Day Twenty-Three.

Today was pretty good.

We woke up late (around 10) and went to the Mensa around 12:15 and then headed to the Campus Center to study for our Italian quiz. We actually made use of the study rooms upstairs! The test was pretty reasonable and I made a bunch of really stupid, small mistakes but I definitely got the main part that was being tested correct (i.e. the verb tenses, etc.). Plus, I'm taking the class Pass/Fail. All I really want is to learn to speak the language. Not that this will help...I can write and read it, but not really speak it. We do absolutely NO speaking practice.

After our quiz we walked with Dan to a side of town we had never seen before to meet up with a group of Italian girls who play soccer. Some people in our group are interested in playing with them and then some of us just wanted to meet people. Due to a mix-up, we didn't actually get to talk to the girls but maybe next week. On the way back we went into an electronics store and Erin bought new headphones (she broke both pairs she brought here!). Then we headed down Via Maestra and got gelato at our favorite place and cereal for the next week. Special K, yay!

Then we chilled in the apartment until 7 when Jordan, Erin, Kiki and Laura went to La Duchessa and I waited behind for Kate to get out of the shower. We were going to go to La Duchessa as well but I mentioned that earlier today Dan pointed out where the sole Chinese restaurant in Alba was and we decided to go there. It was a good walk but it was nice to walk. On the way there we stopped in a different electronics store and found a webcam for Kate (hers was crapping out). We eventually found the Chinese place and it was cheap and cute. The food was very clearly an Italian interpretation of Chinese food. Smaller portions and something healthier about it. It didn't really satisfy our craving but it was good enough for now.

After dinner we walked to Akash and I used a voucher for pineapple and Kate used one for lemon cake. The change from our vouchers more than covered our dinner at the Chinese restaurant (17 euro)! We were excited. This means we can eat other places (granted, cheap ones) and still have our meal plan pay for it. Yay.

Tomorrow we don't have class (Friday!) so I'm going out on a mission to find gym clothes. I want to start going to the gym with Kate and Kiki and Laura so I asked Mom to mail me my shoes and gym clothes (I didn't anticipate going to the gym while I was here) but it would cost $100 to get the box here so Mom told me to just buy gym clothes here... Well, anyway, tomorrow's mission is to find said clothes. I asked Dan and he suggested going to the Chinese market by the train station because there are a lot of cheap things there. I'll start my mission by going to the Chinese market in the morning and then the sports stores I've seen around town after lunch. I at least need shorts and shoes by Monday if I want to go to the gym. Shirts and socks can be bought at the market next week (we'll be away this Saturday in Genoa!) if need be.

I'll let you know how it goes! Wish me luck.

Fay Twenty-Two.

Well so it turns out that the absinthe night didn't really turn into much.

Everyone except Laura and Nick made it to class and we watched a movie (La Gattopardo) which was way too long (3.5 hours!). They met us for lunch at the Mensa and then I got to hear all the stories.

When I was there everyone was annoyingly loud--too loud. Americans are much louder than Italians so I felt pretty embarrassed at the bar. When I left there was more loudness as well as a lot of spilling of drinks and food (they sell food at the bar) and, eventually, someone threw up out front of the bar. So...yeah. Pretty ashamed of us. Other than those little stories, I've gathered that Greg went up to the boys' apartment before everyone else and accidentally deadbolted the door and then, when everyone needed to come in and get their stuff, couldn't figure out how to open the door. So that required much yelling through the door and in the hall outside. Apparently, once Greg got the door open, Paul was raging mad about having to stand in the hall for half and hour and sort of started strangling Greg though Paul debates this. Greg was really scared Paul was going to kill him and holed up in his room crying...not a good moment. Anyway, this is what I know about last night.

After lunch I went to Akash and Vin and got small pastries to cash in vouchers. I got a lemon cake at Akash that I'll probably let someone else eat and I got an apple tart that I quickly ate. Mmm. Had some sort of custard underneath the apple slices and the pastry dough was SO fluffy.

Italian class was short and sweet--we had another exercise to prepare us for our test tomorrow and I got all but three correct! I was pretty proud. I'm still going to study a bit for the test, though.

After class we went home and I read my book while people went to the gym and Skyped and such. Dinner was at 8 at Akash. Like I've said before, I don't really like Akash. The food is only ok, the service is always grumpy and it always takes forever to get our food. But everyone else likes it so I don't fight it. I got a chicken burger with cheese. They're served on pita bread and they're actually pretty good compared to the rest of Akash's food. I got pineapple for dessert again. I love the pineapple for dessert idea--guilt-free dessert!

