it's the freakin' weekend.

Yeah, I have four day weekends. I don't think this has happened since sophomore year of college, and Lord knows what sort of mischief I got into that year.

Anyway yesterday I was dead to the world, but I made it to Fashion Photography anyway. I need a few more pictures for my first assignment... a six photo spread on Shoes, Hats, & Accessories. (Accessories is open-ended, so let's get creative. Anyone with cool jewelry, expensive purses like those birthday gifts from junior year, or inappropriately small dogs, let me know.) Pairing Food and Wine was entirely about white wines, so my classmate Val and I had fun with that.

We both hung around after for the workshop on Tasting and How We Taste, Etc. It was no new information for me after all my crazy classes in psychology and food but still entertaining. Met up with Kyle, Adrian, Aeri, Tanjila, and Tom for aperitivo at the usual bar. Then we went on a mission to regrop with Aeri who had found her way to the Uffizi. Back home, I made hot chocolate from scratch for Jesse, Tom, Adrian, and myself. Since I finished Rosemary's Baby I started reading another book from our well-stocked shelf. Digital Fortress by Dan Brown.

I haven't finished it yet, but it reads so familiar for some reason?

Prologue - Someone dies a mysterious death.
Chapter 1 - The protagonist is having a dream. She (in this case) wakes to a ringing phone with bad news about a mysterious emergency to which she must immediately MYSTERIOUSLY attend to.

(Dan Brown wrote Angels & Demons and its more famous sequel Da Vinci Code, if you're not familiar with popular fiction.)

After that I crashed for several hours.

Today has been very productive. Granted, today began around noon. But I finally sent off my Permesso Siggiorno - I wonder how many exasperated and exhausted student the lady at the post office has dealt with. Then I went to the bookstore and registered to vote with a friendly lady from California who reminds me of a grandmother slash junior high teacher. Then I went and got Gelato from St. Sarah and Southern Anna's favorite gelateria since it was next door. I got my (second) locker here in the arts school and dumped the photo paper in it. Three errands in less than an hour.

Enough productivity. Sergio wants to "party big" tonight, so I think that's the plan. Game on.

Tara, if you're still reading, of course I'm aware you're coming. We can cuddle. It'll be awesome.

Space Mountain the other week

Let's put some faces to these names.

If you don't know who he is, you probably don't know who I am.

Nick, Diedre, Sal, Jesse, and Tom executing some symmetry

Jesse, Aeri, myself, Vanessa, Alex, Tanjila, and Deidre catchin' a breath

Firenze

Happy birthday, Nick. Belated happy, Adam.

It was a good weekend. Saturday night, we went out for Nick’s birthday. Nick is one of “The Triplets” that live across in the river in Jack and Juan’s former apartment. He, Adam, and Alex (my old roommate Giuseppe’s younger brother) are “The Triplets” because “they’re all kind of the same person.” But not in a bad way. They love to go out, party, and pick up girls. That sounds like every guy our age, but they have more in common than just that. Cool guys though.
Anyway, so the three of them and all of us roommates (except Adrian who along with his visitors Neely and Aly were tired from a day of sightseeing) went out to celebrate. I guess this is a good time to say that we have a thirteenth roommate named Marlene, a little bit of Latina fire from New York. She was practically living here already because her other roommates weren’t as much fun I guess? But she officially moved in, paperwork and all, the other day.

Jesse, who enjoys baking more than cooking, made dark chocolate birthday cakes for Nick and for Adam (whose birthday was like the second night we got here). They were delicious, and Adam’s was slightly mangled but then took on a mountain theme because he’s a climber anyway. Afterwards we all went out to my (now our) favorite bar and got shots and bought Nick drinks and got pretty messy. Sergio was there, and he and Kyle finally met after hearing so much about each other and were surprised at how actually cool the other was and not just the product of exaggeration. Eventually, as the drink numbers increased, the party numbers waned, and we all split off. Sergio, his friend Rose, Sal, and I went to another club for a bit. But I stayed only for one round, courtesy of Serg. I went off to find Sal and he called me and told me he got lost and wound up at The Duomo, so we just met up at home. People here were in various states of... functionality, the more functional ones babysitting a little bit.

