Firenze

I just returned from the world’s largest chocolate festival. Eurochocolate, http://www.eurochocolate.com, is an annual fair devoted entirely to chocolate. It was packed! This year in the ten days it’s hosted in Perugia (in Umbria to the south of Florence), they’re expecting over a million people. In fact, the bus I went on couldn’t get into the city; we had to park a town over and then ride the train into the city. From there, everything in the city was setup for the festival. The busses were only running the “ciacco line”. The police were linking their arms and forming lines to channel the herding pedestrian traffic. The only nice thing about being so crowded? There aren’t many 6’3″ Italians who go to chocolate festivals.

There are a lot of free giveaways (like chocolate cookies and Coca-cola Light), but most of the chocolate is for sale. While the displays on fair-trade cocoa and the new types of pepper-chocolate were interesting, the tasting was the best. There were chocolates made without butter or sugar that tasted so smooth. There were dark chocolates that you couldn’t bite through – you had to suck on them. They had almost anything you can imagine with chocolate. One lady had long hair and had it styled with chocolate (that was actually kind of disgusting since it had started melting mid-day).

I came home with some fun stuff too: coffee beans covered with white chocolate; a bar of dark chocolate with mint crystals in it; a white chocolate bar with some types of nuts and toffees inside; a giant bottle of chocolate liqueur; a bottle of chocolate pepper vodka (yeah, I know, they have EVERYTHING with chocolate in it); a box of wafer cookies filled with dark chocolate; a bar of dark Cuban chocolate; and my personal favorite — two bars of pepper-chocolate. The pepper-chocolate burns on the way down but is kind of fun since the taste stays in your mouth and throat for a while.

After the first twenty minutes of walking around I was already tired of the chocolate. I’d tasted so much so fast that the rest of the time was scoping out what to stock for the rest of the semester (and whatever survives long enough to make it home). The sugar (and caffeine) high lasted me well into the afternoon. Here are three things I’d definitely recommend before going to a chocolate festival: 1) don’t bother with breakfast before going, 2) take a water bottle — washing chocolate down with hot chocolate is counter-productive, and 3) pack something salty for lunch so you don’t wait in line for a prosciutto sandwich. My afternoon snack that was a little salty: popcorn with chocolate instead of butter. It was nice, but it simply lifted the sugar high back to where it’d been before.

You don’t have to go to Belgium or the middle of the Swiss Alps to get great food and great chocolate. Italy once again proved that you don’t have to go far away to experience something completely different.

It’s great how the small reminders of familiarity can change an entire day. I spent the first part of the day getting a lot done. A little reading here and there adds up. Then came the familiar: Mike’s cooking lessons. These are turning into the highlights of my weeks. I know this is going to be shocking, but classes and living in a tourist-trap don’t match up to learning how to cook. The only thing that made this one extra-special: two of my TCU friends from before I arrived in Florence enjoying it with me.

Natalie Mattern and Brooks Zitzmann are two friends from back in Ft. Worth who are studying in London. Natalie, one of the co-directors of Awakening last Fall, is graduating in December (with me and so many other friends that I have). Brooks, graduated my first year at TCU, but has just finished her Masters degree at Oxford. She’s been working on it for 12 months straight and is now done! So what do they do on their short break? They come to Italy!

Nat and I had been playing e-mail tag for the past week exchanging info. They spent yesterday and the first part of today in Cinque Terre, a gorgeous (or so I hear) place over on the coast. I’m planning on going, but not until November. In the end, they rode the train directly into Florence and met me at Mike’s. They didn’t know what they were getting into! The hostel they’re staying at turns out to only be a block from the apartment, so luckily it worked out as well.

OK, now for the menu for the best meal the girls had in a long time: Cipollata, Petto Di Polli Alla Fiorentina, Tiramasu and a Vino Rosso. In English: Onion Soup, Chicken Florentine, Tiramasu (don’t know an English one for that) and a Red Wine. That still doesn’t do it justice.

Cipollata:

A soup made of onions, sausage and cubed bacon all based on a broth Mike had been prepping for the afternoon. The broth ended up being the key: he’d been boiling all kinds of veggies in it. This was served on garlic toast. Topping the soup: a lot of parmesan cheese – a lot! Imagine French Onion but Italian style.

Petto Di Pollo Alla Fiorentina:
Chicken breasts stuffed with a mixture of spinach, parmesan, pine nuts and salt and paper. The chicken is then browned in olive oil and baked the rest of the way. Who knew that chicken was supposed to have melted cheese, nuts and green stuff inside of it?!?

