Je déteste l’emballage: Part Deux

For those of you who have been reading since the start, you’ll notice that this looks strikingly similar to my first post.  Hence the “Part Deux” added to the title.

We have started packing.  Ugh.

This time, instead of the constant worry and frustration that I may have forgotten something (which becomes increasingly less possible when you only have a certain amount of items with you, and they’re all in one room), I’m just worried that everything isn’t going to fit in our now reduced luggage.  We have basically three carry-on size bags, and my purse.  One of the bags can only serve to hold all of Jon’s camera equipment, and my purse is just a relatively tiny cross-body bag, so storage is limited.  So in reality, we have two.  Thankfully one of them is being checked, simply because of those unreasonably annoying fluid rules when it comes to flying.  Even worse, yesterday when we took our suitcase to the post office to mail it, we had to take a few things out because the scale here at home was wrong.  So we either have to find room for these items in our luggage, or bid them adieu.  Lets just hope we don’t have to say goodbye to much.

I’ve also come to the realization that I royally fail at post cards.  With all the chaos of dealing with our suit case yesterday, I forgot that I wanted to go to a tobacco shop so I could possibly buy individual stamps instead of an entire book.  So those very few lucky people may be getting a post card from Nice that’s stamped from another country.  I wonder if the post office is open on Saturday here…

I guess we’ll just have to see!  Wish us luck :)

Nous avons finalement reçu une réponse de l’Irlande!

Just a short post to let all of you know that our summer has officially been planned.  We have confirmed dates to farm in the following countries: Spain, Italy, Czech Republic, Germany, Holland, and finally Ireland!

That also means we have finally purchased our plane ticket home, and I can quit fretting about not getting back to Florida.  Not that I’ll find the July heat incredibly welcoming, but I’m sooo close to graduating, I would really like to get home and finish up my bachelors!

Tomorrow is our final day of class, and I’m having mixed emotions.  I feel like I’ve absorbed all the French humanly possible in this relatively short period of time, but I’m a little concerned about how the credits will transfer when we get back to the states.  Hopefully the lady in charge of signing off on that believes us when we say that two levels of French at Alliance Francaise is considerably more thorough and advanced than French 1-4 in college.  Keep your fingers crossed!

Now if USF would just finalize all these silly tax paper things for my financial aid, and my new apartment would let me know then I’m done with the leasing process until I get home, I can rest peacefully…

… okay, maybe not peacefully.  But I’d like to not worry about school, money for school, or a place to live while at school.

Until next time, passez une bonne journée! 

J’ai déjà commencé ma valise

Its kind of sad when that I don’t leave for another 5 days, and I’ve already started packing my stuff up.  Okay, maybe not completely sad, but I think sometimes I try to be too organized.

Jon’s mom did a little bit of research after our UPS shipping price scare, and found that it shouldn’t be much more than $100-150 to ship our big suitcase back to the states so we don’t have to carry it and a whole bunch of stuff we don’t need with us.  I really hope it’s somewhere close to that price range, because though it’s a little expensive, its well worth the convenience of not having all that extra stuff with us.  We’re hoping to go to the post office sometime today, so lets hope what she found is true!

Other than that, it’s about time I write and send out my postcards too.  I bought a handful for a few people a couple of weeks ago, and kind of forgot about them.  I also should start thinking of little things I want to bring home to my family and a couple of friends, which brought me to the unsettling realization that there isn’t a very cool French Riviera souvenir.  So, to my few friends and family who get something from me and look at it and wonder “Well how is this French?”… it probably isn’t, I probably just saw it and thought of you.  The only real souvenir of this region of France is this silly little sachet things filled with dried flowers and such that smell pretty.  I think it’s a little lame.

That is about it really.  I powered through the rest of my online courses for USF, so I’m done with all that (thank goodness!).  Just dinner plans tonight with Ilona, and trying to come up with something worth while for the weekend.  We shall see.

