Buon Appetito!

Ciao Tutti! 
I know it has been a while since I have written a post, so I have a few new stories! Let's back up just a bit to Friday, September 21. Well, we took a trip to a small town about an hour away just outside of Torino to visit and tour a family vineyard! We got to travel on a private bus with some of the students from the program along with our advisors. The ride there was just beautiful! Enjoying a ride through the country side of Italy where the endless green hills never leave your sight sure is amazing. Upon arrival, we were taken right in the middle of a field of freshly grown grape vines. There, we got to help  pick, as well as eat these fresh grapes! This had to be one of my favorite parts of the trip because they were just sweet and so authentic. The downside of this was how sticky our hands were afterwards. Literally, you would bite into the grape and the juice would go everywhere! I guess that's why they were so tasty. After this, we made it to the "behind the scenes" of winemaking. Here we were taken to see most of the stages from crushing all the way to the bottling step. We were even able to taste the juice straight from the steel barrel of the beginning of the fermentation stage. Grape juice! I would have loved to take some of that home with me; it was just the perfect amount of sweetness and completely natural. Mmm! After the tour, we went upstairs to eat a four course meal at the family's restaurant! They were bringing us plate after plate. We started with an antipasto, went on to a spaghetti dish, then risotto, and to finish, a sweet dessert of panna cotta. This was my other favorite part of the day! ;)
Now, back to this week. On monday night, I had my first lesson in my Italian Cuisine class! SO amazing and I am so excited for the upcoming classes! We started out making one of the traditional desserts here in the Piemonte region. "Pesche alla Piemontese" (Piemontese stuffed peaches). These are first cut in half and then hollowed to be used as mini bowls. We filled them with the mixture of freshly mashed peaches, sugar, coco powder, egg yolk, amoretti cookie crumbs and a touch of butter on the top to create the perfect crunch from baking in the oven. As the evening continued, we went on making homemade gnocchi along with two different sauces- fresh tomato and basil (which we picked straight off our instructors plants), and a creamy fontina/parmesan cheese sauce. Finally, the "Cotolette alla Milanese", which were thinly sliced chicken breasts dipped in an egg, then into dried breadcrumbs, and cooked on the stove- with a touch of lemon and some fresh seasonings! One of the best parts, we got to end this night with a nice little feast of our finished cuisines. Buon Appetito!
Well, that's the major updates for now. My weeks have been pretty busy, filled with studying and working to improve my Italian. This is especially beneficial when I hang out with my Italian friends! Oh! I also had my first experience going to the movie theaters in Italy! We saw "Ribelle- The Brave", which was good since I had already seen it in english. It made it that much easier to follow along! I will finish this week with our second exam in Italian class, and then off to the Italian Riviera! "Il Cinque Terre".

 Photos from the Vineyard Tour

Frosties and Chinese Food!

Buongiorno! 

It's always wonderful when you have something so simple that you love that can take you right back to home. It's even more wonderful when you find it in a foreign country! Well, Frosted Flakes does it for me. Just add a few strawberry and banana slices and bravo, perfetto! Mmm! It's funny that something so simple can be so good at the same time! Anyways, yesterday was week three of my adventures here in Italy and there has been even more to add to the list! I have survived the three hours a day Italian for the past two weeks! Now the class is still "intensive" for the next four-ish weeks, but it's down to three days a week for only two hours. Good news! I got 100% on my first exam! The other class that has started is Italian Cinema. The professor seems to be really interesting and hasn't failed to make us laugh. Always a necessity. One thing I was not aware of is beach volleyball seems to be pretty big here. Not quite as big as il calcio (soccer), but still something they are quite competitive in- that's for sure. There was a game organized through the school, "Americans vs The Italians" and we were so excited for it and also didn't know what to expect. My roommate and I show up and it's majority Italians, with two other Americans. Oh! And we were the only two girls. Ha! Intimidating! It turned out to be so much fun though, and we all just divided evenly to make the two teams. The Italians are so funny, so competitive, and we ended up making new friends out of it. Later that evening, we were rushed to make it home on time because we had a meeting scheduled with our landlord to pay rent. So me, Virginia, and Daniele (awesome sarcastic Italian in charge of our housing here in Torino) rushed home. One word of advice, no matter how much of a pro you feel at public transportation, there will always be those times when you are in a rush and need to make the metro before the doors close on you. Do NOT start sprinting down the stairs in flip-flops with absolutely zero tracking as the warning sound starts beeping to let you know the doors are closing soon, only to make a quick turn and jump onto the metro. You WILL fall down. I did at least. Daniele made it onto the metro, I made it sideways onto the floor, and Virginia was stopped just before the doors closed on her. Yikes! What a laugh though! Something else I found out this week is that not only are their pizzas, pasta, focaccia bread, or anything else Italian wonderful, but also their Chinese food! There is a cute little Chinese restaurant just across from our apartment building that we tried out, so yummy! So, I am also making more Italian friends, which is so good for me because it gives me a chance to work on speaking Italian more often. Last night, I was invited by some of the people who are around my age that I met at church last week to come to a group dinner at an amazing pizzeria. Everybody seems so awesome! Well here are some recent photos of my adventures this week.

 Mmm, Lo mein and beef :) 

 On the Lingotto Mall rooftop!

 Basilica di Superga 

The Adventures of an American in a Foreign Country

Well, it is the second night in our new home here in Torino and we love it! The area is beautiful and our apartment is so adorable! Definitely better than what we were expecting. It was recently remodeled so it looks and smells like new! I LOVE the authentic brick ceilings and beautiful archways. Oh! And we live just above a café and pizzeria, so the amazing smells of freshly toasted bread and homemade pizzas make their way in, of course. I haven't decided if that's a good or bad thing yet! ;) Today was orientation day at the school. Since we are living downtown, we are the furthest from the school. No problem, it's just a metro ride away. Wrong! Two hours later, we FINALLY arrive. We decided to leave 45 minutes before we had to be at the school, which should have been plenty of time- given that it only took us about 20 minutes to get back home. Well, wrong again. But it sure was an adventure, riding on a metro that turned out to be a train, walking about 20 blocks the wrong direction, and getting on a few wrong buses taking us every which way. Oops! Eight girls wondering around aimlessly in every direction, along with a huge map in our hands, must have been a sight to see. It's definitely something to look back on and laugh about! Anyways, orientation went well, and we finally found out our exact schedules. It seems like I should have plenty of free time to relax, enjoy, and see the world. Intensive Italian classes start tomorrow! Emphasis on intensive. I am so excited though, I cannot wait to be speaking and understanding it completely. Three hours of Italian five mornings a week for the rest of this week and next should be a great start! Then it will slow down just a bit and turn into three mornings a week for two hours for the rest of the semester. I am so so so excited for my Italian Cuisine class! The class will be held in our professor's house right in the middle of her kitchen where we will be learning, cooking, and of course tasting the authentic Italian dishes. Mmmh! "Buon Appetito!" Thank goodness for all the walking around we'll be doing! ;) Well, tomorrow is the big first day of classes and it is bedtime over here in Italia. Here are some photos of my new home! Buonanotte a tutti!