Tiramasu:
Like nothing I’ve ever had. This one even topped the kind we learned at the cooking school. Chocolate and coffee mixture isn’t good enough for this one; instead, it takes Kahlua. I’m not going to even describe the rest since I’ll probably make it a lot. Just one more hint: the not-so-secret ingredient is Mascarpone Cheese (not the Kahlua)!

The cooking crew — with Brooks holding the Tiramasu

After we got done at Mike’s (4 hours after we started), we walked around and enjoyed the Florence night. We did the Edison’s (bookstore) thing, but I think I’m out-growing Edisons. The atmosphere is great, but it’s just not enough. Bookstores are great because there’s SO much there; but, they’re also my escape. In Cambridge, the Coop was a social thing for me to do with classmates. Here, Edisons was kind of social since I was with Nat and Brooks. I’m naturally a recluse in bookstores. I’ll just have to avoid them and order all of my books online. Oh wait, that’s even worse!

Seeing Natalie and Brooks was great! Familiar things are nice … now for something I’m rarely too familiar with: sleep. Tomorrow morning I’m getting up and going to EuroChocolate.

I’m pretty excited. I just got the e-mail. The e-mail that told me two of my best friends are now engaged! Richard Newton, one of my roommates back at TCU, has been dating Sarah Harville since our sophomore year. Now they’re engaged.

They both support each other and love each other so much. Whether helping each other study for Religion midterms and finals or whether worshiping together at UBC, the two are there for each other. I kind of wish I wasn’t in Florence at the moment. Just to be around them right now would make my year. But alas, I’m over here and can only read the e-mails and catch Richard on Instant Messenger. Oh well, it works. So, if any of you who read this at TCU are around them, TELL ME WHAT YOU’RE NOTICING: describe the things you’re hearing and seeing! Until then, I can only sit and imagine from the tidbits of info I have.

Kneading is an art. It creates; it forms; it sustains. Kneading envelopes, turns, pushes, and envelopes again.

The bakery at the end of my street is one of Florence’s best. It’s the little details that help in distinguishing this ‘forno’-expert from all of the others. The baker speaks at least three languages and smiles and waves at me every time I walk by the windows. His shop is set up with two doors that are perfect for creating a traffic flow during the busy hours. For 1.5 euros I can get a huge slice of pizza that quenches my hunger for a long time. For under three euros I can get a day’s supply of biscotti cookies and cheddar biscuits. All of his work is done because of kneading. Yes, he has machines that help him, but he still does some.

Mike, my cooking guru, has some of the highest standards for kneading. When we made homemade pasta noodles or focaccia bread with Duccio (Mike’s instructor), we were pressed for time and Duccio said “Good enough.” Mike came from across the room saying, “No way, come on Duccio.” Then he turned to us and chided, “you realize he’s letting you off easy, right?” It’s funny.

Texture is essential. Material is essential. With everything in baking, however, the form at the end of the kneading is never the final result. Kneading is only one of the preparation steps. After adding heat, allowing time, or simply using for the intended purpose, the form that results is never identical to the beginning. Bread rises, noodles are cut and formed, pie crusts are fit into a mold.

One of the best metaphors for God’s shaping our lives is that of the potter and the clay. Taken from all over the bible (I saw it was in Jeremiah this morning), the process is the molding of our lives into something better than their current form. The ironic requirement for the metaphor is that bread or clay has to have air kneaded out of it. The hot air has to be forced out so that it’s easier to mold and bring to a better texture. The strange aspect with kneading is that after the air-removing process, and after the molding into the perfect form, the form is still shapable. It can still change until something else happens: it’s form hardens by either time or temperature.

My favorite musical genre is Broadway. It probably started from the musical nature of Disney in my younger years (you know: The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin, The Lion King). The lyrics give the meaning of the songs but the melodies cement the impact. For some reason, probably the copyrights most of all, I can’t put one of my new favorite songs on my website.

In the weeks before leaving for Florence, my camp co-counselor from this summer, urged me to get the soundtrack for the musical “Wicked.” Now, to be fair, one of my best friends at TCU had told me that in April, but it didn’t sink in until the end of the summer. “Wicked” is the musical based on a book of the same name that takes a different look at “The Wizard of Oz.” In what one reviewer called “the year’s best guilty-pleasure,” the stories of the three witches in Oz intertwine and mold together.

My favorite character, Elphaba (the Wicked Witch of the West), goes through the whole story wanting to be changed. She wants to be ‘de-greenified’ and she wants to be equipped and empowered (by the faux-powerful Wizard) to help everyone else. Elphaba, through the entire story, is actually saying that she needs to be kneaded. Her point is that she thinks she can be better and she wants someone to change her.

