Museums & Chocolate

I am so so sorry to all of my blog readers! I know it has been almost a week since my last blog. This week has been amazing. As always, I mean if I ever have a day that isn't awesome that will be something to write home about. Well I can't go through every detail of my week but I will hit up some highlights and per my boyfriends request I will include lots of pictures detailing what I am talking about:) Your welcome Sam.

Classes are going well, and I am loving everything that I am learning. I really have yet to have a bad class. In my ceramics class we were told to try and imitate a sketch or a piece of pottery we liked. So I picked out this adorable little vase with a spout on it for pouring to copy. I spent the next five hours painstakingly crafting each coil to look exactly like the vase I was trying to imitate. Apparently I am not the greatest at copying other peoples work. By hour four my vase looked nothing like I wanted it too. It actually had started to resemble a fat little bird, so naturally I turned it into a fat little bird. And surprise surprise I am pretty pleased with how it turned out.

Cute right? I am pretty excited to fire and paint it. I will take suggestions on colors:)

My other classes passed by without incidence until Thursday when my Medici class was scheduled to take a tour of the Duomo. However due to the weather my professor decided to cancel and lecture and show a documentary instead. Before I left for Italy I watched this three part documentary on the Medici family so I wouldn't be going into the class blind, and I actually enjoyed it. Well we watched this exact same documentary in class on Thursday. So being who I am and not thinking before I talk I grinned and said "Oh I have seen this documentary it's really good" to the girl next to me. She, apparently thinking I was joking, replied with a snort and a "good one." Apparently watching documentaries where she comes from is unheard of, whatever she is missing out.

Thusday night my roommates and I had dinner at the dining hall associated with our school. Every Thusday night is aimed toward a specific type of food and educating us on what we are eating. The night we went was a night of food and beer pairing all prepared in a six course meal of amazingness. We also tried three different types of beer to eat with our food.
The first course was steak tartar with a little baby egg fried on top and a sweet biscuit.

The next course was two succulent pieces of shrimp wrapped in prosciutto topped with a bit of beer foam. This was paired with an Italian beer, which I really liked.

Next was a creamy risotto topped with beets and toasted almonds

By this point we were all bursting at the seams with food but everything up to this point had been so amazing we were dying for more.
The next item was the best yet it was beer braised beef cheek with saffron potatoes that literally melted in my mouth.

By this point we had reached the deserts. The first was a small sphere of the best tasting Gelato I have ever had. According to the chef who came to talk to us it was glazed with malt! Even the Ice cream was beer themed. Oh also by this point we were tasting our third and last beer. It was a dark thick beer with a sweet tangy taste that was meant as a desert beer.

Finally we reached our last dish. It was a chocolate mouse with barley cream and lemon crumble. This almost pushed me to the edge of bursting, and for once I couldn't finish my desert!

By the end of the meal we were all grinning from ear to ear pleased with our company, the food, and the lovely evening. By the time I got home I was in a blissful state of happiness.

On Friday Mariana and I attended our first Museum, which we actually just stumbled upon on our way home. We bought the 8 euro pass that allowed us access to 9 other Museums all over Florence, which we thought was a pretty good deal. This Museum was called the Museo Horne and was a collection of art collected from homes all over Italy.

On Saturday four of us used our new 8 Euro pass to get into the Palazzo Medici Riccardi which was extremely beautiful! They have this room in one of the upstairs room that is covered in some really beautiful frescoes depicting some of the life events of the Medici Family. Downstairs they have an interactive exhibit where you stand on a designated spot in front of a projection screen showing the frescoes from upstairs with little boxes around certain areas. A camera tracks your movements and all you have to do is point to what you want to see and it zooms in and then gives you a little short clip of what that part of the painting is about.
Another one of the upstairs rooms had this amazing ceiling painting that we all stared at with our mouths open.

Beautiful right? 

After we left the Museum we went straight to the chocolate festival that was happening right down the street. Yea... you read that right... the chocolate festival. There were about 15 different booths selling everything you could imagine in chocolate.  

Everything in that picture is made out of chocolate! I ate a chocolate shish kabob of strawberries and bananas and because it was so cold I also bought a hot chocolate. The festival is going on all week and I am sure I will be back. Especially since I have to walk by it every day on my way to class. 

Well that has pretty much been my week. As always I will report back with more later. Love you all

Love from a very happy girl,

Natalie 

Video Blog!

My New Love of Wednesdays

Let me start off by explaining that I don't have classes on Wednesday! Life is oh so good!!! I was writing in my classes to my planner today and for some reason I flipped back to a week from last semester. The little boxes representing my days last semester were filled to the brim with tiny reminders of rehearsals, due dates, meetings and papers where as this semester I have two days off a week.

I told a friend earlier that I didn't want to go back but I just wanted to clarify that I do miss home:) I miss my Sambam and his fantastic sense of humor and smile:) I miss the hugs and love from my family and last but not least I miss the green room and my theater family, of course not excluding my favorite professor and our weekly meetings that always cheered me up. Well enough of my sappy shout outs and on to my day. <3

I slept in today and did a bit of shopping with my roommates (who I still love). We walked around the city for a while and went into some touristy shops. I need to learn how to not look like an american. Before coming here I was under the impression that I wouldn't stick out as an american since I look like an Italian but apparently I was wrong. It may be that the Italian women walk with such grace and beauty and I tramp through the streets like a rouge elephant, not to mention I still run into door frames and trip over every stone. Ah well perhaps after a month or show I will get the hang of it. My hopes aren't high though I don't think I will ever be graceful.

I was thinking today about how lucky I am to have the roommates that I do. There is always someone home and there is always someone to go do things with. And at the same time I can do things by myself with no problem at all. I really do have the best of both worlds. Speaking of the roommates tonight we are cooking with some other friends. I love roommate dinners:) Nothing but food love and laughter!