Then we went home (it was raining out) and watched a movie online and talked to people and generally hung out. The weather has been pretty crappy so we can't be outside much and other than shopping there isn't much to do. But this weekend we have Genoa so that's so exciting! Also, I'm pretty sure we've moved our Morocco trip to the last weekend in April because there's a speaker coming to talk to us on the Thursday we were going to leave on next week. So yeah. Update there.

Tomorrow we don't have a seminar in the morning so we get to sleep in (yay!) and all we have to do is the Italian quiz. No other plans have been made for other things during the day so I have no idea what we'll do! Hopefully the weather will be better.

Ciao!

Day Twenty-One.

Today was Laura's birthday!

We had class, as per usual. Today we had Cinema and talked more about the "crisis" of the early 60's where there was a feeling of emptiness caused by Italy's rapid industrialization and the Italians' quest for affluence. We watched a couple of clips and analyzed them and tomorrow we'll watch a movie.

We went to the Mensa for lunch as always and then after lunch I headed over to the video game store to look for a charger for my Nintendo DS because the one I brought from America wasn't working. Luckily the guy spoke a little English (couldn't find the word for charger in my dictionary!) AND they had one in stock! Only 10 euro! Yay! So that was a triumph.

Italian class was normal. We're working on the past tense. In Italian they use the present perfect to express the past tense so we are working on mastering that while simultaneously learning a lot of grammar we were never taught in school. Lots of identification of sentence tenses/moods/voices/etc. I like that stuff and I'd like it more if it didn't also include learning another language but maybe linguistics will be another chapter in my life.

We came back to the apartment after class and Erin and Jordan went to the travel agency to book our day trip plans for this weekend: Genova! Genova (or Genoa) is the main port of Italy and the industrial products from Turin and Milan get shipped out there. Also, it's beautiful, warmer than Alba, and on the water. We're going Saturday, leaving Alba at 7 and coming back around 8. 25 euro roundtrip--pretty good. We're all excited. Staying around Alba for a whole three day weekend is kind of rough.

For dinner we got all dressed up and went to VinCafe for dinner with the boys. Dan had paid for wine for all of us for Laura's birthday so that was fun (the wine was too strong for me!). We had similar stuff that we'd had there before. They pick what we eat when we go as a big group. The pomodoro was very good.

Afterwards Erin, Paul and I went and got gelato and then met everyone at the boys' apartment for drinking and music playing. There was a lot of drinking since it was Laura's 21st and she wanted to get "blackout drunk." Eventually we went downstairs to the bar under the boys' apartment and everyone ordered absinthe. Kiki wanted to go home around 12 because she's sick and wants to get better so she wanted sleep. I went back with her because I was pretty done and things were going to get messy once that absinthe was done. There will be stories, I'm sure. Kiki and I made bets on who would hook up with who. We shall see.

Tomorrow is normal again--a movie in Cinema and then Italian class. Dino says he'll have another exercise for us so we can practice for the test on Thursday. Other than that tomorrow looks normal but I'm sure there will be stories from tonight--if people can remember!

Signing off!

Day Twenty.

Hey everyone!

Today we all woke up early and made it to the boys' apartment by 8:30. Then we walked to a part of town we haven't been to yet and went into the Ferrero Roche auditorium building. A man came and talked to us about the famous Alba writer Beppe Fenoglio who is known worldwide for his novels on partisan life during the Italian Resistance in WWII. His most famous book, The Twenty-Three Days of the City of Alba, is very well known and is even translated into English. He died of lung cancer very young (40) and only became really famous after death so no much is known about his life. Another of his books, Partisan Johnny, was made into a movie and we watched that for the rest of the time period. I really enjoyed it. It was boring at parts but that reflected the boredom the partisans felt as they sat around, wanting to fight but not properly prepared to do so. They had the will but the Nazis were just too strong and numerous to really fight against. So there was a lot of hiding and waiting. It was a good movie.

Afterward we went to lunch at the Mensa and then came back to the apartment for a little while before going to Italian class. We're still working on the present and present perfect tenses. Today we got a worksheet to self-test ourselves on what we learned. I think I did pretty well but the worksheet provides you with more information than the quizzes do. We have another quiz on Thursday.

