I'm In Love, and I Don't Care Who Knows It!!

So I'm officially in love. Head over heels. With France.

Maybe it was the fact that I can actually communicate over there (Tu parles francaise? Uh-Huh-huh! Mais oui! Biensur!). Maybe it was the 49033 pastry shops I saw. Maybe it was the 49031 pastry shops I went to. Maybe it was the musicians in the streets playing "La Vie En Rose" on every corner.  Maybe it was the fact that I almost knew multiple people in the town of Bayeux after only 24 hours. Whatever it was, I fell in love with France.

First couple of days, obviously dedicated to the wonderful sights and sounds of Paris.  We're talking the whole nine yards (meters? I am in Europe): Arc De Triumphe, Eiffel Tower, Champs-Elysees, Louvre, Versailles, Notre Dame, and just some good-old-fashioned exploring.  We saw a Parisian wedding, which was one of the fanciest I've seen.  I saw a bird market, with roosters and parrots and insert exotic bird name here.  I saw old men sing The White Stripe's "Seven Nation Army" on the metro.  A woman and her daughter asked me to take a picture of them in FRENCH and I UNDERSTOOD.  I accidently started talking to someone who totally was NOT talking to me (what a faux pas!).  I got a little too close for comfort to some fellow Paris Metro riders.  Let me just say, though, that people in France were really nice, even to my friends who didn't speak a lick of French.  I have no idea how the rude stereotype came about, but I didn't encounter anything of the sort.

And then my daddy got here! AH! I went to charles de gualle (actually, technically snuck in, because the metro was being weird, so I completely tailgated behind someone to get into the airport. Pas de probleme, n'est pas?).  Train to Bayeux, where we accidently sat in the wrong place on the train. But then we got to Bayeux.  Saw the tapestry (it's so long, holy crepes), and went to checkin at our hotel: the Churchill. In Normandy. Somebody pinch me, because this can't be happening! Saw the Bayeux cathedral (which is jaw-dropping), and stopped a few bakeries along the way!  Had dinner at a wonderful wonderful WONDERFUL restaurant, where the staff greeted us with smiles and handshakes.  By the end of the meal, we felt like locals.  Pictures of the food adventures, because there were many!

little olive snacks. YMMMMM:)

My appetizer, salumi, pate, and some cured meat! 

oh yeah. Steak, potatoes, salad, and scallion butter. SO DELICIOUS

Laura's omelette, tres bien!

Gateau au chocolat. 

this is a french mcdonald's. I don't understand how they have this, and we don't.

my lunch of quiche and salad! 

We had chinese! Boeuf au poivre! 

haagan-das. not so french, but oh so good.

This was in Bayeux. It's a steak in a blueberry reduction, with various vegetables on the side! 

Dad's meal, Fish with a mild sauce with the same veggies. 

our desserts- dad tart au pommes with cinnamon ice cream, and my almond cream cake. 

marzipan! look at the little piggies!!!!!!!!!

a chocolate beignet.Which really means a nutella beignet. 

the best pain au chocolat I had in France - this one had white and semi-sweet chocolate chips!

well dear readers, I'm sorry to say but that's all I can write today! But alas, tomorrow we will continue with the Normandy expedition and the second wave of Parisian activities.  

Buon Appetito! 

Rachael

THIS IS ITALIA.

So my awkwardness has finally hitched a plane over to the Atlantic and found me.  It's good to be reunited with an old friend.  Even if I prayed and hoped that that friend had taken a semester-long hiatus. In the words of Ross, WE WERE ON A BREAK.

First of all: Getting hit on by an Italian man is not a frequent thing in my life, but I do get some "Ciao Bella!"'s a couple times a week.  On Monday, I heard one directed at me, and turned to look. And it came from a girl. I can't even imagine what my face did, nor do I particularly want to know, because her friends kind of laughed at my expression. I get that a lot, actually, Italians laughing at my facial expressions.  I really hope it's out of actual amusement rather than pity.

That was Monday of this week.
Tuesday? I had two midterms, Italian and Food of Italy ( I have it so rough, don't I?).  Well, because my food professor is the best, she offered us chocolate and coffee.  So I'm nibbling on a nice piece of cioccolato pepperocino and writing down some of the typical dishes you can find in Umbria, and wonder why the corner of my mouth feels wet.  Look down at my test, and I have drooled onto my midterm exam. Hello, My name is Rachael. I'm 20 years old and eating chocolate prevents me from keeping my saliva to myself.

Today? Well, on the way home I was mentally worn out from taking another two midterms back to back (Pre-Renaissance Art and World War II), and passionately mouthing the words to a country song (you know, totally normal IN ARKANSAS. I keep forgetting this crucial detail).  And the lady at the fancy wine bar/restaurant near my house that saw my fishy face earlier this semester? Saw my karaoke-winning rendition of Miranda Lambert's  "Crazy Ex-Girlfriend".