Before I give you the words to her duet with Glinda (Glinda the “Good” — the witch who rides around in a bubble), I want to point out that Elphaba was wanting a mentor. It turns out that she became disillusioned with her mentor’s lack of abilities (and honesty) and wanted something better. In the end, as in all of our lives, the change comes from the place least expected; those surrounding us are the ones who help mold us and shape us. What allows Elphaba to be changed? Her knowing that she needed to be kneaded.

For Good
Music and Lyrics by Stephen Schwartz

ELPHABA
I’m limited:
Just look at me – I’m limited
And just look at you –
You can do all I couldn’t do, Glinda
So now it’s up to you
(spoken) For both of us (sung) Now it’s up to you:

GLINDA
I’ve heard it said
That people come into our lives for a reason
Bringing something we must learn
And we are led
To those who help us most to grow
If we let them
And we help them in return
Well, I don’t know if I believe that’s true
But I know I’m who I am today
Because I knew you:
Like a comet pulled from orbit
As it passes a sun
Like a stream that meets a boulder
Halfway through the wood
Who can say if I’ve been changed for the better?
But because I knew you
I have been changed for good

ELPHABA
It well may be
That we will never meet again
In this lifetime
So let me say before we part
So much of me
Is made of what I learned from you
You’ll be with me
Like a handprint on my heart
And now whatever way our stories end
I know you have re-written mine
By being my friend:
Like a ship blown from its mooring
By a wind off the sea
Like a seed dropped by a skybird
In a distant wood
Who can say if I’ve been changed for the better?
But because I knew you:

GLINDA
Because I knew you:

BOTH
I have been changed for good

ELPHABA
And just to clear the air
I ask forgiveness
For the things I’ve done you blame me for

GLINDA
But then, I guess we know
There’s blame to share

BOTH
And none of it seems to matter anymore

Who can say if I’ve been changed for the better?
I do believe I have been changed for the better?

GLINDA
And because I knew you:
ELPHABA
Because I knew you:

BOTH
Because I knew you:
I have been changed for good.

What will it take for God to change me? Admitting that I need to be kneaded. It also involves someone like Mike saying “that’s not good enough” and Melanie and Jessica for saying “try this” and for every other person for molding me in different ways.

What could be worse than my third technological casualty during my stay here in Italy? The fourth, which almost happened! When I was cooking a great sauce for my angel hair pasta tonight, I tripped over my power cord plugged into my Apple Powerbook. It wasn’t good. When I plugged it back in, it started clicking. So I took off the European power adapter and put the American one on and then plugged that into a European converter I have; still clicking. In all of those stages it wouldn’t power the laptop either. It was gone.

Then came the other scare for the night (besides the midterm that I have tomorrow in my Political Science class): my iPod wouldn’t work. It said that it didn’t have any charge left in the battery. This was the major problem with this generation of the iPod; in fact, Apple had to settle a lawsuit because of it. What was strange with this one was that I’d listened to it a half an hour before and it had a great battery. After a while I was lucky and giving it a jump-start from my ever-depleting laptop battery got it going. Want to know the only good thing about not being able to charge an iPod in Italy? Half of the TCU group has our iPods with us, so chargers aren’t in short supply either!

I’m not worrying too much about these. Once I figure out how to get a charger, things will be great. Until then, however, I’m running on fumes. So, don’t expect tons of updates on the site until I get more stability with my technology!

I’ve finally decided something – I’m digging in. I’m going to stay in Florence for most weekends and enjoy the culture. Several people have told me I need to go to several places, but I realized today that I haven’t enjoyed Florence enough. I’ve yet to go into the Uffizi, the Museum of San Marco, the Accademia or the Duomo. I’ve lived here for almost six weeks now and I’ve yet to see what most consider the top four cultural gems of Florence. I’ve also noticed that I do worse academically after I am away for the weekend than when I’m here and studying (even if only for a short time). I had the same situation at TCU; after any retreats I helped with I usually bombed the tests on the following Mondays. So I’m going to dig in and enjoy my time here in my new city.

Know what else I’m digging in to? Food. Great food! I wrote about my first cooking class two weeks ago, but it’s only become better. We had another class this past Wednesday at the Culinary Institute. All of us left that class knowing we’d learned some treasures. First plate: Linguine al Limone. The lemon sauce melted in with the linguine was great. it was made from butter, parsley, parmesan cheese and lemon zest as well as some pine nuts. Then came the second plate, which was what I worked on: sweet peppers, tomatoes and eggplants cooked with stuffing inside of them. This stuffing had capers, anchovies, raisins, nuts, parsley and bread crumbs. You may say it sounds disgusting (that’s what I thought when I first heard it), but it didn’t disappoint. I don’t normally like half of the things on that list, but the combination brought out the best parts of all of them. After that we each got two different types of panna cotta, one with chocolate and one with berries. Panna cotta, for those who don’t know, is cream, sugar, jello all mixed together with vanilla bean.

