Simple Day 2

Buon Giorno! It's Day 2 of blogging for this girl and I hope I'm doing an alright job. If you know me, you know that I absolutely hate having to write any type of paper, essay, journal, what have you, which is why I was surprised when yesterday I found myself taking all sorts of pictures and thinking of things to put on the blog. That sounds super corny but I'm wanting to document every second of my time here.

So yesterday, I had finally enjoyed my first normal full night's sleep. I sleep like an absolute rock. I always thought that nothing could wake me up (which is why I usually set three or four alarms), but I found something that will wake me from deep slumber... Italian Talk Radio. Turns out that the neighbor upstairs is a huge fan of stomping around, slamming drawers, and BLARING Italian Talk Radio in the wee hours of 6:30-7:00 in the morning. It could be that the building I live in is hundreds of years old and the walls, and obviously ceilings, are paper thin. Needless to say, I was up for the day at 7:15. I ate some breakfast, read Jesus Calling, and got ready for the day. By 8:00 I was out wandering the streets of Florence yet again, searching for a store that sold school supplies. I ended up wandering around the Duomo for a while taking pictures and looking at the huge line of tourists that were already waiting to get inside the Duomo at 8:00. Here are a few pictures from my morning:

The Beautiful Duomo in the morning

The biggest car I've seen here, the Range

The Duomo yet again

Random Sight

After wandering around for a while having not found my "Office Depot" anywhere, I ended up in the Tutti 99 Cent store right around the corner to find a notebook. I took my 25 minute walk to class and hung out on the porch right outside my classroom for a while before class started. 

Panzanella and Wines

My teacher's name is Claudia and she is a full-bred Italian. She struggles to get her words out the majority of the time. Sometimes she is struggling to find a word and I'm just thinking "Skip it, because it probably will be the wrong word anyway!" But one thing about Claudia is that she is a master at finding flavors in wines. She will sniff a wine that to my untrained nose just smells like butter, but she will get all these intensive smells like red flowers and grass? Maybe by the end of taking this class I will be able to do the same. Yesterday we had an Italian salad dish called panzanella that consists of red tomatoes, cucumbers, onions, bread, and a wine vinaigrette. The wines we had were a 2011 Sauvignon made by Alois Lageder and then a 2010 Le Maustrelle made by Santa Cristina. The Sauvignon was divine. My notes from that wine say that there was a big intensity with the aroma of white flowers, green apple, grass, and the skin of a green tomato. The flavor was dry, with a big freshness and minerality and a medium structure. The wine itself had a bigger smell than taste. The Le Maustrelle had a deep red color, intense smell with the aroma of red flowers and strawberry. The taste was dry with a soft flavor but not a very big freshness, which was needed for the simple, fresh dish of panzanella. Overall the Sauvignon was a perfect match for the panzanella dish. I hope y'all find this information as interesting as I do. If not, then the rest of my blogging may continue to bore you!

Panzanella

After class, I went straight back to the apartment where I did some catching up with people at home and then I passed out for a good two hour nap (that's what waking up at 7:15 does to me). When my roommates got back from class we all went to the supermarket around the corner called Billa with no recipe in hand. We were just gonna try to find something to whip up for dinner. Luckily here, there are obviously multitudes of pasta, sauce, cheese, and bread to choose from, which is exactly what we had. We brought all of our groceries home, opened the windows, and had a good ole family dinner, that included penne pasta, spaghetti sauce, fresh mushrooms, zucchini, and tomatoes, and a baguette with melted parmesan cheese, not to mention the four bottles of wine (don't judge, I'm in Italy!) 

They are going to hate me for all my picture taking. 

Momma always taught me how to set the table

Pasta and a glass of Chianti Classico

Mas Vino

By the time we ate dinner it was already 9:30 or 10:00, so we decided to stay in, listen to good music, drink wine, play an awesome few games of spoons, and obviously have some dessert of pretzels and Nutella. Truthfully, the most dangerous thing about Italy is that they sell Nutella EVERYWHERE. No peanut butter. No almond butter. Just Nutella. Of course, I'm not complaining because I love it, but the extra eating of Nutella means the extra running down the river this girl is going to have to do. Overall, it was a fantastic night with some awesome talks and fun times with my roommates. Nights like those are the kind that make me really appreciate the place where I am right now. 

Dessert for sure

That's all for now but I'll be back real soon. Tonight, we may be going out so be ready for some good stories. I'm still missing home but continuing to love and grow in Firenze. Ciao!