After Italian, Jordan, Erin and I stopped by the grocery store to pick up toilet paper and fabric softener. Exciting stuff. Then we all hung out calling people on Skype and doing our little "errands" of the day. Some people went to the gym. Joanna and I booked the last leg of my Sicily flight and we booked the hostel. I'm staying 5 nights and she's staying 4 (I have to arrive the day before because of flights and pricing and such). We'll share a double room and a bed but we get a private suite so it'll be nice. Really close to the beach. Oh! And Trapani has a huge Easter procession where people carry religious statues around the town for 24 hours. Should be exciting. Apparently the procession is a famous event. I still have to iron out my plans a little. I have 10 days and I'll only be with Joanna in Trapani for 5 of them.

We were hungry early so we went to La Duchessa. Also, most of our eateries are closed on Mondays so we only had two choices and La Duchessa won. I had a normal margherita pizza and then fresh pineapple slices for dessert. Yum!

We came back home after dinner and watched Mean Girls together. Tomorrow is Laura's birthday AND Fat Tuesday so we're partying. We have reservations for all 9 of us at Vin and Dan has arranged for a "surprise" since he can't be there for dinner. Then I think we're going out to a bar or something to celebrate. I just know everyone wants to get wasted. So that will be something different. I'll let you all know how it goes.

Day Nineteen.

This morning I got up to a snowy scene outside my window. Big white flakes. Not much sticking to the roads but the sidewalks were a bit snowy. I went out for lunch and there were Valentine's Day couples walking together, huddled under umbrellas to shield against the snow. They sort of seemed fantastical, floating ethereally through the snow, their shoes wetly clacking against the cobblestones. I bet it was romantic.

I went to Vin for lunch and bought some sandwiches and then used the change to go to two bakeries and buy cookies for myself. The cookies from one place where big and heavy and not miraculous. The small, thin cookies from the second place were very good but left me wanting more. They're the only pinole's I've found in Alba!

At 1 I made plans with Joanna to meet in Trapani, Sicily on the 31st of March and stay until the 4th of April. She successfully bought her tickets and I've only been able to book one. We're buying from RyanAir and I'm having troubles getting them to accept my card on the second leg for some reason. I may have to call them but it's going to be ridiculously expensive and in Italian so I don't know what I'm going to do.

We went to dinner early because we hadn't made reservations and we were scared everything would be booked. We got to La Duchessa around 6:30 and had pizza (yum) and shared pineapple as an appetizer. After dinner we went to YoYogurt and got frozen yogurt. Here it's literally yogurt they freeze. It had the yogurt taste and everything and you can get sauces to put on it. Next time I'm trying the dark chocolate sauce on top.

Then we headed back to the apartment to watch a chick flick together. We ended up watching How to Lose Friends and Alienate People which is a funny British movie with Sean from Sean of the Dead in it. I love the title of the movie--hilarious and offputting, just like the character in the movie.

Now I must go to bed. Tomorrow we have an early day, meeting at the boys' apartment at 8:30 to walk to the Ferrera Roche conference hall where we'll have a lecture. Everyone else claims it won't be a lecture having anything to do with the factory but I feel like Dan said it was a lecture about the factory. Oh well--we'll see. Nothing else spectacular planned. Most things are closed Monday.

Hope everyone had a nice Valentine's Day. I love you--you know who you are.

Day Eighteen.

Today was Market day so I got up early and Erin and I headed to the Market around 9am. It was freezing out so we didn't spend as much time at the Market as we'd have liked to but we still were successful. Erin was on a mission for a coat and found one at the first vendor we went to--she had seen it there the last time we went. We also wanted to make sure we saw the whole thing since last time we only saw half of it. This time we made sure we saw the food part. There were all sorts of vendors there. Lots of fruits and vegetables and even fish, cheese, and meat carts! A county fair gone bad! I was hoping there'd be a pastry cart (specifically didn't eat breakfast in the hopes!) but there wasn't. We ended up getting pastries from the bread and pasta cart. I got a chocolate croissant with the edges dipped in chocolate and chocolate pudding in the middle. Yum.

Then we headed back to the house and hung out. People went out for lunch but I wanted to eat light so I stayed in and had cheese and prosciutto and crackers.

Around 4ish I went out to go shopping and mail some postcards. I went into a couple of stores and was pretty disappointed. They're all really small stores that are overstaffed so it's awkward to browse because people are always trying to help you. Also, the stores have basically no stock in them. It is sale season so I don't know if they're empty because of that or because they're boutique shops. I think the shopping in Torino is much better and I'll probably do the bulk of any clothes shopping I do there and at the Market (was too cold to browse this morning).