Me and my Daydream

Sunday I thought the sin of the day would be sloth, but mine turned out to be gluttony. We all got up late to really late. Some of us went to the bar to get some free internet. The same mass-goers as last week (Marlene, Lisa, Gerard, Sal, Nick, Adrian, and myself) all planned to go but ended up losing track of time and missing the one English mass across town. We’ll fix that next week probably. And just when I thought I’d do nothing all day, I started eating a lot. On the way home from the bar, Tom and I stopped for kebabs. And then some time later I had a bowl of cereal and donated the remains of a bottle of red wine to Gerard’s stew. And then I went with Jesse to her favorite falafel place. And then I came home and had some of Gerard’s stew. And then I showed Adrian the falafel place, and he tried a kebab from there and an egg sandwich, and I bit off some of each. And then I came home and had more of Gerard’s stew and pieces of Deidre’s orange and apple.

And Deidre, Sal, Gerard, Lisa/I (forming a team who’d trade off), played two games of Rummy500. I was winning most of the first game, probably due to the fact I was the only innocent one not affected by the these-are-stolen-cards karma. But Sal won both games. We sat at the dining table originally just singing whatever and changing words around to make the songs aout our roommates, and when that got old Sal brought out his laptop and playlists.
Around 11:30 at night, the entire apartment came to life and everyone either woke up or came home and people were milling around. Everyone went to bed late.

Gerard also made use of the random scroll paper all over our dining table by marking it as “Scripture” and beginning to inscribe all the quotable stupid things people have been saying. It won’t take long to fill up between the twelve of us.

The rest of Monday was pretty much just my chocolates and confections class. We made cremino-filled chocolates. (Cremino is a hazelnut cream made of hazelnut paste and white, milk, or dark chocolate. I love dark chocolate, but it overwhelms the nuttiness in filling. White is a good contrast to the dark chocolate shell. Milk is the best taste on its own... like Nutella.) After that, I stopped by the Chinese take-out place in my old neighborhood on the way home. I spent the rest of the evening reading (and finishing) Rosemary’s Baby, which is in our rather sizable library of books-left-by-previous-tenants, the majority of which being Florence or travel books.
We played Rummy500 again, Jesse playing instead of Sal. Team Lisandrew won, despite the jeers from Team Diedrian (Adrian was on Die’s team in spirit). We left the TV on to watch shows in Italian, which got pretty amusing. Some time after midnight, Tom and Alex came home, so Vanessa, Kyle, Adrian and I hung out with them in the kitchen. We all got hungry, so Tom donated his ingredients to my care. Red bell peppers, tomatoes, ground beef, Parmesan cheese, and pasta became… a pasta. My olive oil and Vanessa’s fresh basil helped a lot too. After everyone else went to bed, Kyle and I just talked a bit while he drew for art class. I changed his world with our discussion of the magic of aperitivo. He also said he’d help me with lighting and stuff for fashion photography, so that’s a major relief.

Today has been pretty uneventful. I wasn’t feeling well, so I missed Mediterranean Diet’s Pasta with Chick Peas and Cod with oregano and sun-dried tomatoes. Along with Vegetarian Cooking’s market trip, which Sal and Diedre assured me wasn’t that epic anyway. I figured I should take today easy rather than be sick tomorrow and miss Fashion Photography and Pairing Food and Wine, the two classes I’m least experienced in anyway.

I walked to Jesse’s Egyptian falafel place, unaware it was closed for siesta time during the afternoon. I just chilled at home and got some actual studying done and then met up with Adrian for sushi aperitivo at the wine bar near our house. Vanessa and Tom eventually joined me. (Adrian left to go see Tristana et al.) After a few glasses of wine and several shots of Swedish liquor Cristian brought back from Sweden, my head is swimming. I’m writing from The Triplets’ Apartment (aka Jack, Juan, and Anton’s old apartment) where we’re eating Pringles, watching Half-Baked, and eating the eggs and buttered toast Alex cooked. And I’m catching up with Jack and Sarah. And Aneet. And Liane. And Anna. Man, I miss them.

a little late, Italian style

Yeah, I’ve been really behind. I’m back in Florence. Classes are great. Adrian is here. Um, what’s new this semester. Let’s start with the obvious. I no longer reside at 80 Via Ghibellina in the wonderful Santa Croce neighborhood. I live on the opposite end of town. And I am one of twelve roommates. Yes, twelve (12). People we meet in bars sometimes say to us “Oh, you’re one of THE TWELVE.” They’ve heard.