Until then, I’ve uploaded a new picture for the top of my blog, if you didn’t already notice.  Jon took a bunch of pictures from Breil-sur-Roya and put this panorama together from the top of the mountain we hiked.  If you look very closely, you can find me laying in the picture, enjoying the beautiful French sunshine. :)

Jon voulait voir des montagnes, donc j’ai trouvé des montagnes.

So, as we were approaching our second to last weekend in Nice, Jon’s mom (and most of our other friends) asked us “So what are you going to do this weekend?”  Likely question, but we didn’t have a definitive answer.  Jon just wanted to see some mountains.  After asking a friend if he would help us with a good place to go, and if he would like to join us, he was only able to provide some help with the former; apparently a thesis was calling him, poor guy.  He did however, suggest Mercantour National Park.  Well, Jon did some research and couldn’t find anything to get us into the park, despite its rather great size.  So he went to bed suuuuuper late after doing some night photography (while I slept, because I thought he was crazy), which allowed me some time alone to do some research in the morning when I woke up a few hours before he did.  Before Nicolas’ screams had a chance to wake him up, I found us train times and a village to see in one of the valleys that feeds into the national park.  Sure, we weren’t actually going to be in the park, but they were mountains, and we figured that was good enough for us.  Since Jon got so little sleep, I decided (after consulting the unpredictable weather forecast) against waking him up and saying “Come on, lets go!” and told him when he was awaken by the screams that I had plans for us the next day.  I figured that might make waking up to a screaming 3-year-old a little less annoying.

Saturday went by with not much to say about it; just some homework, some eating, some screaming, and some reading.  I finally finished Julia Child’s My Life in France and I loved it.  I’ve now moved on to my list of classics that I never read as a child, and the first on the list was Lewis Caroll’s Alice’s Adventure’s in Wonderland.  It’s definitely interesting!

Our plan Sunday morning was to get up early and take the 7:30ish train into Breil-sur-Roya.  Well, apparently it took Jon 20 minutes to even get me awake (I didn’t sleep well the night before, probably because I knew I needed proper rest), and after getting ready and double checking the train schedule, I realized that the times I had remembered we backwards; the train that left Nice left at 7:21, and the train that left Breil left at 7:38.  So on top of being late, we lost 17 minutes in my mistaken planning.  Thankfully though (and I already knew this), there was a train that left at 9:05 and we considered this not much time lost.  The train into the village was fairly smooth, mountainous views all about, and my ears popping like crazy the entire way.

Once we got to Breil-sur-Roya, we were met by a very tiny, adorable little village.  It being Sunday, and the fact that its touristy season doesn’t start until its warm enough to enjoy any water sports (since theres a wide river that runs right by it), not much was open to get something to eat.  We found one place were we had the most amazing fries, and Jon ordered something called the Americain and I ordered a kebab.  The Americain is basically France’s interpretation of American food smacked between halves of a baguette; one or two burgers split in half, lettuce, tomato, some sort of sauce to your preference, and fries.  Yes, fries in the sandwich.  It was delicious, but he couldn’t finish it.  After finishing our food, we told our server that we were looking to do some hiking and asked if he knew of a good place to start and how to get there.  He beckoned another girl, and she rambled off directions in the fastest French I’ve heard yet.  Thankfully though, we caught enough words, and I was able to follow most of what she was saying through her hands, and we found ourselves a path.  And boy was it a path.

The original path we found came to a fork, and we opted for the one that looked significantly steeper.  The name of the path was the Boucle de la Cruella which translates to the curls of Cruella (DeVille? Hehe).  Given the nature of Cruella, this path was nasty.  Really steep, really narrow, parts of it were extremely loose, and I was not doing well.  Part of the problem is our inability to plan proper amounts of water.  We ran out of water about halfway up the mountain, and had to take frequent breaks to combat the rest.  Its the sort of hike that gets your heart rate going pretty hard, but then every time my foot would slip on the loose rocks, my heart would skip a few beats out of fear, which would send it into an uncontrollable heart rate.  Not fun in the slightest.  But when we made it up to the top where the old château and its ruins were, it was well worth the hike.  The view was fantastic.