So Thursday can just go ahead and make my semester, because it's Italian Unification Day, the last day of midterms, and St. Patrick's day.  So just bring it on, Italy, because I'm not slowing down the awkward train any time soon.

In other news, leaving for Paris THIS FRIDAY! :) vado a normandy con il mio padre! Molto bene! Can't wait! Delicious food, War Memorials, and Communicating efficiently with locals!

Buon appetito!
Rachael

It's Not Even Noon, and I've Got Stories.

Ok, so today has gotten off to an out-of-the-ordinary start already.  First things first: I slept in until after 9.  If you know anything about me, you know that is WEIRD. I mean really weird.  Even if I go to bed at like 4, I'm usually awake before the clock strikes 9.  Not this morning, and I didn't go to bed too late, like 1:30 or 2!

So that's not the most interesting thing, I promise. Otherwise, this blog post would be pathetic.  Next up is the gym. Swan (the name of the gym here), never ceases to amaze me with its Backstreet-Boys-era music videos and random showings of Pink Floyd's "The Wall", but today took the torta (cake in italian. jus sayin).  Italian BET. That's right. But they had a Beyonce marathon, right when I hit the elliptical.  After about 5 Booty-licious videos, some rap thug music video came on, but in the background there was a woman signing the whole song.  SIGN LANGUAGE. IN A RAP MUSIC VIDEO. So many thoughts in my head. So many questions that will not be answered.

While watching the enlightening programming at the gym, I realized I needed to go to the store.  For the record, going to the store is ALWAYS a hassle, because you have to pay for bags, bag your own groceries, lines are always long, and the aisles are not big enough for anyone to move. Today was especially challenging. They were out of the little cart things, so I'm wondering around Billa desperately clutching my grocery goods.  I get in line, realize I forgot eggs right when I'm next.  Retreat back to the dairy section, get eggs, realize I'm going to drop something if I don't get a cart, and find one all alone next to the onions and the peppers.  Some Luck! I think to myself. But, dear readers, the scene was much too good to be true.  An elderly man (seriously, he had a cane) who looked like an Italian Christopher Lloyd came at me, made a face like "what are you doing?!?!" and kind of sternly articulated some stuff at me in Italian. I just kept saying "Scusa, Scusa, Mi dispiace, Mi dispiace!", but his gaze wouldn't change.  He was giving me like a Clint Eastwood stare-down. Like a "do ya feel lucky, well punk, do ya?" stare-down. And no, I didn't feel lucky. So I almost literally ran away.  But not without paying for my groceries first.

It's raining here, and so the walk home was slippery, and I had to hold my bag like a baby so it wouldn't break.

This day is off to a racing start.
But it'll hopefully get a little more normal.  Actually, it will, because I'm not doing anything today but studying. Yes, dear readers, even in Italy one has to study.  I actually almost pulled an all-nighter this week to finish up a paper, an abstract, and a presentation.  And let me just say, Italy is not procrastinator friendly.  You can't check books out of the library, the library/study areas close at like 8 pm, and you have to print things the night before for morning classes because the print place doesn't open early enough.  C'mon, LdM! You're an international institute catering to mainly American students. BE OPEN LATE OR EARLY. I consider procrastinating to be nothing short of a beloved American pastime, and you're hindering on my cultural expression.

Meal wise, I've been extremely boring. Oh! But I did buy some ground beef this week, seasoned it with garlic salt, some herbs, salt and pepper! It's goooood! I'm actually just about to fix myself some. I miss meat so much I just eat it straight. Seriously, I formed myself a hamburger patty the other day and just ate it without a bun or any condiments. Happiest meal of my life.

Mid-terms this week, then St. Patty's day! Then Paris! Then Dublin (fingers crossed!!). SO GOOD!

Buon appetito!
Rachael

A Week of Culinary Delights

All the food I ate :) this class is my Tuesday lunch!

So, as everyone might have suspected, me following my strict dietary rules didn't exactly work out well. And by work out well, I mean all caution was thrown to the wind the minute I walked into cooking class on Tuesday. We had pesto (that's right, real ITALIAN pesto!), potatoes baked with mozzarella and prosciutto, meat stuffed with vegetables, pretty much the italian equivalent to mashed potatoes, and three different kinds of COOKIES! FINALLY SOME COOKIES. Sorry, I have a cookie fetish. We made one regular meringue cookie, one crunchy almond cookie sandwiched with dark chocolate, and one light meringue cookie that had a hazelnut chocolate sandwich filling.  Basically, a cookie smoooshed with nutella brownie batter. HEAVEN, dear readers, nothing short of HEAVEN. I saw God on Tuesday, in the form of that cookie. But my group had the meat with vegetables, which was the most time-consuming all intensive task. AGAIN. My professor is adorable, don't get me wrong, but I've been in the most labor-intensive, recipe-overload teams every time! It's pressure that I'm not sure I can handle!