I’m not entirely sure this was supposed to happen because we are six girls and six guys in one huge apartment. But so far so good. There are six bedrooms, four bathrooms, a pretty large kitchen, and a huge living room. So, besides obviously Adrian and myself, the other ten of twelve are:

• Aeri, who is Korean and really laidback. She loves shopping, and she gets mad when I say I’m old because she’s a year older than me.
• Diedre, who is Jamaican and seems to be the best mix of sensible but fun-loving of the dozen of us.
• Gerard, who is Costa Rican, Chinese, and Italian. He eats a lot. But is jacked. He and Sal are the only ones who came here together as friends from home.
• Jesse, who is from Alaska and not as conservative as that would make her sound. She likes the outdoors and seems tired of being asked what she thinks of Sarah Palin.
• Lisa, who is Filipina and petit. (Tila Tequila size?) But she’s always reliable to have a camera and is fun to convince to go out when she almost stays in.
• Kyle, who is the ex-boyfriend of Liane from last spring, and is pretty much everyone’s favorite and very cool. He also has nice hair.
• Tanjila, who is Bengali and to everyone’s amusement sounds like she’s always high, even though she never is.
• Tom, who is tall and has tattoos. He always says “I don’t give a fuck,” which sounds a lot more aggressive than he actually is. It just means he’s the most chill person ever.
• Sal, who is Italian-American and from Brooklyn. He loves to go out and he is always looking for the best bargain regarding bottles of wine.
• Vanessa, who’s loud and very what-you-see-is-what-you-get. She’s fun though and either by self-appointment or by default (can’t remember) is the mommy.

So yeah, it’s a little like The Real World on steroids or Big Brother without any cameras. Our rooms are pretty uniform, like hotel rooms. They’re really comfortable and we have a maid service that brings linens and towels. Strangely, I haven’t had any problems with personal laundry schedule. There are three fridges and lots of shelves in the kitchen, so food storage isn’t an issue. Clean-up is though. There’s been a great amount of drinking and not a great amount of dishwashing.

But yeah, we all get along better than apartments of three or four persons. Some people of course are more likely to be found together (e.g. Adrian and myself) but nothing cliquey. There have been a few nights when all of us have actually been out together. I’ve been hitting up my favorite bar in my old neighborhood, Adrian’s made friends with some of the guys at the wine bar in our new neighborhood. We’ve all hit up a bunch of clubs, some very near our place. Domenico and Miko are gone but Sergio and Antonio are still around and I’ve seen them a good bit. And I’ve made some new friends too. We’ll see which become familiar faces and mentions on here.

My classes are great too. Mediterranean Diet and Italian Vegetarian cooking are both full of dishes you’d expect. Both had eggplant parmigiana the other day. Max teaches the first and Marcella teaches the latter. Both are really chill and specified seafood as their favorite thing to cook. Max has a cool soul patch, and Marcella is kind of like our class’s mom. Chocolates and Confections is in Andrea’s chocolate shop, which is really distracting because it smells amazing. He’s got one of those genius-almost-crazy things going on. So far we’ve done chocolate tastings and tempered chocolate bars both milk and dark, which is a lot harder than it sounds. Fashion photography is with Cosimo, who taught me food photography last semester, and I’m going to milk my little point-and-click for all it’s worth once I find some willing models. Pairing Food and Wine might very well be my favorite but is pretty challenging since I don’t know that much about wine… yet. But we get to eat and drink in class.

But yeah, classes, good. Friends, good. Apartment, good.

I think it was Tom who pointed out that “on those shows, it’s always like the third episode when the shit hits the fan.” So we’ll see. But so far so good!

I'm in Florence. I'm alive. My roommates alternate between being really chill and really fun. Adrian is here. It's awesome. Real updates soon.