One our way back down the path, we ran into a mysterious dog that scared the living daylights out of us, but ended up being totally adorable and unbelievably happy.  We also found his owners a few meters a way further back on the path.  Nothing like some doggy lovins to make you feel great!  As we continued to climb down, Jon insisted that instead of going back to the village (where there was nothing to do for a few hours before our train home, but there was water) we should take the other part of the path that forked off at the beginning and see where it takes us.  He always wins.

After some convincing, we headed that direction, and noticed that the river that the mountains surround was getting closer and closer to us.  Given our thirst, and how crystal clear the water looked, we decided to keep going until we could find a way to get down to the water.  We eventually did, and found the most peaceful place to spend about an hour and a half of our afternoon.  We filled up our water bottle, examined it thoroughly, smelt it, and then eventually took a sip.  It tasted wonderful; just like the water that originally filled the bottle.  Sure, in a survival situation I wouldn’t have done that without testing the water first, but we were thirsty, not lost, and not far from help.  So far, its proven to not be a bad choice, as neither of us have come down with mysterious symptoms out of no where.  Jon was wearing his FiveFinger shoes again, which are much better suited for water than my Nike tennis shoes, so he took of his shorts (don’t worry folks, he was wearing under armor underneath!) and got in the water to take some pictures of the little bitty water falls around us.  It was too cold for me, so I stuck my toes in ever few minutes too cool off.

Even more interesting though, was there were quite a few of these little purpley-blue butterflies everywhere that insisted on landing on us.  I don’t really know much about butterflies, but they were not shy like they usually are.  They landed on our feet, shoes, Jon’s socks, our hands, watches, hair, everything.  They were adorable and entertaining.  So while Jon was off mid-thigh high in ice cold water, I was being entertained by a bunch of adorable butterflies.  I thought that sort of thing only happened in Disney movies!

Once we started to feel a little too relaxed, we decided it was time to head back into town.  We figured we had just about enough time to stop at the first place we saw that had ice cream, have a little treat, and head to the train station to take the first train back.  Sure, it left Breil-sur-Roya about an hour earlier than we had intended on leaving, but we did a lot more in our 7 hours than we thought we would have, and did not regret our decision.  We were exhausted, and didn’t want to push ourselves so far that the last couple hours just wouldn’t be enjoyable.  Ice cream proved to be a wonderful idea, as I ordered possibly the best vanilla ice cream I have ever had in my entire life, with chocolate sauce and whipped cream on top!  It actually tasted like vanilla, something most vanillas lack.  With a Coke to wash it all down, which proved to be a good thing to order since it helped make Jon’s lemon sorbet and vodka a little easier to stomach when he mixed some in.  Definitely a good idea.

Our walk back to the train station seemed longer than we thought, since we’d had time to relax while we ate our ice cream, and were growing more tired by the minute.  The train ride home was the same as the one there, but with a lot more napping.  We got home and basically went into zombie mode; we didn’t even have dinner.  This was all made better by the absence of a screaming 3-year-old, since our host family is out of town until Friday or Saturday.  Yay for silence!

I’d say, good day accomplished.

Oh of course, les photos.

Breil-sur-Roya

Water and mountains? Yes please!

This is how the river is able to widen so much. Cheaters :P

Just an adorable alley.

My lunch.

Jon’s monster.

Before we started our hike.

The arch that marked the beginning of our trail.

Earth is so cool

Pretty stream

The view from the top!

See the little building pretty much centered in the picture? Thats where we started.

The castely thing.

The mystery puppy!

Jon can’t resist a puppy.

Did I mention how cool Earth is?

Trying to find our way down to the water.

I sat on the little bridge while Jon investigated.

Butterfly!

Butterfly on Jon’s shoe!

Butterfly tickling my toes!

Butterflies on my watch!

Butterflies on Jon’s icky sock!

Jon pouring really cold water on his head.

Butterfly on Jon’s camera!

The view from where we sat.

Our “new” bottle of Evian!

The best vanilla ice cream on the world.

Ce voyage n’est pas censé être stressant

So the past couple days have been a roller coaster.