Thursday night has also become a culinary adventure in and of itself! Cooking night at Lauren's, and this week's menu was Breakfast for dinner! scrambled eggs with mushrooms, onions, and tomatoes, banana pancakes with granola, chocolate chip pancakes, french toast, and fruit salad! Super tasty!! CHECK IT OUT:

So wonderfully deicious. And today, I found a smoothie place, that is exactly like Jamba juice. Words can't explain my excitement. I had a smoothie with cinnamon and cardamom, and it tasted like Christmas.

Anyway, midterms are this week, so my weekend consists of studying and studying and working out and studying and hopefully sleeping.  Then, however, it's off to Paris! and hopefully Dublin! SO EXCITED! I'll keep you posted with any other culinary finds! I'm sure after Paris I'll have an entire album dedicated to my food stuffs! Ciao!

Buon appetito!
Rachael

Doctor's Orders

Going to an Italian Doctor is another thing I can check off the study abroad bucket list. Not that it was on the list to begin with, but now that I've accomplished this and it's kind of unique, I'll use it.

First of all, took all of 35 minutes to walk to the doctor. Whoever decided to put the English-speaking doctors farthest away from where most English-speakers are is beyond me.  I'm of course the first one there, because I'm not going to wait to get checked on- I came to win!  I get called in, and at first I'm startled because there's no lab coat, no nurse, no stethoscope.  She doesn't take my vitals.  I just sit down, tell her my symptoms, and she nods (a universal doctor habit, apparently).  Her diagnosis? Either I have food poisoning or the flu.  Neither of these sound very good, nor extremely correct...? I never threw up, I haven't eaten anything out of the ordinary, I'm not running a temperature.  This causes her to be a little unsure of her initial assessment, so she kind of leaves it up in the air.  Her uncertainty certainly doesn't hold her back from prescribing me four different meds.  Two of which are things I could have probably gotten over the counter, and one of them I'm only supposed to take today.  Just to clarify, before people start asking me if I've written my will yet.  Chillax, people, not on my deathbed quite yet.

So essentially, I took my medicine today and had a nap (because my body is very exhausted from all this), and I feel worlds better.  I'm hoping by tomorrow I'm up for a trip to the library (a true test of heart, isn't it?), but I haven't decided whether or not a workout would be too much.

Oh, and there is something else.  Until next week, I have certain dietary restrictions, that completely interfere with my blogging intentions.  I am not allowed to consume any dairy, spiced/heavy meat, or (gasp) pastries/cakes for an entire week.  I've tried to see what we're going to be cooking in my class, but all I have to go off of is our reading assignment.  Guess what it's over? The history of Italian cheese. Perfetto. Regardless of my restrictions, I've decided to bring my camera to class so I can upload pictures of our creations.  They're nothing short of inspirational.

Well, I'm going to go try and boil apples.  It's one of the two meal options I have for today, the other being rice.  Tomorrow I get to upgrade to bread and pasta, and bananas I think.  The rest of the week will be a gradual reintroduction of foods to my palate.  I better be feeling better by Sunday, because I will be going to an ITALIAN SOCCER GAME! GOOOOOOALLL!

Buon Appetito, kind of,
Rachael

Lessons In Noodles, Nap-taking, and Nausea

Well, dear readers, I wish I were writing under a little different circumstances.  I'm afraid I've come down with something rather discomforting and (at times) painful.  Stomach pains, nausea, headaches and fatigue has been the name of the game for the past couple of days for this foodie.  Consequently, that means a week of minimal (or in severe cases, no) culinary satisfaction. However, that did not stop me from helping create some wonderful dishes in my cooking class, and learning about when to NOT take naps in class.

On Tuesday, my class consisted of making some fried meat patty things (that were good, trust me, like a fried meatball), some garbanzo tomato spread, lasagna (my group!), and a cake.  Given my intolerance to any type of food that day, I didn't finish any of my sample-sized portions of wonder.  But all of it was delicious.  And apparently, ricotta is never used in lasagne! My professora was completely aghast at the thought of such a thing- which, given that reaction, one can only imagine her response to me stating my grandmother's use of sour cream.  Another little Italian cooking factoid- in Tuscany, they never (and I mean NEVER) cook with red wine, always white.  In the words of my professor "to drink, yes, to cook, no!".  Regardless of it's ricotta deficit, the lasagna was to die for, but very very VERY intensive.  That makes it the second week in a row that I've been on the sort of "cooking team" with the most challenging dish.  She overestimates my skill.

