30-Jan-06

Alright, I’m going to try and get back on the daily writing schedule, I’ve just been super busy the past couple of days.

Sunday was absolutely amazing. Seth dragged me out of bed at the but crack of dawn (this coincides with the hour of 7am) and told me we had 20 minutes to get to the train station. As I was trying to wake up and put my snowboard gear on at the same time, I couldn’t help but think about how good it would be to go back to bed… Had I chosen to crawl back into the covers, I would have made the worst decision of my whole entire life. We made it out to Bardoneccia, which is where they are having all of the Olympic snowboarding events, and it was amazing. They had fresh powder and for some reason no one here skis the trees. It was pretty much like a day at bohemia with runs a thousand times longer. I was so tired that after awhile I knew I wasn’t going to be able to do much walking. The snow was ridiculously nice. I ate it quite a few times and the falls were almost as fun as the fresh tracks… almost. :-) We didn’t get the bluebird skies that we had when we went to Cervinia, but the powder made it a good sacrifice.

As for today, my neck muscles hurt badly from the incredible amounts of whiplash that I apparently survived. Other than that, I feel pretty good. This was definitely the first day that I was completely unprepared for class, and I liked it. I did my presentation for Italian culture during elementary Italian, and needless to say, paid absolutely no attention to anything else. It was marvelous.

The best part of my day was attending my newest class. Italian Cuisine was absolutely amazing. I have a feeling it will be undeniably worth the extra $200 to take. We only meet five times throughout the semester, but we get to cook with our teacher at her apartment and we make complete Italian meals. I feel like the food part of the culture I could completely adopt as my own. The only real downfall is that we definitely cook with meat, so I’ve decided that for class I’ll do the meat thing. Tonight we cooked antipasta, which is equivalent to an appetizer. This was made out of a very thin type of pork and stuffed with ricotta cheese and oregano… I think. The second course was two kinds of gnocchi, one with cheese sauce and the other with tomato. I am going to be practicing both those recipes frequently I’ve decided. We also made a desert and another meat dish that is known as the “second plate,” but I can’t remember the exact Italian translation right this minute. Regardless, it was amazing AND we got sent home with all the recipes. It was funny though, we had to sign a waiver that acknowledged that we might consume alcohol as part of the class. I wanted to keep it so that I could show everyone the requirements for classes in Italy.

Other than that, It’s been a pretty average day. I did decide that I’m going to start carrying around a tiny notebook and take my observations down during the day so I can remember all of things that I want to write about when it gets to be this time of my evening. Oh yeah, I got a B+ on my Italian test! Saweet!

And tomorrow is my first day as an Olympic volunteer! Yippie! Ciao ragazzi! (bye guys)