The first major loop was learning that our information on the Schengen Zone and its rules were out of date.  We were under the impression that you could only stay in each country of the zone for a total of 90 days, but now you can only stay in the entire zone for 90 days.  When we leave France, it will be day 84, and all but our last farm is within the Schengen Zone.  So after going to see the United States Consulate here in Nice, and consulting with some people back home, we found out that we’ll actually more than likely be just fine; just travel quietly, be really nice, and worse comes to worse, play dumb.  Which means I’m going to be a rubber band ball of stress everytime we’re traveling.

That is, if I get to travel.

The second loop is that our continued research in finding train and plane tickets to all these places has proven to cost us more than we had originally budgeted for.  Which means with the amount of money I currently have left, I can’t afford to get from one country to the next and get home.  Getting home is pretty important… but so is this trip.  Considering all the time I spent emailing all these farms and organizing them, all the saving I did before the trip, and all the work I did throughout my college years so I can earn the scholarships I have to make this possible, it’s extremely important to me that I actually get to go through with our plan.  I don’t like the idea of Jon even considering forfeiting anything because I can’t, but I also don’t like that people seem to think that I’m merely a tag-a-long in this trip and that I didn’t have an active part in its planning from the very beginning.

Combine all this with a six hour time difference (which means my mom is working when I’m in need of someone to talk to), the fact that I emailed my dad two weeks ago just to say hi and I still haven’t heard from him (he’s been busy getting ready for a new job, which involves a lot of travel, but still), and the fact that my new Bank of America card is stuck somewhere in Nice’s postal service (that is a story unto itself, and I will be giving Bank of America an earful when I get back to the states) and you can imagine my state is probably pretty fragile.  Very fragile, really.

Okay, sorry for the sap story, but my absence had to be accounted for some how.  There you have it.

Vous allez faire quoi pendant vos vacances?

Alright, enough about my Italian adventures.  I hope you enjoyed something a little out of our normal routine!

Since we got back from Torino, we got straight to seriously working on booking all of our farms for the second half of our trip.  We had been trying for weeks to just focus on Spain, but that was proving to be extremely difficult to plan.  While planning our first destination is obviously important, I felt it was equally as important to start looking in the other countries before they all book up too.  So I took over the emailing and started with the smallest countries with the fewest farms.  We had to change our plans slightly; originally we planned to see Switzerland, but after emailing all 3 possible farms, we decided to start looking at other countries too.  For the Switzerland slot I also emailed farms in Belgium (all 4 of them) and then several in Germany.  I also emailed all the possible farms in the Czech Republic and the Netherlands (3 and 5 respectively), and simply crossed my fingers that one of them would respond positively.  I had the support of my two friends at home, Jenna and Cristina, along the way, each of them insisting I keep my chin up, thoughts positive, and emails will come.  Believing them, I asked for good vibes, and went to bed feeling optimistic, several emails later.

The next morning we woke up to no replies, but given that we leave for class a little before nine o’clock, I decided this shouldn’t worry me.  When we got home from class though at one, we had 3 emails in our inbox.  One positive, two negative.  I was excited, we had officially booked our dates for the Netherlands!  Thankfully, this farm is only an hour away from Amsterdam, and the family has lived in the city for the majority of their lives.  Nothing like insider information on what to do and see!  That night, along side my homework, I continued to send emails to farms in Germany, and then started looking into Italy and Ireland.  After a long chat with my mom about my planning for the summer, planning for the fall semester, and getting updated on things at home, I went to bed feeling the same as I did the night before; optimistic.

The following morning went exactly the same as the previous.  Nothing when our alarm went off, but we had a positive reply from Germany (a farm between Berlin and Hamburg) waiting in our inbox when we got out of class!  Two farms officially confirmed, we were a third there.  Given that we hadn’t heard anything from the Czech Republic, and how badly Jon wanted to return, I insisted he call the farm there that looked the most promising, one just a little over an hour outside of Prague.  After buying the minimum amount of Skype credits allowed, and waiting 15 minutes for them to apply to his account, he nervously called the farm, fingers crossed that they spoke English well.  It was a quick conversation, but all positive.  She would send us an email confirming the dates, and we were booked.  All in a span of less than three full days, we had half of our farms booked.  Now thats what I call progress.

