Chapter 14: "Really? You had room to pack your hair straightener, but not the Ireland guide book?"

The weekend before midterms, most people stay home and study. Others, recognizing that life is short (and that a semester abroad is even shorter) choose to fly to Ireland for three days instead. I belong to the latter group, and without regret. Three other girls and I left Italy for the first time since September, and jetted off to the Emerald Isle. I'd been to Ireland with my family years before, but never to Dublin- which is where we stayed for two nights and three days. My mom often jokes about how every new movie I see, book I read, or person I meet, is my new FAVORITE IN THE WHOLE WORLD, and she's kind of right, in that I don't have the most discriminating taste- I just love things really hard. So I guess it's hard to take me seriously when I say each new place is my NEW FAVORITE, but I'm really serious this time: Ireland is my favorite place in the whole world! I could easily move there and live there for years. Starting tomorrow. Maybe even later today. I desperately want to live there for an extended period of time, at some point in my life. Anyway, back to the actual trip. It was amazing! Here we are on the bright yellow and blue RyanAir plane.

I know that I should be better at speaking Italian than I am now, but the language barrier in Italy is still a daily challenge. Landing in an English-speaking country and going out for our first meal was like a brand-new world for us-- we were absolutely in awe that we could actually READ the menu, and our waiter actually understood what we were saying, and we could talk easily with other people and read street signs without confusion! We probably would have thought our meals were delicious even if we'd eaten them months ago, but digging into a NON-Italian meal was such a novelty- we couldn't stop gushing about all this amazing non-pasta food. Afterwards, we went to an Irish pub (go ahead and add it to my list of favorite things on this planet), drank Guinness and cider, and listened to amazing, hilarious, rowdy Irish musicians play all night. The pictures below are of my friend Kaisa and I enjoying our first Guinness beers, and another of the group with a charming gentleman named Mike Kelly (how perfectly Irish!), who bought us drinks and reassured us that we were making the right decision in regards to our upcoming midterm exams. That night, we slept at our hostel, Paddy's Palace, where we'd been delivered earlier by the bright green bus... the Paddywagon!


The next morning, we didn't let cold, rainy weather stop us from having an amazing day in Dublin! We toured the beautiful Dublin castle, where Ireland still hosts most of its government business, took a tour of the Guinness Storehouse, the museum and factory where the famous (and delicious) Guinness beer is made, and then toured an old prison called Kilmainham Gaol, where tons of Irish rebels were imprisoned and executed for their nationalist political stances during the Irish War of Independence. All the tours were excellent, the chilling stories at the prison were perfect for our hope for spooky stories for a pre-Halloween scare, and after the Guinnes tour, we got a free pint of "the black stuff" in a pub on the top story of the factory that had a 360-degree view of the city!

As if this day wasn't exciting enough, we ended it by going on a "Literary Pub Crawl", which is exactly what it sounds like. Two Irish male actors led an all-ages group around Dublin between four pubs, stopping at historic points to act out parts of famous works of Irish literature! For a Guinness-loving English major of Irish descent, I couldn't have picked a more perfect way to spend a night in Dublin. I always wish my parents be here with me in Europe, but this day was almost too much to bear- they would have loved every minute! After the pub crawl, we continued to (several) other pubs around the crazy 'Temple Bar' neighborhood. We met so many fun people and listened to the greatest music in the world, I wish I could keep reliving this night over and over!

After our big night, we relaxed the next day by taking a one-hour train ride out to a small fishing village called Howth, so we got to see some real Irish greenery and ocean! We ate amazing seafood, saw wild seals by the port, walked through beautiful green grass and early autumn leaves, and lounged around on rocks happily looking at nothing but the open sea. I could be happy on the Emerald Isle forever!

Chapter 13: Is this really a school field trip?

Our second school-sponsored trip was called "Under the Tuscan Sun", and we went to four towns around the region of Tuscany to sample their best cheese and wine! Am I honestly getting school credit for this?

We went to Arrezzo, Cortona, Montepulciano, and Pienza in just two days- touring a cheese factory and two wine cellars, including what I'm pretty sure are the world's largest wine barrels. Everything was beautiful, delicious, or both!


At night, we got to eat the most decadent meal I've ever had. Traditional Italian meals consist of about five courses, but being a broke college student, I can only ever afford one. Having our school show us the real way to enjoy Italian cuisine was amazing, especially the famous "bistecca fiorentina", or steak Florentine. When we woke up in Cortona in the morning, we were so high up on a mountain that clouds had actually gathered below us! The picture below is actually looking DOWN at clouds from my hotel! If this didn't prove that I must be living in a dream, I don't know what will.
(Except maybe what I found on the cheese farm...)

