High Pace Lifestyle; Just A Glimpse.

I love the time I get to sit, reflect, and blog about this journey. Life here is so high pace and it's nothing like living in Midland, Michigan where living in the country is quite and you've got plenty or space and silence to digest your each and every thought and experience. Between the chatter of the people passing on the streets below, the neighbors speaking Italian to each other, or friends enjoying themselves at the apartment, silence is extremely rare at any time of day or night. It is normal to be laying in bed ready for some sleep and to hear people shout, sing, or honk their horn at late hours in the night. It doesn't seem to bother me much, in fact its starting to feel pretty normal! On that note--there is one place where you can find silence. At about 2:00am in a little ally about 2 minutes away from my apartment. Sketchy sounding I know! But there you can find what is called the 'Secret Bakery'. They technically are not allowed to be open at that time of night because it is against the law. So if you're being loud they will not open the door. If the locals wake up because people are being loud then the police will be called and shut them down. So how it works is everyone waits outside, we never actually go inside the Secret Bakery. We walk up to this foggy glass door and knock on the door and someone will come to the door and crack it open. Then they will whisper "what do you want?", we whisper back what we want, they shut the door, and then we wait. Depending on the night and what they have, our options are usually a pastry for 1 euro or pizza for 2 euro. Instead of taking that late night trip to taco bell like we do in the States people go to the Secret Bakery. It's basically the only place open at that hour of the night besides the kebab shop where you can get a shawarma. The kebab shops are like their taco bell here--late night snack kinda thing. Last night was my third attempt at the Secret Bakery and it was successful! The other two times I went people were being too loud so they wouldn't open the doors. I got a warm crossant with Nutella inside, so delicious! So depending on the night and how bad people want there food--silence can be golden at the Secret Bakery. Now on to my week--I had three full days of class as usual and on those days the days go by so fast. I have class from 12:00-5:30 but throw in an extra half hour before and after class for walking. In my food & culture class this week we made gnocchi with a fabulous kale, sausage, parsley sauce, it was one of my favorite dishes we've made yet. We also made fried sage, it had anchovies in it--very salty-I tried it but wasn't a fan. Another dish we made reminded me of Sandy because she loves to make this--bruschetta on tuscan bread with tomatoes and basil. Simply DELICIOUS! I generally don't like tomatoes but here they are so incredibly fresh and tasty that I don't mind them. And then yesterday we made two soups, an onion soup and another called carabaccia contadina. Both consisting of a ton of onions. My eyes have never burned so much from onions before. Not only the people cutting the onions (I was one the them!) but the entire class was crying from the onions. Thats how small the classroom/kitchen is and how strong the onions were! My wine class isn't as exciting as the food class. It's a lot of long lectures followed by three wine tastings each class. It has been helpful to better understand the different wines, appericate them in their own way, and figure out what I like. The dreadful part about it is we always talk about what the wines would be good paired with and it always makes us so hungry! On the 13th we'll be taking a field trip to a winery which will be exciting! I can't believe week three has already almost come to an end--time sure if flying by! A couple of the friends we've made here are only here three weeks and leave tomorrow which is sad. One of them being what we call our "big brother"--he protects us at night if were out! Their great people, we're gonna miss them for sure! Last Thursday we had some American guys from New York move into the apartment across the way from our kitchen window, one of which who we think will be our new "big brother", haha. And for this weekend--I think I will be staying in Florence, seeing some sights, maybe some gardens--potentially going to Venice for the day on Saturday. There is so much to do and see in Europe and not enough time but, I think my body will appreciate relaxing here for the weekend. Like I said earlier, life is very high paced here, it's always go! go! go! I think what fuels that is the fact that I'm surrounded by Americas in my apartment and classes and we all act so rushed. Such as; we gotta go here, we gotta go there, we need to do this, we need to do that! I think it makes it hard to fully appericate the places we go and the things we see because were so focused on whats next. But I'm doing my best to appreciate every moment to the fullest (: Because in reality simply living here for six weeks is enough in itself, it's an experience that not many people get to have and I am so blessed for that! It's definitely going to take more than one trip to Europe to see and fully appreciate the different sites and not feel rushed. On that note--I think this is a good spot to conclude this post, because a nap sounds great! Ciao! xo-