il vento

the bora helped to push me across the sidewalk a few days ago!!
:O :-O :-o

UDINE

sorry its been awhile since an update fam.. ive not really been doing much. and now i am fairly sick. i went to buy medicine today and then i accidently threw it away unused and im very mad at myself for this.. so tomorrow ill go back to buy more..
also yesterday i ate grapes that are the type of grapes they make wine into because i went into Udine, the region just north of trieste. its a really pretty little wine making towns just below the alps in some other mountains. the mountains were SOooooooOO pretty. i had a delicious dinner of gnocchi, frecca (sp?)(whichis like hashbrowns in a away with cheese), some sort of quiche thing, wine from the region, and they have this other drink its like a shot they call grappa but you sip on it.. so i tried it but it was really gross to me so i didnt have it.

anyways back to the grapes... wine grapes are REALLY REALLY DELICIOUS. they are like a cross between grapes and muscadines and the inside mushes out in one slimey piece and they are so so so good i could eat them all day.

anyways .. i ahvent posted a picture in awhile so here is a picutre or two of the people ive been hanging out with, some erasmus (exchange students) from portugal. i like them lots they are really nice really crazy and really fun like people im used to back home instead of these other people ive been around that i have found a little bland.

first day of classes

so today i went to my first class. i actually had three today but could only go to one because during the other two i had to go to an italian placement exam. i think i did alright on this.
anyways about my first class it was quite an experience.. !
me and my friend manu signed up for the same class because it interested us both, it was the class filosofia della cultura (philosophy of culture..obviously?)
so we go to the room and there is NO ONE. class is posted to start at 9 the light is off its a few minutes after nine and no students are around. finally we knock on the prof's office door and go in. he said just wait a few more minutes and we will start
so then we wait and the professor comes and we go inside. still it is only me and manu. the classroom is small with a round table for socrates style teaching (i think?)
the teacher is a rather small italian man wearing trendy clothes- fitted jeans, asics shoes (very popular here), and a collared polo shirt with the collar POPPED. he spoke with us very casually and it ended up being only me and manu so for my first class i was lucky to be able to have things clarified and he spoke more slowly for us. the class was off to a pretty good start i found it interesting although some things were a little uclear i generally understood everything since he was going slow and is italian!

tomorrow i will have more classes to show for!

cucinando!

ok so now i will explain to the best of my memory the pasta and pesto recipe

for the pasta:
whatever pasta you use, boil the water first. then once to a boil put the pasta in for about 8 minutes. it shouldn't be mushy but shouldn't be hard. you can check with some pastas by cutting it in half and looking if the center is kind of white while the outside is yellowish. also its important to stir because this way the pasta won't stick together to each other and have hard parts between two pieces of pasta.

now for the pesto:
take lots of fresh basil leaves (parents this could be from the garden since there is so much!)
oil
pine nuts
garlic
blend to a good consistency.. i dont know how to describe the consistency.
then put in bowl and put in pasta and mix
yumyum!