Chapter 12: Cinque Terre

Nope, not "sink tare", not "sink-que tear" either. It's actually pronounced "CHEEN-kweh TEH-rah", and it turns out that you can actually say it out loud, wrong, multiple times before anyone will correct you. Embarrassing? Perhaps, but hardly the first or last thing I pronounce badly in Italian. My foreign language skills are not what you might call impressive. Anyway, this was the most beautiful place I think I've ever seen! Cinque Terre is a cluster of five little villages along the north-western coast of Italy. (Cinque is the Italian word for 'five', and Terre means 'lands') They're all tiny, beautiful, and the perfect taste of unadulterated Italian sea, sand, and sun. Dana and I took a train there from Florence, and arrived in the early afternoon. We planned to stay that night and return the following afternoon. Most people only go to Cinque Terre as a day trip, but we wanted to relax and soak in the quieter, more relaxed side of Italy- especially after our chaotic weekend in Rome the weekend before. I couldn't find any hostels online in any of the towns, so we just showed up and wandered the narrow, winding streets until we found one. We found it a little bizarre that the people at the hostel didn't ask for our passports, our IDs, or even our NAMES, but just took our cash payment and showed us our room. A little different from America? Good to know I have somewhere to go if I'm ever a fugitive.



There's a hiking trail that links the five villages together, and it's about a five hour trip along the Mediterranean coast. I can't even describe how much I loved it! I love hiking, and I LOVE the ocean, so having them both right next to each other, on such a warm, clear day was the most perfect thing I could imagine!


The hike was hard work, it started out easy and became a sweaty, uphill obstacle course towards the end, but it was worth every minute. Each little village looked a little bit different, and they were so beautiful! The water was a perfect blue, there were vinyards and lime trees growing up the sides of the mountains, and I felt even more like I was inside a postcard than I already did.

We stopped for dinner in the fourth village, because it had gotten too dark to hike to the fifth, and before we ate, we grabbed two beers, ripped our shoes and backpacks off, and sat on the rocky coast watching the sun go down over the ocean. It was honestly the happiest and most relaxed I think I've ever been in my life. I couldn't identify the sea creature that appeared to be swimming around my plate of pasta afterwards, but it was hard to complain.

The next day, we took a ferry boat (my other favorite thing on earth) to the fifth village, where I swam in the bluest water I've ever been in!

It was a little chilly, but I couldn't resist. I may have cut my feet and legs on the rocky beach (in salt water, of course) got one of the worst sunburns I've ever had (and believe that I've had my fair share), and took the wrong ferryboat at the end of the day-a nightmare that caused us to miss our train back to Florence... but it was still the happiest weekend of my life!

Chapter 11: Adventures in the World's Smallest Kitchen

It's pretty wild that the first time I'm ever living on my own, outside of a dorm, is in a foreign country. At ISU, my building was attached to a cafeteria with a meal plan, and I rarely had to think about buying food, much less preparing it. I've always loved to bake, and make as many creative cakes and cookies as possible at home, but I've never had to consistently provide myself with food. Doing this for the first time in Italy makes it such a different experience, in some awesome and some really frustrating ways. For example, my apartment here literally has the smallest kitchen I've ever seen. I have about a square foot of counter space, a refrigerator the size of about two microwaves, a gas stove, and an oven that doesn't work (yet.. it's complicated). I have two pots, one frying pan, and no spatula or good quality knives. The apartment did come with a wine bottle opener though, so I'll let my resentment go.

These challenges are easy enough to deal with. I live about a two-minute's walk from "mercato centrale", or the central market. This is a huge semi-outdoor produce and meat market where real Italians buy their fresh fruit, vegetables, cheese, bread, pasta, and meat every morning for that day's meals. This would explain why I only need a teeny fridge. I love living like this now! It's so much fun to buy ingredients in the morning, practice cooking something at night, and not really needed much refrigerator space at all, because I only make a small amount of food, and we eat it all that night!

As far as actual cooking, I've been trying lots of different homemade sauces, pastas, and meats, and doing my best not to use any recipes or cookbooks! Being in my Food of Italy cooking class has given me some great ideas, but being on my own in my kitchen is a totally different adventure. Dana and I have been calling me her housewife because I cook a homemade meal almost every day! The two most memorable adventures I've had so far have very different outcomes...

Last week, we made homemade pasta, from scratch! We just mixed flour, eggs, and salt and rolled it out on our desk (the only large, smooth, flat surface in our apartment). I browned beef, boiled fresh spinach and crumbled fresh feta, and mixed them together in different combinations for ravioli filling. We spooned little piles of the filling on half of the rolled out pasta dough, covered it with the other half, and cut little raviolis out with a knife! After using egg yolk to make the two sides stick together, and boiling them for about 4 minutes, we had our most authentic homemade Italian meal yet!

