious, of course. For dessert, we had gelato with caramel and chocolate that was just incredible—they sure know how to eat here! After dinner, Franzi packed up the rest of her things and headed out for the train station around 8:45…I am officially an only child for the weekend! It’s so weird to have the room all to myself and I’m going to be the only “kid” at dinner, too.

Well, for the rest of the night I’ll probably stretch and do some reading just for pleasure. Saturday I am going on a 13-mile bike trip through Chianti with some friends so I think I’ll lay low Friday and Sunday. Tomorrow morning at 9:00, a repairman is coming to fix our window (apparently something was wrong with it but they couldn’t fix it before we came…we haven’t noticed) so I have to get up around 8:30 but that won’t be a problem at all. I’ll probably get ready and then head into town for the day and do some shopping and maybe go to a museum or meet some friends for lunch. After a crazy week of classes, I am ready for a day of just doing whatever. Then Sunday I think I am going to set aside for sleeping in as well as all of my homework and reading for the weekend. It’s not too much but the reading makes it more time consuming. Plus, I would love to maybe even get a little ahead so I am not so overwhelmed this next week. But, for now, I had better go. I hear that fall is just beautiful back home so I hope you are all enjoying it! I am going to try to track down a pumpkin for my room at some point (I have no idea where you might find a pumpkin in Florence but I’m going to try…) to pair to my pumpkin spice candle to make it feel more like fall. And hopefully it will start getting cooler soon so it will at least FEEL like fall. Anyway, enjoy the fall colors and the fall weather for me!

All my love,

Kari