Cibo e del Vino

Crocchette di Polio

Spaghetti Carbonara

Pine Nut Cake

Ricotta Cheese and Spinach Gnocchi

For the first time ever I had my first day of class on the fourth of July! Even so I was super excited! Got my outfit all picked out, knew where the building was and... YIKES! It took about two minutes before I realized that this was going to be a much more stressful 4 weeks than I had mentally prepared for. Even this guy's English sounded like gibberish. I've never been so lost! I'm sorry but if I don't know an Italian word, I will not know it when you say it slow either...SO basically that's how I decided to drop Italian 101 in the first 10 minutes of the class. As I was happily shopping for a new class I was filled with excited! So many cool classes to take; Florence Sketchbook, Photography...WHAT!? Wine and Food Pairing? Heck yes! This is everyone's dream! To come to Italy and take a cooking class and learn how to refine their palate and enjoy food like never before! Sweet!

Instantly I realized this class was going to help me get everything I wanted out of this Italian experience! Everyday we get to make two amazing Italian dishes and a dessert, then pair it with a wine and talk about how they compliment each other! It may seem like a joke, but it's not! It is absolutely wonderful! I've never payed so much attention to the pleasure you can get from eating before! At the end I am going to be able to describe a hundred similar reds and whites in a completely different way. This class somehow reminds me about the simple pleasures of life, to slow down, to enjoy...

Life is short, we don't have time to rush! ;)

My second class is also super cool! I wish I could take tons of classes here! Something about having an Italian teacher gives me something I could never quite grasp in America. I am taking Intercultural communication, and although I feel like I have taken the exact same class before I am learning so much! I just can't help but laugh at how silly humans are. My teacher spends the majority of class telling stories about him and his Turkish wife who have very different views of life, but at the end of the day laugh and seem to be completely in love. The main point of the class is to think about how different cultures can come together and how we can all become more competent at communicating. It makes me so happy that there are people everywhere in the world teaching everybody else that the world can be a better place.

I'm already learning a lot here, and I am seeing benefits of this experience that I couldn't before. I'm learning how to slow down, how to describe flavors I never knew existed, how to express feelings I couldn't quite put my finger on before, and how to live a fuller life.

Love Always,
~Care