A couple weeks ago, I bought some linguine, tomatoes, and shrimp at the market. I decided to make a shrimp marinara sauce to pour over the cooked linguine, and bought some crushed red peppers to spice up the sauce a little bit. After peeling and deveining shrimp for the first time (I do not recommend this for the weak), and peeling and cutting the tomatoes for the homemade sauce, I added the red pepper. After serving the meal and pouring the wine, Dana and I take our first bite... at first taste, it is absolutely mouthwateringly delicious... after about 15 seconds, we were in HELL. Our mouths were ON. FIRE. I thought my lips were going to go up in flames off my face, and that I would never have feeling in them again. We immediately starting trying to fight the fire: I chugged a bottle of milk, Dana a bottle of water, and she tried in vain to cool her mouth with our oscilating fan (a sight I would have found more humorous if my life were not flashing before my watering eyes)..... Turns out, the language barriers are especially important to break in the market.... "red peppers" and "chili peppers" are, in fact, different foods.

Live and learn, right?

Chapter 10: ROMA.

For our first self-guided trip away from Florence, Dana and I picked Rome, or Roma in Italian. WOW. WOW. WOW. I don't even know where to begin talking about Rome. It was the most impressive, exhausting, chaotic, surreal city I've ever seen. We took a train from Florence on Thursday morning, which was an adventure in itself. Yes, we were THOSE people running at full speed through the station, knocking innocent bystanders out of our paths to make our train, after a tumultuous experience figuring out which was ours. There are different kinds of trains in Italy that go at all different speeds. There are very fast, very expensive ones that get you to your destination immediately, and in style. I happen to prefer the "dreadfully slow" trains that linger in the countryside and cost a fraction of the price. A train of the latter sort brought us to Rome, and into another world.

I was so proud of myself for researching, booking, and then finding on foot, our first hostel (called the Freedom Traveler, which I hope makes others laugh as much as it does me), and also for using the Rick Steves guidebook to plan out a two and a half day trip with a full itinerary! I'm such a grown up! That is, if grown-ups are allowed to prefer slurping multiple scoops of chocolate ice cream per day. The first thing we did was take a double-decker, open-top tour bus ride around the city. We did one in Florence too, and they're great! We can see all the major sites, and orient ourselves as to where we are among them and how far apart they are from each other.

The next morning, we walked all over the Roman Forum, where Rome itself was born (including the spot where Julius Caesar was assassinated), and as if our minds weren't already blown, then we walked all over the inside of the Colosseum! The craziest thing about the Colosseum was that there are glass cases of excavated animal skeletons that were used to fight gladiators for entertainment. Later that day, we walked to the Spanish steps at dusk, and ate gelato in front of the Trevi fountain after dark! Being the shameless tourist that I am, I of course tossed a coin into the Trevi, which is supposed to grant you a wish and ensure your return to Rome..

The next morning we went to Vatican City. It's actually it's own separate state, not part of Italy at all! We went to the Vatican museum, the amazing Sistine Chapel, and of course, St. Peter's Basilica. These were the most beautiful and exhausting sites in the world. So much walking, so much waiting in line, so many people trying to cut in line... but it was all worth it. The Sistine Chapel ceiling really is breathtaking. The colors have been so carefully restored and are so vivid that it's easy to imagine Michelangelo painted them yesterday, not 500 years ago! St. Peter's is honestly the richest, grandest, most ornate buildings I will ever be in. It's feels impossible to describe it or capture in a picture how HUGE it is. HUGE. Huge. Incredible.

With a broken subway (while we were on the opposite side of this huge city from the train station where we were supposed to be catching a train) and an impossible bus system to bring our adventure to a traumatic ending, we said goodbye to Rome. It was the most exhausting and exhilerating city I can imagine. I wanted to cut my poor feet off and sleep for days, but never forget the way everything looked and sounded and smelled. We arrived in Florence indescribably relieved and grateful to feel like we were coming back to a familiar home after such chaos, but somehow counting the days until our return to Roma..

Chapter 9: First school field trip!

My school, Lorenzo de' Medici, puts on several school-sponsored field trips throughout the semester, all over Italy and even to other parts of Europe. The trips are very expensive, and only last for two days and one night, but allow students a very different experience than their self-guided weekend travels. For example, instead of staying in cheap hostels full of backpackers and eating pizza, the school provides nice hotels and unbelievable five-course dinners. My frugal and free-spirited parents brought me up to appreciate the rougher of these two, but my ISU study abroad program includes two of these trips in their total budget and tuition, so I was along for the ride whether I would have picked it myself or not-- and it was amazing!