The next day we were able to confirm a farm just outside of Madrid in Spain, and today we finally confirmed a farm in the heart of Tuscany, Italy.  I am ecstatic that this has finally come together.  At this point, all the gaps are filled.  We still have Ireland to plan, but thats our last destination, and therefore doesn’t worry me as much.  Since we don’t have a ticket home to Florida yet, should Ireland prove to be impossible to book, we just go home early; not preferred of course, but definitely better than having a two week gap to try and fill on a limited budget.

Needless to say, I’m relieved.  At least I can stop stressing for now; you know, until I have to magically come up with all the money for this, despite the fact that the exchange rate from the USD to EUR has NOT been moving in our favor?

Okay, I’ll take the good as it comes, and worry about the rest when I need to.

Until next time, passer un bon week-end!

La mozzarella è migliore in Italia: Parta Prima

Since I know very little Italian, I hope Google Translate doesn’t fail me this time! But hey! Look to the right! I finally got to use a different category!

I’ve been some what dreading this post, simply due to the magnitude of information and experiences I feel the need to share with you.  I learned a lot in a very fast three-day period of time, some good and some not so good.  Regardless, it must be said, so I’ll do so in parts.  Here goes nothing…

First let me say, I don’t think trains will become my preferred method of travel any time soon.  Especially in Italy.  This was my first time riding a train, and I found the whole process to be extremely unorganized.  I can’t exactly figure out why a more efficient and organized system can’t be implemented, because I thought of several things that would help just waiting for our first train.  I think it just boils down to the Southern European mentality.  Why bother?  It works just fine.  Except when it doesn’t.  I’ll get to that later though.

I will say that riding a train through the mountains in Italy had its ups.  Literally, my ears were popping like crazy.  Haha.  But in all seriousness, the views were spectacular.  At one point we were high enough that we got to a little mountain town just covered in snow.  It was beautiful, and for a few moments I seriously wished we had gotten off the train there.  Also, unlike in a car, I was able to read comfortably without feeling sick to my stomach after a few paragraphs, which made the nearly 5 hour train ride a little less annoying.

Once we arrived in Torino, we found that our hotel was much closer to the train station than we had originally anticipated.  We also found out that 3 stars must not have the same meaning in Europe that it does  in the United States.  The reviews we read promised that someone at the desk always spoke English, which we found to be untrue, that there was a good continental breakfast, which their wasn’t, and that the rooms were nice.  The room really wasn’t bad, just extremely small.  Not a huge deal, since our plans didn’t include staying in the hotel all day anyway, but we definitely didn’t feel like it was worth what we spent on it.  But alas, in Torino, all lodging is expensive, especially in the center of town.  If we wanted cheaper, we would have had to stay 10 miles or so out of the city’s center, which is quite difficult when you don’t have a car.

After we settled in and relaxed for a few minutes, we set out to try and find some pizza.  I’ve decided, after visiting Italy, that there is just no justifiable reason for Chicago style pizza.  Italians eat it like the New Yorkers do, and it will always be my favorite.  It was simple, and delicious.  We followed this with some real Italian gelato (which tastes pretty much just like any other gelato, but thats not to say it wasn’t delicious) and a walk to do some exploring.  We found a lot of what we planned on further investigating the next day, and bought a map of the city with all the popular tourist attractions marked on it.  It was actually kind of cool- they had those “You are here” maps in a few places, and on the side of the case it was in had a thing where you put 50 cents in and you get the same map that was displayed.  50 cents well spent, because it had everything, and in Italian, English, Spanish, French and German.  We headed back to the hotel a little earlier than we probably would have normally so we could get some proper sleep for the following day.

I have to gloat a little, because I’m proud of the fact that not only did I manage to get up and out of the hotel by 10 AM, but I also managed to shower, put make up on and straighten my hair.  Usually when I try to leave the house that early, I only manage to get the first done.  But the Italians are quite fashionable, I couldn’t let a lazy appearance scream “I’m a tourist” any more than my freckles already were.  I even remembered to bring and wear my contacts so I could actually wear my sunglasses, that I actually remembered to bring.  I was feeling quite organized.