Alright well I'm off to go start cooking tomorrow is my History of the Medici Family class which I am really excited for. So I will report back on that late tomorrow.

Love from Italia,
Natalie <3

Chapter Two: Natalie is actually on time!

Day two of classes started out just as any other school day would begin. I woke up my typical hour and a half before I had to leave and spent about 30 min laying in bed trying to stay warm. Here is the thing about Florence, they don't produce energy, they buy it from elsewhere. And as a consequence of this particular situation the Florentine law states that households can only have the heater on for 8 hours a day. They split it up between morning afternoon and night. So as you can imagine in late January in a top floor apartment where the heater is only on for a few hours a night, the nights can get pretty freaking cold. Hence my morning delema of not wanting to get out of bed. Literally every night I have slept in my super warm Wabash sweatshirt. And every morning I have a little race with myself seeing how fast I can put my clothes on.

My first class on Tuesdays isn't until noon which I am proud to report that I made it on time to this class, and it was all the way across the city. I did however forget to eat this morning but to my delight in my cooking class we talked for a while about Italian meat and cheese and then we got to sample some. Which, if I do say so myself was delicious!

This next part is for my mother because I know she would love this little bit of information. We talked for a while about a certain type of Salami called Finocchiona or Tuscan Fennel Salami. The Italian word for Fennel comes from a phrase meaning to tell something that isn't true. And the salami came about when butchers used to stuff bad meat with Fennel to make it taste better and to pass it off as better meat. Interesting right? Well that was pretty much my cooking class. I think I am really going to enjoy it. Next I had a European literature class which after being in for 5 minutes I decided to drop. Our first assignment was to read and write a detailed analysis of Animal Farm. NO thank you!

And now I am sitting in my apartment typing this blog before I have to go to my Italian class, which I am pretty excited for.

Love from Italia,
Natalie

First Day of Class

Yesterday and today have been my relaxing days. Since I have been running on pretty much pure excitement since arriving it caught up with me in less than a week and I am now fighting off a cold. This morning I read my schedule wrong and I thought I had class at 12 and around 11:30 I realized that my class had actually started at 9. If I were in the states I know exactly what I would have done. I would have panicked, got really emotional and ran to class. Something about Italy has made me reevaluate the time in my life I spend  worrying about things. There is no need to worry, my life is so amazing I have absolutely no reason to feel sad. So anyways this class is literally 5 hours long....so I had the time. So I set off across the river to my class which it turns out was on the other side of the city. It was about a 20 min walk. Once I got there the professor was extremely understanding and he just gave me a chunk of clay and told me to experiment with it for the next two hours. Which is what I did.

As I sat sculpting I thought about the irony of what I was doing and where I was doing it. Not two blocks down the street is the Piazza De San Marco where a massive bronze statue expertly crafted was staring into the back of my head through the buildings. Here I was putzing around with a little clay heart in the city where some of greatest sculptures to ever live did some of their greatest work. Well everyone has to start somewhere I guess. I just hope my works don't ever see the light of day, they would be considered an embarrassment to this city:)

I will write more tomorrow about my next day of class.

Caio for now
Natalie

The Hike Gone Right

  This morning I was so excited to go on an afternoon trip to the Boboli Gardens that are right around the corner from where I live. My roommates an I made sandwiches for a picnic and set off for a relaxing day that ended up turning into something unexpected. Once we got to the gardens we found out that it was 10 euro to get in, we decided against spending money and agreed to keep walking and find another free place to eat. On our way we came across a part of the ancient wall that used to protect Florence. We then enjoyed our sandwiches in a park up the road.

With our stomachs full and smiles all around we continued to trek up the hill. Something in me wanted to keep climbing higher. I wanted to see Florence from on top of the hills that surround the city. Our persistent climbing paid off immediately. Each street we climbed had a more beautiful view than the last. We shortly realized that we had left the tourists behind and we had somehow ended up in the Beverly Hills of Florence. The houses were gated, huge, and massive. At the top of one hill we stopped in a hotel to ask if there was somewhere we could get an amazing view of the city. The women at the desk directed us to continue our climb to the Piazzale Michelangelo which was up the road. After about 30 min of walking uphill we ended up at The Basilica of San Miniato Al Monte, a breathtaking Basilica with the most amazing view. Inside the walls were adorned with architectural detail that almost brought me to tears. I could almost feel the passion that went into the paintings and details. It sounds stupid and cliche but it really was so beautiful it hurt.

With another amazing day under my belt I am about to have dinner with my rommmates and I can't wait for more. 

Love from Italy,

Natalie

The Days Go By

Every day here seems like a dream, a crazy dream where I have suddenly started to live in a post card. If I ever become disenchanted with this city it may be time to just put me down, I am clearly out of my mind. My feet have never been this sore from walking but at the same time I have never been this happy about my feet being sore!

We went to a reception tonight with all of the students from my school. It was a huge gathering of students from everywhere and some really good food. There were some beautiful gardens out back that we did some exploring in and a small little hedge that formed a little maze and I felt like I was five years old again (always a good sign). After my roommates and I left we stopped into a place that we were told was the best gelato in Italy and it was absolutely AMAZING! My father would hate this but I got coconut and pineapple :)

After the amazing gelato we went out to some bars and I was thrilled to have the chance to have some full conversations in Italian! I was amazed how easily it came to me. Any time I didn't know a word I would just ask if they knew it and they would teach it to me. Another sign I am clearly meant to live here.

I can tell that there are some things pulling at me to ruin my time here but I refuse to let the petty little things get in the way of a once and a life time opportunity. I love it here and I don't want to spend all of my time dwelling on things and people that really don't matter.

Love from Italia!
Natalie