Wonderful Wednesday!

I don't even know where to begin for this entry. The past four days have been a whirlwind of emotions. Sunday and Monday a giant wave of sadness and missing home came over me and I was crying at every little message from someone at home. Monday night I decided I needed to get off Facebook for the week because it was getting too difficult to see everyone who was getting to go home for the week and thinking about how I wouldn't get to see all of my friends and family. I didn't want to be moping around all week so I signed off of my Facebook and told myself to have a positive approach to the rest of the week and to keep my head up. Then, Tuesday morning I woke up with a migraine, and it was the first day the sun had actually come out in the past two weeks or so. It would be my luck :-) So Tuesday I stayed in bed pretty much all day sleeping and studying a little. Then Wednesday came...

I woke up Wednesday morning to yet another sunny morning, and while my head was still dizzy and hurting a lot, I took some medicine and got ready for school because I didn't want to miss more class time and I wanted to try and enjoy this sunshine in case it didn't last for much longer! So my first couple classes were hard because everyone was talking very loudly and then I had to sit at a desk in the sun which didn't help much, BUT it was good to be with my friends because even if I did have a headache, they were still making me feel better and not be so sad about this whole holiday and whatnot. Then, Italian class came, and my day was completely turned around. 

Since I wasn't in class on Tuesday, I had no idea that we were going to be cooking in our Italian class Wednesday. So that was a very nice surprise! We went down to the kitchen on our campus and we started out our class all gathered around a big table. Our professor, Isabella, asked us to get out a piece of paper to write down the grocery list so half of us pulled out paper and started writing the items down as she told us the recipe. Then, at the end, she had us recite it back to her and then she handed us some money and told us to go. We all looked at her and then realized that we had to actually go to the store and buy it! So, with much laughter as we got up, we started our way to the store!

On our walk I was thinking about how in high school, and really any other place besides the native country, that when you are learning a language and get to the food section, you don't do much hands on learning like we can do here. We went to a market the first few weeks of class when we were learning about the foods and that was an experience in itself, but this was just another Italian class for us and going to the store wasn't that big of a deal. For all of us, we have to go to the grocery store anyways for any food that we want not out of a restaurant or bar so we're used to going to the store. We were mainly just worried about getting the right things that Isabella told us to get and pleasing her! :-)

Here's a picture of some of the girls in my class and myself pretending to look confused. We weren't actually confused :-) Just bored while waiting in line!

Skipping ahead, we got back to the kitchen and started on the cooking activities. I won't go into details. I think the story is better told through pictures and some captions :-)

The Tiramisu Team

The pesto I helped cut up!

Allison and I working on the pesto

Tiramisu Team working again

Yay! Spaghetti con pesto!
(This is Chris and I. Chris is another freshman in the Discovery Florence Program!)

My first Tiramisu!

Tiramisu with Chocolate Mouse! So amazing! And all homemade!
...Or schoolmade I guess since we were at school :)

Can you tell we liked the tiramisu?

My Italian Class! Professoressa Isabella is in the center

Alex (another DF gal!), Professoressa Isabella, myself, and Allison (from Franklin and Marshall)

I think I can speak for the whole class when I say that we all had a such a blast Wednesday- shopping, cooking, and eating! I'm very blessed to have such fun kids in my class! We each have somewhat of a humurous and silly personality so we usually have quite a bit of fun and laughs when we're both in class and doing things out of the classroom!

This was just the start to my day turning around and turning into one of the most memorable days of my time here in Florence.