On Saturday morning, September 19th, about 40 students boarded a charter bus at 5:30am with out LdM tour guide, Luca. He is a fantastic guide, with deep knowledge of every place we've been to. He led us around our first destination: Pompeii! It was so thrilling to look up and see Mt. Vesuvius smoking away, and the city so perfectly preserved after her famous eruption in 75A.D. The streets, markets, forum, brothels, kitchen countertops, even frescoes were still in tact, and we were even shown the "mummies" of two victims, skeletons still whole.

Later that day, we went to Sorrento, home of the world's best lemons. I LOVE lemons, so I was in heaven when we were told we would be sampling some local lemon-based products that night. After a five-course dinner in our beautiful hotel, we were led to a local shop where we sampled multiple kinds of limoncello. Limoncello is an Italian liquor made from (you guessed it) lemons, and it was great! We bought some lemon-flavored chocolate bars too, because I'm clearly trying really hard to stay healthy over here.

The next morning, we took a ferryboat (one of my favorite things in the world) to the most beautiful island, Capri! It looked like a painting, the cliffs and water and teeny houses built into the hills were like something out of a storybook. We boarded a tiny, roofless boat to take a three hour tour (Gilligan's Island anyone?) around the island, with a barefoot, open-shirted, hairy-chested Italian captian. The water was bluer than any I've ever seen in my life... and the storm clouds were darker than any I've ever seen..

Sure enough, about a quarter of the way into our tour, it starts to rain. Then it starts to pour. Then it starts to storm. I did mention there was no roof, right? I was FREEZING and miserable for almost an hour! Every single part of my entire body, and every article of clothing, was utterly soaked. It was the longest three hours of my entire life. When it finally ended, that's when the sun decided to come out. How nice of you to join us!

We had about five hours or so to roam the island on our own and meet back at the ferryboat to go back to Florence that evening. Well, Dana and I were absolutely miserable in our cold, heavy, dripping wet clothing. Seriously, we could barely move with these clothes. Most of the other students had elbowed their way undera tarp on the boat... we were not among the lucky ones. I will make a very long, humiliating story short by telling you that the ONLY options we had for buying dry clothing on the island (excluding the sky-high prices of the many upscale designer boutiques and the hawaiian printed men's swimming trunks in the souvenir shops)....were two... matching... floral sundresses. We basically spent the afternoon trying to hide from all the wealthy and clearly unimpressed locals and tourists whose stares let us know that we had made a LARGE mistake. No one will ever understand this. It's the kind of thing that could seriously ONLY happen to me. Anyway, I'd like to move on with my life, so I'll end this by saying that the island itself was (almost) beautiful enough to make me forget this matching-floral-sundress nightmare. Almost.

Chapter 8: Clubbing in Florence

I'm having no trouble keeping busy this semester, taking five classes and traveling almost every single weekend, but I decided to check out my school's extracurricular clubs anyway. I decided to join the Cinema club and the "Slow Drink" club. In my cinema club, we meet every Monday night and watch classic Italian films. The films are shown in Italian, but with English subtitles, so I thought it would help me a little with my Italian language skills-- hearing it spoken in actual language, instead of a teacher who is slowwwlllyyy sounding out each syllable for me like a child.

Which I absolutely need, by the way. It's strange to be at such a low level of speaking, especially for an English major who's used to having a really firm grasp on the language she's speaking. It's not as if my classmates and I are kindergarten students-- it's much more like we're babies! Think about it: at least a kindergarten student knows how to tell her teacher what she wants, I don't even have those skills! It's incredibly humbling to be the foreigner here, I will never again grow frustrated with someone who can't speak English in America. It's so frustrating to try to do the simplest things, like buying dish soap or laundry detergent or baking soda, and not be able to read the label of a single thing in the stores!

Anyway, back to the club. I love it! The movies are excellent, and I love listening to the language. The other club I joined, the "Slow Drink" club, is a wine tasting club with the goal of teaching foreign students the Italian art of enjoying wine and food at a leisurely and appreciative pace. It's so exciting to feel like I'm really diving into real Italian culture in these two clubs, instead of just passing the locals by on the streets every day and never really understanding their lives. The wine tasting takes place in a local restaurant, with an Italian wine connoisseur teaching us about the process of making red, white, and dessert wines (all in Italian, with an English translator), and then we sample a few, along with some fabulous cheeses and bruschetta. My schedule is crazy with school, homework, traveling, and clubs, but I'm so glad to be getting a taste of the real Italy in my spare time!

