Thursday, September 15, 2011

Bacon and Borsa

Tuesday night was amazing. Seven of the lovely BCSP girls (Bernadette, Jessica, Sabrina, Madeline, Sarah, Brea, and Kyle) came over to my apartment and cooked a delicious meal. I whipped up some penne all’amatriciana (penne pasta in a semi-spicy tomato sauce with bacon, garlic, and onions), and Kyle made spaghetti alla carbonara (spaghetti in a creamy egg sauce with more bacon). Yay for bacon! To accompany these two dishes, we had salad and super fresh bread. For dessert? Nutella smeared over some cracker/cookie things. There may or may not have been wine involved… and spritzes.

SPRITZES! I cannot tell you how much I’ve fallen in love with “lo spritz” (pronounced “loh spah-reetz-uh,” in the italiano) a popular Italian mixed drink that is BRIGHT ORANGE. It’s a combination of proseco, aperol (or campari, but it’s super bitter and gross), and a touch of club soda. Top it off with an orange slice and you’ve got it going on like 89% of the Italian population.

Lo spritz. Bright orange. Entirely fabulous. I want one RIGHT NOW.

Yesterday we had our first “Wednesday afternoon class,” which refers to the art history class we have on Wednesdays—which doesn’t start until 3:00 pm, so we have the morning to sleep in. Instead of being a bum, I dragged my lazy ass out of the apartment and went to MamBo with several of my BCSP peeps. MamBo refers to Bologna’s museum of modern art, which is conveniently (*cough*) located 45 minutes away from my apartment. While modern/contemporary art isn’t really my thing, the museum was pretty cool—mostly because it’s free on Wednesday for students. There were some highly questionable pieces of “art,” but I got over the artsy-fartsyness… and so should you.

After our museum-visit, we trekked it back to the BCSP office to have class with Professor Benevolo, who is very nice but incredibly boring—and he was talking about art history, which is usually my thannng! But it was so, so boring. The only thing I can remember about the class was that it dealt with Ravenna, which is the destination of Saturday’s mini excursion, which I’m excited for. Even though I’ve been to Ravenna once before, I’m excited to go back—that and the scenery from the 1.5 hour train ride will probably be amazing. I’m hoping my bug bites are gone by then, because right now I look like I have chicken pox… and its gross.

Yesterday night Dru came over to my house and we made dinner for ourselves—the same dish I made for Kelly the other day, but much more delicious this time around. After all, Dru’s cutting abilities are out of this world… when she cuts onions, they taste so much better than when I do! Or maybe it’s because we used fizzy white wine instead of regular white wine… mostly because the fizzy wine was cheap and tastes good… but thankfully it all worked out, although we both had our doubts when the sauce started fizzing… thankfully it turned out relatively well.

Today was back to bisniss as usual—class in the morning, scavenging for lunch in the afternoon, and going to some boring BCSP event in the evening. I was really excited for tonight, though—the BCSP packet made it seem like it was going to be some awesome outing where we would meet the mayor of Bologna and see some ancient ruins located under the Sala di Borsa, which is quickly becoming my favorite building in the entire city… mostly because it has public restrooms, air conditioning, and funny little chairs that make me laugh. Turns out we had to sit in a hot, stuffy room for an hour with 100 other foreign students and watch a slide show presentation about Bologna that repeated things we’ve already known about for weeks. And the whole “meet the mayor” thing? Yeah, we had the priviledge of listening to the assistant mayor talk about something (by that time I was zoned out completely) that was extremely boring. I stuck it out, though, because I was so excited to see the ruins located under the Sala di Borsa… and it was a total flop. We basically got ushered into a basement that had a door that lead to the excavation site… which was comprised of some stone walls and a semi-discernable portion of an old road. I was so sure that the tour guide was going to bring us into another far more impressive room, but no go. Not exactly exciting. The tour guide talked extremely fast (in Italian), and I barely understood a word she said because I was looking at my toes the entire time—admiring the nice new shade of nail polish that I picked up for 1 Euro at COIN.
Note the seafoam green toe nails
Boring 1000-year-old wall of Sala di Borsa ruins.


After the completely underwhelming experience at Sala di Borsa (okay, it wasn’t that bad… but I had expectations, yo!), myself and six other lovely ladies went to eat dinner at Nicola’s—the restaurant with the cheapest liter of house wine in town. The food is good, too. As always, I ate tagliatelle al ragu. I should probably start branching out more… and instead of wine I ordered myself a nice, big beer that was delicious. When did I start liking beer enough to order it at dinner? Weird.
Nomsies!

When I got back to the apartment, Med Student and I had a long conversation about the weather in Wisconsin and pizza—which were two totally unrelated topics. I was trying to explain to him that in the United States you can get “stuffed-crust pizza,” which is crust stuffed with cheese. He could not wrap his mind around the concept. I also told him it was 36 degrees in WI this morning… Fahrenheit. He just started to laugh and go, “Che cazzo!” which essentially means, “What the fuck!” He is now in the kitchen, macking on some girl. I wish him luck…

Over and out.

PS - shout out to my best friend Sarah Tamarkin, AKA Shaquisha, who will be visiting me in October.

PSS - another shout out to my Auntie Laurie, Guy, and my goddog, Tank. I miss you both. Whenever I see dog pee streaming down the sidewalk, I think, "I wish Tank were here..."

Come si dice "bromance" in italiano?
EDIT: Hi, mom. These boys are not "Italian." The one in the blue is Nick and the one in the red is Ben. Both have girlfriends, so do not make any hinting-comment about them. The end. Love you, Snoopy Mommy!

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