Florence, Day 3

I slept pretty darn well last night and woke up to the best present ever: a free morning. No obligations (except to print out passport photos), no plans (except to print out passport photos), and nowhere to be (except the booth where we could print out passport photos). After a leisurely breakfast, we went over to the Santa Maria Novella train station (SMN), printed out those darn photos, and then split into smaller groups for shopping and sightseeing. Sammy, Gretchen, and I ended up in the market, where I had my first splurge purchase of the trip when Sammy and I bought leather jackets. In my defense, it is both fire and water proof, so it was worth the money. (Edit: I have also worn it pretty much every day since, so it's essentially paying for itself. If only the euros went back into my wallet....)

We grabbed a quick lunch, after which I discovered the greatest cheap-o food item in the world: gelato sticks. Two bites of gelato, covered in chocolate and chopped nuts. Beyond delicious. And from McDonalds. I know, I know, it's weird. 

Back at the hotel, we had another ACM meeting and some more important paperwork before our planned trip to Fiesole (an archeological site just outside the city). The trip ended up being cancelled on account of more rain, so we walked as a group to Palazzo Vecchio instead. We looked around the palace for a while, then climbed the tower and got an amazing view of the city. We also all jumped about three feet in the air when the bells started tolling the hour (and we happened to be blissfully unaware of the fact that we were directly beneath them). A group of us (pictured below) got kicked out of the tower for spending too much time up top (there was a line downstairs that we had no idea existed) and so made our way back to the hotel just in time to drop stuff off and head back to yesterday's restaurant for dinner (penne pasta with zucchini-tomato sauce and roast chicken with the BEST peas ever and more of the house wine). After dinner, Ian, Sammy, Gretchen and I went out to an Irish pub for a little while with a few other students, but ended up heading back to the hotel pretty soon and hanging out in my room (which, yes, is still housing 5 of us girls), watching youtube videos and talking.

(L to R) Gretchen, me, Ian, Sammy, Isa, and Stacy

Successful day? Yeah, I think so.

Florence, Day 2

I am, not surprisingly, still jet-lagged. However dinner last night helped a lot. Breakfast this morning helped even more! The hotel provides a bit of food for us, croissants and freshly baked rolls, with our choice of nutella, jam, or other fruit preserves, plus coffee (or hot chocolate or my new favorite chocolate mocha-chino (which the coffee machine helpfully says is "1/3 chocolate, 1/3 coffee, 1/3 steamed milk" - delicious).

After breakfast, Gretchen, Sammy, Isa, Stacy, (the same girls I went to dinner with earlier) and I went out on the sightseeing tour that I looked up the previous night. We ended up riding the bus up to San Miniato and the Piazza Michelangelo, where we got out to take in the view from a (very crowded) scenic overlook. After some group pictures (you'll see that below), we walked up to the church, saw the end of a wedding, explored a cemetery, and looked around the "farmacia" run by the order of monks that still live and work at this church. Cool.

(L to R) Stacy, Isa, Sammy, Gretchen, and me.

After that, the day got even better. We waited around in the courtyard to see the end of the wedding, and kind of in order to see the church some more, and the moment the bride and groom exited the sanctuary... it started to pour. We're talking buckets and buckets of rain. But we found out that in Italy, a torrential downpour on your wedding isn't a bad thing. "A wet bride is a lucky bride." Take that any way you please.

The five of us (Gretchen, Sammy, Isa, Stacy, and myself) took cover in a smaller, even older church father down the hill where we attempted to wait out the storm, figuring that it would be a relatively short storm and that would be that. Wrong. We finally screwed our courage to the sticking point, hoisted our sopping umbrellas once more, and made it down the hill to the bus stop. Waiting for the bus was an ordeal all its own (where the bus that I was sure would take us on the rest of the tour didn't seem to exist and then the bus we decided to use instead wouldn't let us on because "they were full"), but we made it back to the hotel, checked into our new room (yes, all five of us were put in the same room for the next few days. We're ok with it. Don't judge.), changed out of our wet clothes, and then met up with the ACM people for a first round of paperwork/getting to know each other/orientation followed by dinner at a nice restaurant ristorante. (For those keeping score at home: butterfly pasta with a vegetable sauce and roast pork with sauté spinach and the house wine.) The program director and coordinator (Jodi and Kate, respectively) then took us out for gelato - which I could get used to.

Veni, vidi, vici - except instead of coming, seeing, and conquering, I came, I saw, I ate, I talked, and then I went to bed.

Food for Thought

It’s now seven days until I leave for Norway and I’m thinking about food. Living on campus for part of this summer, having my own apartment (with a kitchen!), and being responsible for my own meals has made me look at food differently. I’ve always really liked food. I enjoy cooking with my mom, I like sitting down at a table and eating with my family — I just really like food. Food was a central part of my childhood; my parents never had any problem inviting people over for dinner, bringing meals to those in need, or swapping favorite recipes with those around us. Rather than buying overly processed foods, my mom makes her own soups, spaghetti sauce, baked goods, and desserts. My dad makes the best from-scratch hamburgers I’ve ever eaten. It’s important to my family to have set times where we know we’ll be sitting down and eating a full meal together. The process of cooking food and bringing meals to the table has always been equated to love. Food brings people together and one of the ways we show our love for others is through food.

Feeding myself has reminded me how important food really is. More than showing love for others through the act of cooking or giving food, eating good food is a way to love yourself. The past month and a half have shown me just how critical it is to love yourself. Other people may come and go in your life, but you must always love, value, and respect yourself. No one can do that for you. Eating food that fills, comforts, and nourishes you is one way to love your body. Your body is something that you’re stuck with for your whole life, so you might as well treat it the right way. Give it the fuel it needs in order to get through the day. Give it the food that you love when you are in need of comfort. And give it the healthy food that will help you be the strongest “you” that you can be.

But that’s enough, for now, about loving yourself.

When I have traveled abroad in the past, it has been in a class setting. I’ve had professors telling me what to expect when we get there, for everything from what the hotel will be like, to what parts of the city we should see, to what museums we will be visiting. When we’ve reached our destination, I’ve made it a point to try as many “native” foods as possible, whether I like them or not. In London, this meant eating fish and chips, despite the fact that I really don’t like breaded, fried fish. In Paris, I savored fresh crepes and choked down steak tartare (a memory my parents still tease me about and they weren’t even there). In Puerto Rico (though it’s not exactly “abroad”), I lived off of rice, chicken, and plantains. In Serbia, I ate as much palacinke, pljeskavica, and kajmak as humanly possible. But in Norway, I don’t know quite what to expect. I don’t really feel unprepared (it’s impossible to feel unprepared when you travel with my dad, the king of travel itineraries), but it’s a very different kind of preparation from the May Term traveling I’ve done. I know what we’re doing, but not what to expect. Recently, my thoughts about what to expect have shifted to what foods to expect and what foods I’m going to try. I’m really curious about what foods we’ll get to eat at our family reunion, since I know relatively little about the food in Norway. Traditional Norwegian foods like kringla and lefse were a staple of my childhood (kringla more so than lefse, since it’s ridiculously difficult to make your own lefse) but I’m excited that I get to experience these foods the way they’re meant to be experienced. (Sorry Mom: your kringla’s good, but I’m ready to try it the real Norwegian way.) In seven days, I’m going to get off that plane and hunt down some lefse.  It’s going to be awesome.