Chapter 7: Residents for a semester, Shameless tourists for a day

I've been incredibly lucky to be raised by parents who love to travel, and who are good at it. This is semester is completely different than any vacation I've ever been on though, for lots of reasons. First of all, I'm used to my parents planning everything: doing the research, buying the tickets, mapping out transportation, time management, and of course, financing it all. This semester I'm on my own! I have great guide books and maps, but the best part is that for the first time in my life, I don't have to pack an entire city's or country's attractions into a day or a few days, I have all semester! And Florence really is an absolutely amazing city. It's the birthplace of the entire Renaissance, and as Rick Steves put it in his guidebook, "Imagine guys like Michelangelo and Leonardo going to high school together."

Dana and I decided we wanted to see (some of) the best Florence had to offer on a day-long walking tour of our new city, so I had my first taste of what my parents have been doing for years- and sunk my teeth into my guidebooks and maps to plan out a day of being shameless back-pack wearing, camera clutching tourists in our own town. We started out at the Accademia Gallery, where some of the most important art of the Humanist movement are housed, including Michelangelo's David. I can't believe I live two blocks away from this! The David is amazing, the definition of the Renaissance man, and so much taller and more impressive in person than I realized.

Next, we walked from the Duomo, the most prominent feature of Florence's skyline. The Duomo Cathedral is home to Brunelleschi's dome, the very first Renaissance dome, and a model for every one that came after it! One of my guidebooks says that when Michelangelo was plannning St. Peter's in Rome, he rhymed (but not in English), "I can build its sister- bigger, but not more beautiful." It's fantastic from the outside, breathtaking from the inside.

An exact replica of Ghiberti's Doors (the Gates of Paradise, as Michelangelo nicknamed them) are on the baptistry right across from the cathedral. Ghiberti made the doors to mark Florence's deliverance from the plague. I think the original panels are in separate museums today, but I'd love to see them while I'm here.

After that, we walked to the Uffizi Gallery, home to amazing paintings from the 14th to the 17th century, including several by Caravaggio, Michelangelo, da Vinci, Raphael, and my favorite, Botticelli.... amazing.

I could have stayed all day, but it closed at 7pm, when we headed outside to the edge of the Arno River. We watched the sun set over Ponte Vechhio (literally just means Old Bridge), which is the only historic bridge across the Arno in Florence still standing. The rest were destroyed during WWII. Ponte Vecchio is lined with fancy little shops selling gold and silver, and a statue of Cellini, the most important goldsmith of the Renaissance, is right in the center of the bridge.

After yet another delicious dinner at yet another charming little outdoor cafe, we stopped on our walk back home for more gelato to eat on the steps ofthe Duomo after dark. I couldn't be happier! I feel like I'm living in a postcard.

Two days later, an ATM ate my debit card. So it goes.

Chapter 6: Scuola!

Just when I felt like I was starting the best vacation of my life, I was reminded that I did, actually, come here to go to school. My first days at LdM were amazing! I'm taking Italian Language for Beginners, Greek & Roman Mythology, The Making of Modern Europe (a history class), The Food of Italy (a hands-on cooking class), and The Age of Heroes: The Iliad, The Odyssey, and The Aeneid. I absolutely love my classes and professors so far, especially my patient Italian teacher, Mariangela, my hilarious history teacher Jacopo (YAH-ko-poh), and my Italian cooking teacher/chef Michele (mih-KEL-ay).

The classes are really different from my ISU courses. They're much smaller, with kids from all over the United States (very few from the Midwest), and they meet once a week for two and a half hours. I only go to school Mondays, Tuesdays, and Wednesdays, but those days are intense. I couldn't be more excited about this semester, especially after buying all my new books!

Chapter 5: First weekend in Florence

My first full weekend in Florence was a blur of various adventures and misadventures. Briefly, they involved: A sweaty and wrenching quest to find, purchase, and assemble (using the only tools in our apartment: Scotch tape, hemp, and a steak knife) a fan in our room to fend off our impending heat strokes, a welcome-to-Florence bar crawl from which myeslf a few other girls from ISU left early and got spectacularly lost for a considerable amount of time, eating my first (of what will be MANY) comes of gelato while looking up at the Duomo, being constantly and shamelessly flattered and flirted with by many handsome but laughable Italian gentlemen, and last but not least, my first trip (also first of many, almost daily) trips to the amazing central market to buy Florence's freshest bread, cheese, fruit, vegetables, olive oil, spices, wine, and pasta! A few days in this country, and I am completely sold. I love it.