I also stopped into a gelato shop Dan likes and tried it out. They had a good selection and GREAT price (2 scoops for 1.80!) so I got some. I thought I was getting panna cotta and vanilla but they both had a weird mint flavor to them so I don't know if it was the flavors or the place. The texture was great, though. Very smooth and creamy but not too melted.

Then we went to dinner at VinCafe because it was finally open!!! I had reserved a table with Erin earlier in the morning (with the help of a very nice lady who translated for us--I didn't know how to say "reserve") so we got to sit down pretty quickly even though the place was PACKED. I had minestrone soup as my first course which turned out to be more of a vegetable stew than minestrone but oh well it was still good. Jordan got the carne cruda (raw meat) and it was a ball of raw ground beef but she said it was good. It looked scary, though. For my main dish I got the ravioli and it was heavy but good. I didn't finish it.

Then we headed back to the apartment. Everyone wanted to go out but a couple of the girls are sick with bad colds and wanted to make an effort to get better so they wanted to stay in. We all watched Bolt, the animated movie about a superhero dog and then went to bed.

Tomorrow is Valentine's Day and I have no idea what we're doing. I'd like to go to a few bakery places for lunch and just sort of graze but I don't think anyone will want to go with me. I can't go to lunch with them as normal because Joanna and I are planning our Spring Break at 1 (good time for her) and lunch here is eaten around 12:30 in restaurants so I'd be missing her if I went with everyone. I'll probably go to Vin for small sandwiches and got to a bakery or two by myself.

For dinner I want to go to the sushi place in town and sort of do something different but no one seems interested in that idea either. They want to stick to the vouchers so I don't know where we're eating tomorrow night. Places will be pretty busy, though, so I hope someone gets a reservation tomorrow morning.

Stay tuned for my super exciting day. Well, that's not completely sarcastic--I'll finally know my Spring Break plans! My idea to pose to Joanna is Trapino, Sicily. Before that I'd, ideally, visit Dad and Heather's friend Kirby who lives in Bologna. He said I could stay there and he'd be happy to show me around and maybe do some day trips in nearby places he enjoys. More on that later. Sicily (or where ever Joanna and I decide) should be figured out tomorrow.

Day Seventeen.

Today was mostly good until the end.

I woke up late (9:30) and had breakfast and showered then read and watched a movie until 1ish. Everyone else went to the Mensa for lunch but I didn't want that so I went to Akash, ordered a lemon cake and a small pizza they had sitting on the counter (personal size) and got some change from that. Then I went to a small pizza shop and ordered four mini pastry pizzas which were delicious. I tried to find gelato but the usual places didn't have anything that caught my fancy. I headed back to the apartment and ate my stuff at the kitchen table and then people trickled back from lunch.

After lunch I read some more and watched another movie. People mostly stayed around the apartment as well and Kate and Kiki went to the gym. Around 4 Erin, who had apparently been looking at flights online, suggested that we go to Morocco in two weeks. Nick has plans to go to Paris and Greg, Paul, Laura and Kiki were going to go to Prague (we had decided not to) so Erin found flights to Tangiers, Morocco for very cheap. We will book things tomorrow but it looks like a pretty done deal. We'd leave Thursday morning (skip both of our classes) and come back Saturday (last flight out until Tuesday). I'm pretty excited. The cheapest hostel there is pretty expensive ($27 a night) but is AMAZING. We basically get a hotel suite. More on this later.

For dinner we went to Locca which is the furthest restaurant away. Dan wanted to go so that's what we did even thought we all wanted La Duchessa. It was pretty good food. Nothing amazing. I wanted gelato afterwards but everything was closed. Dan, Kate, Erin and Jordan went to see Avatar in 3-D after dinner but I had no interest in seeing the movie so I headed back here to watch another one on my computer where I sit now.

Tomorrow we're waking up early to go to the market because apparently we missed half of it the last time we went. I'm on the lookout for a small purse that has a shoulder strap so I can put it across my chest. Something for going out everyday so I don't have to carry my big purse. We'll see. Hopefully Vin will be open tomorrow, too, so we can have dinner there.

Oh. Looks like the Valentine's Day bakery crawl isn't going to happen--just like I predicted. People are backing out because they don't want to pay even though they could just use a meal voucher and get change. Whatever...I'm not going to waste my time convincing them. Yay for a really lame Valentine's Day. I might just go to a bakery anyway but that's hardly less pathetic than not going.