An Uneventful Week of Learning

This week wasn't the most adventurous. Like the great student that I am, I went to school and did all the homework I had to do.

Monday:
I woke up earlier than I would usually have to on a Monday to get to school at 8:30 to sign up for trips. I am going on the Tuscany day trip on February 19 for some wine tasting and good Toscano food. That evening I had my first class, Rome: Republic and Empire. This will probably be my best class this semester in that I will be learning about ancient Rome. The Professor did a great job of describing events and then showing where these things happened in Rome. Now I can go out into the city and see them myself.

Tuesday:
This day and Thursday are my busiest days with THREE classes. First I had Italian. This is my most frustrating class because it is not taught like any other language class I've ever taken. There is absolutely no organization. The professor just asked us what words we knew and then gave us phrases on how to introduce ourselves, etc. Meanwhile she didn't give us much grammatical background. ALSO, I though since I knew French, Italian would be somewhat easy because they're both Romance languages. But they are nothing alike. For example, in French when you say "I live in Chicago" you say "j'habite a Chicago" but in Italian it is "Venga da Chicago." However, Spanish and Italian are pretty much the same minus a few letters here and there. So most people in the class have a background in Spanish, so they can easily guess how to say things in Italian. So I feel like I am behind in the class already.
After that I had Pop music and mass culture, which does not seem like it'll be too much of a blowoff class like it sounds and then Images of Italy in British in American authors. This class seems like the easiest English class I will ever take.

Tuesday night, though, I took a cooking class at AUR. The chef is the chef of the restaurant I ate at last week with the 10 euro meal that included wine and three courses (He also happened to look like Billy Crudup). He taught us how to make a potato and artichoke apertivo (yes, I learned how to cut my own artichoke). The picture of what we made is below:

Then we made hand made pasta in a fresh tomato sauce

Then for dessert we made a pear and apple strudel.

The class was definitely worth the money and he sent us an email of the recipe with very detailed directions. Hopefully I will be able to recreate everything, especially the strudel.

Wednesday:

On Wednesday I finally had my Archaeology class. This class will have a few onsite visits to excavations. The professor started saying that the class wouldn't be about monuments. However, she took us on a walk around campus to show us some interesting stuff. We stopped at an overlook of the city and she started pointing out monuments to us. Not too sure how the class will go, but I'm sure I will be learning even more about Rome.

This was definitely a boring post, but hopefully the pictures of food made it more exciting. This weekend I am visiting my friends Katherine and Lauren in Florence so there will be an even better post on Monday.