My Past Week

Basket weaving

This past Thursday was an absolutely amazing day! After my Italian class in the morning, Monica took the 4 API girls to do some basket weaving with an older man named Lucciano. Apparently he is the only person in Tuscania who still knows how to make baskets. So for about 3 hours he attempted to help the four of his with our baskets. First, he helped us all make our bases. We had to select certain types of branches depending on the section of our basket. He had previously collected hundreds of “branches” and they were now soaking in a huge well of water in order to make them more pliable. After the base was constructed, we then began to weave. For those of you who have never weaved a basket, it is not an easy feat. We constantly used 3 branches, but once a branch would end you had to add in another one. This “switching” was the most difficult part. After we weaved the main body of the basket, Lucciano helped us with the handle and then it was complete! It was so much fun and it felt so good to see the finished product that I can take home with me and have something to remember this experience by. Probably the most memorable thing about the experience was that tons of people came by the farm to see us! People actually came out of their way to see the American girls make baskets. One woman actually had a video camera. Another woman was a writer for the Viterbo (the larger region that Tuscania is in) newspaper and is going to write an article about us! I’ll keep you posted 

Thermal Baths/Picnic

After the basket weaving, Monica took us to the thermal baths about 15 minutes outside of Tuscania. These baths are natural hot springs and is open to the public. Monica kept raving about how healthy the natural spas are because of the natural minerals that are in the water. It was very nice except that it smelled a little like eggs (sulfur). There were many different pools, and they got hotter the closer you got to the top spring. There were a lot of people at the spring but it was not overcrowded and we got our own pool. Then, Monica prepared a picnic for us! She got an assortment of pizza and panini and frutta. It was so tasty! We had a really relaxing evening and I went to bed as soon as I got home.

Friday Markets

The next morning, I woke up refreshed from my evening at the spa  Maggie and I met Mei, one of our advisors at the school, who took us to the Friday market. Every Friday morning in Tuscania there is a huge open air market. Unfortunately, this Friday it was raining, but we still enjoyed ourselves. It is pretty much like a huge thrift store, which you all know that I love! There is tons of second hand stuff, but there is also new stuff. They have everything from clothes and shoes to kitchen appliances and household decorations. It is fun to just go and walk around and see what is new (and cheap). This week I bought a coat, a cute shirt from H&M and a little sweater for 16 euro!

The Locals

Tuscania is a great little town in Italia with so many unique people. Everyone here is friendly and will talk to you if you give them the chance. They are also so willing to help you with your Italian. Not too many people here speak much English, so it is easy to only speak Italian to them. They usually look at me like I’m crazy and smile until I finally make some sense out of what they just said to me. I have definitely learned to laugh at myself and have fun in any situation. For an Italian homework assignment we had to go around Tuscania to a bunch of shops and ask them a few questions about their store and the products that they sold. This was interesting. My friend Maggie and I went around on Monday morning to about 8 shops asking various questions in very, very bad Italian. We made a lot of good friends and had a lot of laughs. I even got asked out on a date (I think… the butcher asked me if I wanted to take a walk around the town this evening). I pretended like I had no idea what he was talking about. The assignment that we thought would take 30 minutes ended up taking about 2 hours because everyone wanted to talk to us. Overall, we are having a great time in Tuscania and we really feel at home here. We saw tourists here today and were semi-annoyed by them.

Classes

I totally forgot to mention my classes…you know…the reason that I’m here ;) I am taking 16 credits while I am here, which is a lot! Luckily, I only have class on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, so I always have four day weekends. On Tuesdays, I have Beginning Italian from 8:30-10:10 and Ancient Mediterranean Civilization and Culture from 15:30-18:00. On Wednesdays (my terribly long days), I have Italian Cinema from 9:00-11:00, Italian Renaissance Civilization and Culture from 15:30-18:00, and Mediterranean Cuisine from 18:00-20:30. Finally, on Thursdays I have Italian again from 8:30-10:10. My favorite class is of course my cooking class, without question. It is amazing!!!! The best part is our uniforms  we look like real chefs. There are 6 of us in the class and we pretty much get together, cook dinner, and eat and drink wine the rest of the night. It is awesome! Our chef, Giordano, is a great chef who has traveled the world to cook. He is only 26 and has now settled back down in Tuscania and opened his own bakery! He is actually going to be selling his famous “biscuits” (cookies/biscotti) in the US! We all have so much fun and we make some great food. My next favorite class would probably have to be my Italian class because I get to learn the language that I so desperately need to know. Because Maria and most other people here do not speak English, I am forced to speak and learn Italian. I am slowly picking it up. At first, I only attempted the nouns and simple vocabulary, but now I am becoming braver and attempting conjugate verbs. My favorite thing to do is to go to the bar (coffee in the morning and afternoon and alcohol at night) and order a cappuccino and cornetto! I usually say, “Io prendo un cappuccino con caffé ginseng senza skeuma e un cornetto per favore”. This just means, “I would like a cappuccino with ginseng coffee without foam and a pastry please”. And you all thought that ordering at Starbucks was difficult. Mei turned us onto ginseng coffee because it is much lighter than and not as hard on the stomach as regular coffee. We also decided that the foam just took up way too much room and that we wanted more coffee.  Typically a cappuccino is 1 euro and a cornetto is 0, 60 euro. So, it is difficult to not go everyday especially because it is part of the culture. Like today, about 10 minutes before the end of class my teacher said, “Let’s stop and go to the bar. Everyone seems tired.” So we all went to get a cappuccino. It was great! Anyway, the other class that I really like is my Italian cinema class because it is so different than anything that I have ever taken before. Before this class, I had never seen an Italian film, but it was something that I really wanted to do while in Italy. So this class makes it easy. I typically have to watch 2-3 Italian films a week. I am now learning about the “neorealism” genre and learning to love subtitles. Also, I am the only person who signed up for this class, so it is now an “independent study class”! It’s awesome! My other classes are good as well, but they are just history classes. They are really long (2 ½ hours) and it is really difficult to understand my teachers. But, I know I’ll make it through 

An Average Day in the Life of Lauren

So, my average weekday is really different than back home. I wake up in my large but uncomfortable bed every morning at about 7:30 (all of the beds are hard as rocks). I take a bath because I only have a bath tub, so I usually almost freeze to death every morning. After I bath and dress I go downstairs and eat breakfast. Maria usually has something laid out on the kitchen table, either biscotti or a pastry of some kind. She also has the percolator ready to go for my morning coffee. I then select a fruit, usually a peach because Maria knows that I love peaches so we always have tons of them. I then make the 10 minute walk to school and attend class for a few hours. Around 1, I go back home to make my own lunch or I go to a pizzeria with some friends. Around 2 or 3, I go back to the school to use Skype to talk to Steve and my family. I then go to another class (if I have one) for another few hours. After class, I go home and do my homework or sit around bored waiting for Maria and Dominico to get home. Around 7 we begin to prepare dinner. Maria usually only lets me set the table or stir a sauce. Tonight was a huge victory for me because I actually washed my own plate before she came over and took the sponge from my hand. We never eat until 8 or so and we are finished and cleaned up by 8:45 or so. By this time, I am exhausted for some reason and am usually in bed by 9. I live a very exciting life…not.