Italian Mid-term Procrastination

So, today we have our Italian mid-term...can you believe it? That means we're halfway through our second Italian class....

Today just the Catholic students had lunch with Tanith Fowler Corsi, the Assistant Vice President for Global Education. She wanted to hear all about the program and who better to hear the real side of it from than the students? It was actually very nice to sit down with her and discuss the ups and downs of the program.

I do want to apologize to you all for my lack of blogging lately. I've actually be pretty sick, thanks to a fun cold/flu like thing thats been going around. Luckily, margherita has been super mom-like...making sure I take medicine, making me tea, and making soup for dinner.

I'm going to try my hardest to remember what we've been eating/doing, but I'm honestly probably going to forget somethings....

Last week we had many different types of pastas: pasta with chickena and a tomato sauce, pasta cooked in with egg in a type of frittata, etc. We had sandwiches one night for dinner, and on Saturday, my host brother made a very typical Roman dish for dinner - pasta with pancetta, onion, pepper, and pecorino romano. Also, we had hotdogs :) and french fries with ketchup for dinner one night. I think margherita wanted me to eat something 'homey.' We also had their version of stuffed cabbage one night last week.

This week, she's made soup almost every day considering both Angelica & I haven't been feeling well. She also made what I'm going to call the Italian version of meatloaf - ground beef wrapped around eggs, kale, and cheese. We actually eat a lot of kale, but its okay because I really love it. The word for kale is bieta, so for a while I though we were eating beet greens, but its actually kale. Last night we also had a typical Roman dish, very very thin slices of beef (I'm not sure what part of the cow it is, and I'm not sure I want to know...) with olive oil, sharp & salty cheese, and shredded cabbage over it.

This weekend, I decided to take a weekend off from going places and stayed home to get work done. Friday night, Katie and I met at a cocktail bar between our houses that is completely unamericanized. No one spoke a word of English. We made some new friends and were going to go with them to a discoteca underneath Villa Borghese, but their friend's car broke down, or someone got sick - I'm not sure I understood them correctly - and so we didn't go.

Saturday, I slept in for the first time in a while, and went running in Villa Borghese, which is so beautiful! I found an old horse racing track that Italians use now for a running track. I also found a beautiful little pond with a gorgeous island statue in the middle of it - only in Rome...

I got really jealous because I saw a bunch of people riding their bikes around and I definitely wanted to go riding, but when I told margherita that, she told me (I think) that she has two bikes and that we can go riding together....

Saturday night we went to a really famous discoteca (the who and pink floyd, for example, have played there). Now, it's more of a hang out spot for the really rich spoiled Italian kids and a good spot for them to do drugs. The kids there must have been about 15 and were tripping on ecstasy. I was actually kind of surprised. The whole place was very overwhelming, it was about the size of a high school gym, and had about 500 people in it. There were platforms and everyone was dancing to techno music... Its not that it wasn't fun, it just wasn't amazing.

Sunday was pretty low key, margherita made bombe - its basically fried dough with fresh made cream to dip them into. They have lemon zest in them and are rolled in cinnamon sugar when they're done. They're special for Carnivale and are delicious!

Tomorrow, after class, I'll be leaving for Venezia and won't be home until Monday morning. Happy Carnivale! (I'm not even sure if thats what they say...)

Anyway, this week has been going by very quickly, and now its time for me to leave to take my italian mid-term. Ciao!

xoxooxo