Mamma Mia

I received the best news today. MY MOM IS COMING TO FLORENCE! God is so good. My mom has a deep love for traveling. In fact, I probably would not be studying abroad right now if it weren't for her encouragement to do so. I could tell before I came here that she was dying to come as well and when I received a text from her this morning telling me that she found a flight to Florence, I was overjoyed! There is nothing more that I would love right now than to share this beautiful city with one of my family members! Now I have to start planning for what we will do when she gets here. I have a few weeks to figure it out.


As for today, I decided that I couldn't put off washing clothes any longer and it was time to take on the Italian washing machine. First of all, the washing machine is in the bathroom.. right across from the toilet. My apartment reminds me of an apartment you would see on House Hunters International that would be the buyer's last choice. I could imagine them saying "Oh, no. That won't do." Well at least I'm getting the full experience ha!

All the directions on the washing machine are in Italian, so who knows if I even washed my clothes. I don't even know if I put the detergent in the wrote spot. Haha, this is an adventure for sure. But the best part is putting them in the dryer. I mean hanging the clothes on the line. And when I say line, I mean a fold out wire rack. My upstairs neighbor have the actual "line" you would think of.

Neighbor's

Ours

 You gotta do what you gotta do! Haha it's quite an adventure.

In class today, our teacher explained our project to us which includes finding three red wines that would be perfect with these three dishes: tuna steak, cacciucco (fish soup), and my favorite, octopus salad, which is literally octupus and lettuce. Gross. But in order to do my project I have to try all three of these dishes. We'll see how it goes. But to make up for that, we had such a delicious Italian dish during class today. It is called Gnudi which is ultimately a spinach and ricotta cheese ball in a butter sauce. I will definitely have to make those at home. We had three wines again today. We started off with a sparkling wine which was an Andreola Prosecco called "Romit." It was a very fresh and delicate wine with very small bubbles which I was told by my teacher means elegance. It was a delicious wine but wasn't a good match for the Gnudi becuase it was too delicate. My teacher said that she would pair this wine with sushi most likely. The second wine was red and was a 2010 Primo Scuro made by Cantina Mesa. It had a very strong alcohol smell and taste. It was quite persistent but I ultimately loved. This wine had too big of a flavor and alcoholic level for the Gnudi. It would be too overpowering. The third wine was a white 2011 Sannio Falanghino made by Mastroberardino. It is made with 100% Falanghino grapes in the South of Italy. It had a huge aroma that consisted of herbal notes, almond vanilla, and white flowers. This wine was the ultimate choice for the Gnudi.

Lecture in class consisted of how to pair wine with spices and herbs. I wrote down a chart of each spice and what wine would go best with them. This is good news for Phillip since he loves spicy food. If I make him spicy food then he'll have to drink the wine that I pair with it. Poor thing.

Bryn and I are about to go walk down the river, maybe walk across the Ponte Vecchio, and probably walk down by the shops, aka: Tiffany's, Prada, Gucci. If they are here for me to look at, why not? A girl can dream. Adios! ... wait, wrong language.