I’m not going to keep adding adjectives to all of these descriptions because I’m not a poet. My phrase that I overuse but still applies to this is “it’s all good”.

Tonight, I did something even better than the cooking classes at the institute: private lessons at a student’s apartment. Michael, one of the institute’s student assistants, gives private lessons at his apartment on Saturdays. 10 euros and he teaches us to make all of the food and then we get to devour it. Plus, he does all of the shopping and has all of the equipment. I did the lessons with two girls from the San Francisco group also studying here and it was a blast. He takes lets us pick what we want to learn, so my request was lasagna. He didn’t teach me to make lasagna; it was so much better than any lasagna I’ve ever had. Earlier this week I wrote about the lasagna at my favorite restaurant, but this topped it … by far! We did everything in it from scratch (save for the pasta sheets for the noodles — but I know how to make those!). He taught us how to make the ragu (tomato sauce with veggies, meat and wine) and the bechamel, which is a cream sauce that takes away the need for internal cheese. You may be asking, “how can a lasagna be that good without cheese?” I guess you caught me, there are layers of parmesan cheese, but the cream sauce makes it a minor detail. We also made saltimbocca, which is chicken breasts with ham and sage in a butter and white wine sauce. Then he taught us his specialty (I’m kind of surprised he gave the secret out that willingly): molten lava cakes. These dark chocolate cakes are baked on the outside but have melted chocolate on the inside that comes pouring out when you cut into them. Plus, it’s topped with powdered sugar and is sitting on a layer of cocoa powder on the plate. I won’t put an adjective with those, since one of the girls came up with a better name: “Molten Miracles.” It’s probably not a good idea to demean miracles that much, but it was so good I’ll do it this once (and any other time I make them!). Digging into Florence – digging into my cooking. Who knew that digging could be so much fun?!?

I knew I shouldn’t have written that last entry; I just knew it. I had the fresh wind and now I have to deal with the fresh rain. What a night! After finishing our week of classes, Brett and I decided to go out for dinner. We went to my new favorite restaurant in Florence, Trattoria La Madia. Stephanie, a friend who studied here last Fall, recommended it to me and it has yet to disappoint. It’s tried but failed. I’ve been there three times now and the first time I had their Lasagna. It was phenomenal as Steph warned me. Each of the past two times I’ve gone with other friends from the TCU group and each time I’ve ordered both the Lasagna and the Pappa e Pomodoro, which is a tomato and bread soup. It’s been phenomenal each time, but each time they’ve also forgot to bring me the Lasagna. I can’t complain since the soup fills me up enough as it is; but still, the Lasagna is SO good!

So, at the end of our eating at La Madia, while Brett was in the bagno, the couple next to us started talking to me. They’re from Monterey, Mexico (their names are Juan Luis and Alma) and we talked about everything. Juan Luis, it turns out, went to undergrad at MIT and now works in the oil industry and their son is working on his MBA at Rice. When Brett came back we talked for at least 20 minutes more. Luckily for us their English was better than Brett’s Spanish, so the conversation was great!

After the dinner we met some of the TCU girls at a Jazz cafe. I’d seen this cafe with some of the other girls while walking around and it’s a pretty nice place. They went for the first time last Thursday night when I was getting ready for Venice and they loved it. Tonight, however, the combo performing was also recording, so we couldn’t really talk besides when they were on break. Nevertheless, the combo was great and the five songs that I heard were definitely recording-worthy. The trumpet player was using a mellophone most of the time, so it added a lot to the atmosphere of the club.

The poetic justice of the night happened on the way back. Brett and I were striking up a conversation and just as we reached our street, a street sweeper approached. It didn’t have it’s cleaning brushes on; but, it was flying by at a fast speed (meaning it was going to park for the night since the driver was done). At 12:30 at night the streets are abandoned of traffic, so it was dreaming of being a race car. Does anyone know the problem with street sweepers driving fast in an area after heavy rain? Yeah, that’s right, Brett and I got sprayed. It wasn’t just a slight soaking — my pants, the ones that I was proud were dry this afternoon, are soaking wet. It looks like I’ll have to do laundry again this weekend. Oh well, at least the rest of the night was splendid!

