So here comes another twofer since I was too lazy to blog yesterday. Though I realized that now that I'm not nomadic, my life is not as interesting.
Yesterday we went exploring and found all of the school buildings. My school is actually a compilation of 9 different schools with buildings all over downtown Florence. So we had to find where each one of them was and figure out how to navigate inside of them. It was a bit difficult at first since all the buildings kinda look the same. But, I am now an expert explorer and know this part of Florence like the back of my hand. It is hard to think that I've only been here for three days. It feels like I've been here forever. Though, there are still things I'm trying to figure out. Like how to feed myself. The best part of the Mediterranean diet is that everything is so fresh. The problem for a lazy college student is that I have to cook anything I want to eat. It was really nice yesterday though because we found an open-air market! It is just down the block from our apartment also. This place is like the Los Alamos farmers' market on steroids. It is wonderful. There were so many vendors with fresh produce and cheese and meats and breads and eggs! It was great. I was a little overwhelmed at first, so i just bought the basics for a salad. But I will be back to explore and experiment some more. I think I already found a cheese guy that I will go back to. He seemed pretty cool. The plan is to find my favorite vendors and then be really sweet to them and hopefully get a discount soon. I felt so Italian in the market though. I have learned enough to be able to talk to vendors about price and say thank you. I'm hoping that gets me through.
At night we explored to the other side of the river and found the Ponte Vecchio. Sadly all the cute little shops were closed, but the sun was setting. And I don't know if you have heard about sunsets in Florence, but they rival New Mexican ones. I finished the night off with gelato, of course! I had my first taste of pistachio gelato. So I've never had pistachio ice cream and so I don't know what I was expecting, but I didn't expect it to taste like pistachios. To my pleasant surprise, it tastes exactly like pistachios! It really is all the little things that make life interesting.
I started class today. I am super stoked for it! My teacher is a sociologist so we are going to be looking at the rates of diseases throughout the Mediterranean and the lifestyle and everything. Here is the nerd in me coming out. The past few days I have been wanting to look into the correlation between the Mediterranean diet and rates of coronary diseases and cancer. I was going to do my own research on it, but now I don't have to! It is going to be great! We learned a lot of interesting stuff today. Did you know that tomatoes didn't even arrive in Italy until after the discovery of the Americas? And then they were only used as ornamental plants. It wasn't until several hundred years later that they became widely used in the Mediterranean food. The first written combination of pasta and tomatoes wasn't until 1891. And then they used lard as the base for the sauce instead of olive oil. Learning about this stuff makes me so happy! You will be hearing much more about my class as it goes on.
In an effort to avoid doing homework tonight, I got a burst of inspiration to cook dinner. I think I should have taken a culinary class while I was here. I pan seared chicken and sauteed red peppers. Then added a tomato sauce with some balsamic vinegar and basil. Then I cooked pasta and combined it all. That is definitely going to be a go to dish while I'm here.
My only complaint with Florence so far is that there are tons of mosquitoes! I have become a walking buffet table for them. Thankfully I remembered what my wise grandfather told me to do with the bites. Put toothpaste on them! So i am covered in little white spots and smell minty fresh. But it is working.
And I've started making a list of things that Italians don't believe in. Here it goes: peanut butter, dryers, standing in lines, leaving space between vehicles, pedestrian right of way, traffic laws in general. I'm sure as time goes on, this list will get much longer.
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