In Art History on Wednesday, this girl in front of me fell asleep.  She had been asleep for a while, and finally with about 30 minutes left of class, the professora glares at her. For a good two minutes.  Her friend nudges her, and my professora states simply : It is best that you leave. Right now.  No smile, no please, but she had a gaze that could pierce ears. Fiercest little Italian woman I have met thus far.  Oh, and a MLIAWKARD moment, I was walking home from class, feeling sickly.  To alleviate my discomfort, I (for some reason) decided to make faces in the window of the fancy wine bar on my street. Which is perfectly fine, as long as the bar is vacant.  I don't have that kind of luck, so the waitress saw me making fishy faces and puffing my cheeks out like a chimp.  Yeah, just your typical American neighbor, don't worry about it.

Which brings us to today.  I actually skipped a class, in a sense, because of how badly I felt.  I went to take the test today, and asked if I could leave because of my sickly nature.  He kindly understood, asking me to e-mail him when I felt better.  So since then, I've just been laying on my bed, watching movies and drinking my weight in gatorade.  By the way, there are different flavors of Gatorade over here, and powerade, and I like them better. My appetite is completely gone, so aside from the obvious bad feelings of simply being ill, I've also felt a great sense of loss not being able to eat my new groceries I bought on Monday.  Sorry, quinoa and bulgar wheat, you'll have to wait it out a little longer.

Going to a clinic tomorrow to get this checked out.  I'm sure that'll be an experience worth blogging about, so I'll keep updates coming.  It's 8:00 here, and I'm going to bed.  

Buon Appetito?
Rachael

MASKS! MAKE-UP! MACARENA!

So I just had the best weekend of my trip.  Carnevale in Venice for the opening? Yes, I'll take some of that. With seconds.

So many people, and so much stuff to do! Not only did we venture the Venetian streets, but we also went to Murano and Burano- little islands which stole my heart and stomach!  Murano was mainly just for glass production (really beautiful stuff), and Burano is where I had a scrumptious coconut/lemon/cake/bar.  So good.  The baker recommended it, and it was to die for.  Oh, and in Venice itself, I had a smiley faced panino!

And then, my friends, the typical carnevale dinner commenced. SO MUCH FOOD. AND ALL OF IT WAS DIVINE. But fear not, dear readers, this foodie-aerobics-instructor completely earned her meal.  After dinner, there was dancing in the restaurant with the group of Italians who shared our banquet room. We taught them all the macarena, and they proved to us that Michael Jackson is always cool.  ENJOY THE FOODS :)

Antipasti: Little meat sausage patties, and on the skewer is prosciutto wrapped with zucchini on a bed of polenta.  SO delicious!

Vegetable risotto- one of the TWO (thats right, TWO! pasta courses!)

Gnocchi with a cheese sauce. Seriously, maybe my favorite. It was so good, but so rich! The cheese sauce tasted kind of like alfredo, but it was not as cheesy.  More cream than cheese probably!

The Main Event: Ham cooked with sage (I believe), with some roasted potatoes and cooked spinach.  MMMMMMM :)

Dolci: Fried dough with powdered sugar. Can't go wrong with that, right? And then, some fried dough ball things with raisins.  If it's fried, I'll eat it. Seriously.

So that was our large carnevale dinner, which put us all in a food coma and made me sleep better than any other night I'm here.  The next day, we went to the Guggenheim Museum (which was amazing, saw some Dali, Picasso, Duchamp...) After that, to St.Mark's square to see the "Flight of the Angel", where they put some crazy volunteer Italian on a rope above the square and have them fly down to the ground. I was scared for them.  As was a very concerned French woman next to me.  She was shaking with fright.  After the flight, the parade of masks! Everyone and Anyone is dressed in their Carnevale finest, complete with masks, make-up, and outrageous outfits.  But don't worry, they're not all dressed up like the Phantom of the Opera Masquerade scene.  Some random costumes which I had the opportunity to see: flowers, mariachi band, penguins, and William-Wallace-wanna-be's.  I had my face painting done by a pirate from Rome, and while he was doing my make-up people came by and took pictures of me...? I let him take the creative reigns on this one, and just told him to do whatever (to follow his heart, if you will).  When I looked at the finished product, it was of course beautiful! And some random englishman captured my surprise face on camera? Many awkward moments, people, many awkward moments.  Oh, I also tried to hot spiced red wine, and it definitely helped keep me warm on the dreary rainy sunday that eventually overtook the end of our carnevale stay.  

All in All, fantastic trip with fantastic people! And the boat ride back to the mainland included some playing of American music *(Love the way you Lie, you know you love it).  I'll probably update tomorrow, because I've been lacking and I just feel bad. I can't believe spring break is coming up so fast! It's insane! 

Buon Appetito! 

Rachael