I started this week in a funk. Literally. One of the nice things about going so cheap and efficiently to Venice was that I took 1.5 outfits that fit in the bottom of my backpack. They were dirty by the end of the trip and I threw them in the wash right once I got back. The Italian laundry process is similar to the states, with the exception of not having dryers (besides the laundromat). Line drying takes longer but also leaves the clothes feeling fresh. That is, it does when it’s not raining and freezing outside.

On Sunday night I had to use our internal drying rack to throw my clothes on. I’d done this before in the semester, but never with two full loads of clothes after Brett had done some of his during the weekend. Our apartment was incredibly humid because of the showers, laundry and lack of ventilation, so it was taking two or three days to get the clothes to a point where I could wear them. I don’t mind a little dampness (or I should say didn’t), but after I set the clothes in my closet I got a little surprise this morning. They reeked. I’m not sure how it happened, but I think our apartment has a mold in it. Any clothes that are even mildly damp, if they stay damp for longer than two days, will acquire the stench. I rewashed the jeans, threw them into the dryer at the laundromat down the street and then threw my other clothes that smelled back out onto the line outside our window in the sunlight. That seems to have solved most of it.

I’ve also gained some momentum with my classes. I was in pain at the beginning of the week because my test in Italian last Thursday didn’t go as well as I’d hoped and we spent all of my Art History classes on Monday looking at the works of and reviewing the life of Donatello. The class was wonderful, but I’d taken in so much that I needed a way to take a break. Italian wasn’t going great until yesterday when several things started clicking. We’re in the fifth week and still haven’t made it to anything but the present tense, but I’m at least solidifying several things I didn’t think were important before. I also have found more time to study in the past couple of days than I have for the past couple of weeks.

Want to know what’s giving me my greatest sense of a “fresh wind?” I’m staying in town for this weekend and I have some friends from England who are coming to Florence at the end of next week. This’ll be the first weekend in the past three that I’ve been in Florence. I’m SO anxious (I’m going to read a lot of fun stuff and not strictly the class material)! Now to finish writing my Classical Rhetoric assignment …

Last night I wrote an article (with the rest of the TCU students) to the Daily Skiff, our university newspaper. Hopefully they’ll publish it! Here it is:

Headline: Thinking About Abroad
We arrived in Italy five weeks ago and only one of the eight TCU students had studied Italian. We placed ourselves in a different culture with a different language and all of us had different ideas of what we were expecting. We all had prepared differently as well: one of us had been planning this semester for 2.5 years before signing up while another had only decided two weeks before the deadline. All of us, however, took the plunge and decided to try something new.

Why should someone at TCU consider studying abroad? Some answers are obvious while others are hidden gems we discovered once we arrived. The classes are relevant to the surroundings: there’s nothing like studying Art History and looking at the actual work before your eyes. The culture is ripe for exchange: with everyone (not just those over 21) allowed to drink alcohol, interactions both with other American college students and the native Italians is guaranteed. Location is everything: all of Europe is within hours via plane or train.

Beyond all of these benefits, our experience is wonderful because our group didn’t know each other before we came. All of us are TCU students but we weren’t a group before this. We didn’t have the inside jokes that we’ll now have forever; we didn’t have the connections. More than anything we could have done to “expand our horizons” at TCU, Florence (and truly any of the study abroad programs) offered us the chance to take adventures and try something even better than Ft. Worth had to offer. Preparation can make the experience easier, but studying abroad planning doesn’t have to be elaborate to prove successful.

It happened; within 10 days I had my second technological casualty of my semester. This was much more serious, however. When I was getting onto the train from Venice to Florence I heard a crack and crash. I looked behind me and my camera had fallen out of my bag. I thought it was secure in my bag, but it definitely wasn’t.

For those who have seen me since I got the camera a little over a year ago, it’s almost always with me. Luckily, it seems this mishap only broke my lens that I had on it. When I picked it up, I noticed the slight abrasion (can I use that word since the camera doesn’t have skin?) on the lower right hand corner. Then I heard the lens. When I got inside the train I found a bag near my seat and took the lens cover off. The glass came raining out into the bag. From what I can tell, the glass is only from a UV filter I had on the lens. I was hopeful at first that the lens was saved, but when I took it off of my camera and tried rotating it to see if the zoom still worked, it wouldn’t budge. I put one of my other lenses on my camera and then tried rotating it some more. It moved this time, but not how it was supposed to — and I heard little crunches whenever I tried.

The good side to the story (if there is one) is that this is the cheapest lens I have and it wasn’t my nice wide-angle or my great telephoto-zoom one. I’ll have to see about whether I should order another one and have it shipped here or just to wait and get one when I get back to the states. Either way, my other two lenses should get me by for a while (there’s only the 35-75mm range that I missing).