On our handy little map, we saw a market just past the Duomo.  It being a Saturday, we figured that would be the perfect place to start.  After frequent stopping to take pictures of things (we were easily distracted), we arrived around lunch time and the market was thriving.  I’ve nicknamed it “The War Zone” because it is serious there.  Crazy even, but totally exhilarating.  Since we did arrive later than we’d hoped, we decided to buy some bread, some cured sausage (closer to a salami maybe, or those summer sausages that are popular around the holidays, but obviously much better), some fresh mozzarella di buffalo, a bottle of Sprite, an orange, and some beautiful little tomatoes.  We ended up with (on accident of course) about 4 people’s worth of food, all for under 12€.  Food is really pretty inexpensive in Italy, and since a small town close to Torino serves as the home office to the Slow Food Movement, it was all incredibly delicious.  We found a nice little place to sit down and enjoy “the goods” and then ended up giving the rest away to a homeless lady we saw with a baby on our way to the market.  It would have gone bad on such a warm day in my purse, or been smushed.   Good food, and good karma.  Yes, please.

Everything in Torino just seemed huge.  The plazas (called piazzas in Italian) were much bigger than any I’ve seen in France, and flanked by gigantic, ancient buildings on all sides.  This I found a little overwhelming, but in a good way.  I also wasn’t all that surprised (and neither was Jon) by the sights simply because of how over-taught Roman architecture is in most European history courses.  This didn’t make it any less beautiful of course, but I felt like I wasn’t seeing it for the first time.  I did enjoy seeing the sort of buildings that modern architecture was based on though.  I find architecture extremely interesting, and if I had any talent with a pencil I may have considered majoring in it, but alas, my Uncle Jay will have to remain the family architect for now.  All that being said, Torino really was beautiful, and considerably cleaner than France.  It had the same little silly trash (like cigarette butts and small pieces of paper and such) that most big cities have, but not in excess, and they didn’t leave their dogs poo in the streets.  It was nice to look up while I walked for a change.  I’ve always known the Italians to be proud (proven by the abundance of Italian flags, even though this may have been because they’re currently celebrating their 150th birthday), so the fact that it was cleaner than France didn’t surprise me.  It was refreshing, to say the least.

To be continued… (but not without some pictures!)

Torino Porta Nuova. The biggest train station I’ve ever seen.

My first gelato

Jon’s first gelato

The market, AKA “The War Zone”

The market, AKA “The War Zone”

The market, AKA “The War Zone”

The market, AKA “The War Zone”

The market, AKA “The War Zone”

The market, AKA “The War Zone”

The goods.

The yummy little sandwiches we made.

This is what we ate next to. Where else?

And the view just behind us.

The Civic Museum of Ancient Art in Piazza Castello

Roman Architecture. & See, a bunch of Italian flags!

Roman Architecture.

Royal Palace in Piazza Castello

Roman Architecture.

Roman Architecture.

Us in Piazza San Carlo

Notre famille est de retour

Well, our family got back a little over an hour ago, and I’m already tired of French Dora’s voice.  You really appreciate the silence when its gone.

It was yet another gloomy day in Nice, despite weather predictions all week claiming the sun would come up.  To make matters worse, before deciding not to go to the Bataille des Fleurs on Wednesday because of the relentless wind, we checked to make sure the weather for Saturday was supposed to be good.  It promised bright sun, with a 10% chance of rain.  Well, now its promising rain.  I guess we’ll be going to the parade in the rain, because its our last chance.

Class today wasn’t bad though.  I received a zillion compliments saying I looked nice today, even though I’ve worn that outfit at least five times since we got here.  Only difference was I actually got up in time to kind of fix my hair, play around with some make up, and put my contacts on.  I think its the contacts that did it.  I usually hide my make up behind my big nerdy glasses, but the room is small enough that I can read the board with my contacts, so I thought I’d give it a try.  More importantly, I was still expecting the sun to come up, and wanted to wear my sunglasses.  C’est la vie.

