This past week held some pretty cool adventures. School wise: It was my last week with my Italian level 2 teacher. I was very sad to know that I wasn't going to see her any more after that. The school had to cut down on the teachers. So, since she was the newest, she was the one to go. For the last day of class we just played games since it was only a half day. So, the night before I made some oatmeal/chocolate/peanut butter cookies. (thanks to Peggy's recipe... thanks Peggy!) The entire school LOVED them! That made me feel really good. I spent a good bit of time working on them and it was the first time I baked here in Italy. You would be surprised how hard it is to find oatmeal, cocoa and peanut butter! Just when I was about to give up, my friend Heather found it! I do need to send out a message, however, to Paula Dean. so here goes:
Dear Paula Dean,
You need to know, there IS such thing as too much butter! Sorry to break your heart!
Valerie
haha. ok so here is what happened. I had a little bit of mix left and a little bit of butter. The mix was drying out so I decided to add the rest of the butter. I knew it was too much butter, but I thought I would see how it turned out anyway. They turned into a big soupy mess!! It actually looked like it would float. (it tasted terrible, too, by the way).
This weekend I decided to go to Napoli. I do not understand why people say "Do not go to Napoli." It is absolutely beautiful! I saw the two castles and sat next to the water eating REAL pizza!! I will say, the pizza was quite good! My second day in Napoli I jumped on the metro and went to Pompeii. I spent about 4-5 hours there. It was so cool to walk in the ruins of this town! I kind of felt like a kid again because when I was little I would pretend to have a house and my appliances looked like Pompeii looks now. (leave it to the immagination of a kid!) It was so amazing to know that people once lived there and their lives were ruined by the Volcano that you see so clearly in the back ground. The scenery was completely unreal! As soon as I walked in to Pompeii I was thinking "wow, I can actually kind of feel the lives of the people that were once here." There is one area that you can go see all of the objects that the architects have been able to preserve. There are several casts of people from the volcanic ash settling on them. I could see the sad and terrified expressions that they held on their faces when they were passing away. I will say that Pompeii was a very cool experience but also very sad at the same time. It is such a shame that those people and children had to lose their lives in such a horrific way, but if they hadn't we wouldn't know nearly as much about our past!
So this next little tid bit of information is for my family and close friends. I made a deal with one of my Italian friends here that I would make him cookies and he wanted to cook fish for me. He was sure that he could convince me to like fish. So, I said ok. Last night I ate with several friends and I brought cookies, he made the fish and the side dish, one person brought the appetizer, and another person brought some wine. The fish was..... AWESOME! I actually liked it a lot! The meal was fantastic all around! We even ended it the real Italian way, with a caffè (espresso).
I feel like every week here I grow as a person more and more. Living in another country and having to step out of my comfort zone has really taught me to be more mature and take care of what needs to be taken care of. I'm sure next week will hold even more fun and adventure!
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