This week has proven best to serve as a catch up week.  On anything and everything.  Talking to friends, online course work, and several hours spent in my Kindle, getting to know Julia Child more and more each day.  If only I could do that on the beach!

Où est le soleil?

Alright Nice, seriously.  I signed up for three months on the Mediterranean!  WHERE IS THIS SUN!?

Okay, had to vent just a little.  But in all honesty, I’m a little bummed that its been so gloomy here.  In Nice, there really isn’t much to do except eat and shop when its grey like this, and the ladder I should do without, because Nice does have wonderful shopping, and I have very little self control when it comes to shoes and handbags.  I mean, I’ve been giving boots like these the same amount of wishful glances as the tartes au citron in the bakery windows!  Needless to say, I should avoid mindlessly walking around the mall.

I will say though, we still haven’t visited any of the museums.  I suppose now would be the best time to do so.  They’re free, but they’re also small, so it would really only buy us another maybe, 3 or 4 afternoons of entertainment before we’re back to square one.

On a brighter note, Jon and I are in the process of planning a trip this weekend to Torino, Italy.  Its only about, 6 hours away by train, so we would get there around 7pm, stay up all night walking around and exploring, check into a hotel that morning so we can shower and take a nap, go out and enjoy Torino during the day and into the evening, and get some sleep in our hotel Saturday night so we don’t miss our early Sunday morning train.  Sounds like I should have a caffeine section in my budget for the weekend, thats for sure.  But we want to get the most out of Torino without paying for two nights in a hotel.  We’ll see how it goes as we get closer in our planning.

So, for those reading in other parts of the world, I hope you’re weather is beautiful.  All my Florida friends have been bragging about tanning at the pool or the beach; you bet the moment the sun comes back out I’m going straight to the beach after class, Kindle in hand, ready to soak up that beautiful sun.  Or at least try- those who know me know that I’m very fair skinned, burn easily, and freckle.  Which means I should probably figure out what sunscreen is in French.

Bonne journée!

Oh! Also, if you’ll notice, at the bottom of my posts I’ve added buttons so you can easily share them with your friends and family on whatever social networking sites you frequent!  So feel free to share!

Nous prévoyons un repas grec

In my previous post, I mentioned a lunch that Jon and I had with a few classmates of ours, and that this week we’d be hosting one of our own.  After pondering on a cuisine type for a day or so, we landed on Greek.  Obviously, Jon and I are not Greek, but we’re firm believers in the fact that there is very little that one could call “American Food”, with the exception of soul food, which would involve frying chicken, and I don’t want to try that for the first time for a bunch of new friends.  So therefore opted for one of our favorites.  Our choice may have been swayed slightly by the fact that we’ve been craving tzatziki sauce basically since we got here, but that is neither here nor there.

However, planning a meal for people of many different cultural and religious backgrounds could be a little difficult.  For instance, Khalid and Doha are both from Saudi Arabia, and Muslim, so pork is not an option.  Fine by me, its neither my favorite nor Jon’s.  But Neelima is from India, so Hindu, and cannot eat beef.  So that leaves us with chicken, lamb, and fish.  Lamb would be classically Greek, so definitely an option.  Fish isn’t possible because I’m weary of serving fish that isn’t purchased that day, which would make having a quick lunch after class a little more difficult.  And of course, the comfort zone, chicken.  Somehow we landed on Greek meatballs, made with lamb, onion, feta and Kalamata olives, despite the fact that neither of us have cooked lamb before.  Hopefully this goes well, otherwise all we’ll have is a rockin’ Macedonian salad and tzatziki with pita.  I am remaining optimistic though; Jon and I surprise ourselves in the kitchen sometimes, so I’m confident in our ability to follow a recipe.  Converting US standard measurements to metric may prove to be a little annoying and time consuming, but alas, we always did well in math.

I will be photo documenting everything, and we’ll start preparing everything tomorrow night.  I’m a little more excited than I should be, but I love to cook, and I haven’t been able to in over a month.  Wish me luck! :)