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So I am finding that I have a real love-hate relationship issue with the food in Italy. Namely, I love the food when other people cook it for me. I hate it when I cook it myself.
I just had a serious rice issue. In America, you put rice in some boiling water, you walk away, you come back five minutes later, and there's your meal. This is why, when I'm at school, whenever I am NOT eating chicken nachos from Qdoba, I am eating rice.
I wanted to try rice in Italy, because 1. I love it and 2. I do not want to get sick of pasta, because then I will really be out of luck. I started out doing really well. When I walked into the grocery store in Perugia and saw roughly five thousand different varieties of rice, I did not panic. I calmly picked the one that read, "Riso per TUTTI ricette." Using my brilliant Italian skills, I concluded that this either meant "every rice is for every recipe" or "all rice for all rice." While might not exactly make sense on the surface, I decided that the TUTTI, or ALL, in the title signified that one did not need to be a rocket scientist to cook it. Like, ALL morons can make this rice.
Not true. This moron had a lot of problems. In Italy, when you cook rice, this is what you do. You turn on your gas stove, light it with a match, scream when a flame explodes across the stove, put the rice on the burner for a minute, take it off one minute later when it overflows, and repeat this entire process for a half hour. While you are doing this, you also fall over a chair twice, break your toe, and spill almost an entire carton of juice three times. When you are done, despite all of your work, you will have a solid lump of matter that looks like it is from another planet. You will try to eat it, feel bad for yourself, and then, like a true American, you will buy two candy bars and eat them while you complain about it in your blog.
I'm sure I will survive. I just don't understand the rice thing. I thought everywhere had edible rice; I thought it was a safe food. Even in China, where everyone has nothing, they still have rice.
But anyway, there are much more important things to talk about right now. We went to the White Night festival in Rome last night. It was fantastic. Imagine ten million babies, dogs, old people, drunk soccer fans, Chinese tourists, and goth Italian teenagers roaming the streets all night until the sun comes up. All the museums were free, and everything was open all night. We started the night by eating dinner next to the Colosseum, which is the coolest thing you can ever do, especially when there is an orchestra lit up by blue lights inside it. Then we went to the Pantheon, the Trevi Fountain, the Spanish Steps, the Forum, The Vittorio, everything - everything was lit up. It was fabulous. We walked everywhere, which is funny because it was all in one night and we didn't know where we were going. We met up with some other people from our program too. Actually, also, at 2am on a random side street, I ran into the roommate of a guy I used to go out with last year, which is really bizarre. I've heard that you run into funny people in foreign countries, but I didn't think it actually happened. But it's fun when you do, because you forget how amazing it is to see a familiar face. We all watched some soccer game highlights, and watched teenage boys riot and literally throw each other through the air onto the street while cheering for their team, which was funny. Then, after five espressos, I started to crash. Since we are geniuses (Jess, Nina, Colleen, Brittany, Marcus and I, all from Northeastern), we decided to just save money by not booking a hostel. By 3am we were dragging ourselves through the streets, cursing, knowing that the first train back did not leave until 7. So we went to an amazing museum, the Capitoline, near the capitol building, which was lit up red and green by lights. The museum was all about Roman history, old statues, artifacts from literally the Iron Age, when Romulus and Remus founded the first village on the first hill that was to become Rome later on. They even had temple walls that the museum was built around, and human bones. We got pizza and we were awake again. On the way back, we stopped on a hill that overlooked the Forum, all the ruins of the Roman senate and old churches and Julius Caesar's tomb. The stars were out, and you could see the dark side of the moon, and everything was lit up purple and there was some kind of Turkish or Moroccan band playing this crazy music and singing from deep in their throats and I was just in this daze, not believing where I was. I thought, looking at the huge quiet sky and all these civilizations falling down right in front of me. I saw a giant statue head and I thought about whether in a thousand years, someone will be looking at the Statue of Liberty head, thinking how America thought it would last forever just like Rome but nothing ever, ever does, except the sky. But I guess that is pretty creepy and Planet-of-the-Apes-ish. At about 5, we made our way to the Circus Maximus, the old chariot racetrack in Rome, and literally sat on it, laughing, delirious because we were so tired, and watched the sun rise behind the monuments. It's so funny - the sun comes up every day, but you never actually see it. You never really watch it, all the colors, the whole sky. Maybe I was just mentally challenged because I was so tired, but it was one of the best things I've ever seen. It was one of those few minutes where you don't need to think of today, or yesterday, or tomorrow, or anything, or even who you are. All you need is to sit and think, I am here, I am right here right now, and it's enough for you. We took the train back and we all fell asleep and I have been pretty much doing nothing all day, but it was worth it. I'm happy I got to go back to both Florence and Rome this weekend. Although they were more awesome the first time I saw them, obviously, I saw a lot of different things this time. I was going to skip them to save the money, but I'm glad I didn't.
So now here I am again in Perugia, eating. I noticed something else funny about Italians today. They all love babies and dogs, obviously. But there is a really specific etiquette about other people's babies and dogs. This is what you need to know: if you touch, talk to, or really even stare at another person's dog, you are a creep. However, you can feel free to scream anything you want at their baby. Most common are, CIAO, BAMBINO! Or CIAO, PICCOLO! right in the baby's face. Or, if you are an old man or one of the African guys that sell purses, you can just scream CIAO, CIAO, CIAO, CIAO at every person that goes by that is under the age of twelve. This is perfectly fine, but you had better not touch anyone's dog.
It's weird. I like it.
I like Italy.
This is a long post, sorry, it goes on and on. I am going to get some appetizers now with the other people working at my internship here and try to plan a promotion for the website we are working for, supposedly. One girl is VERY intense about it, and the other four of us are not, so it should be an interesting night.
Oh. Also: I gave some people my number, but forgot to say how to use it. To call or text the phone, dial 011-39-335-774-8022. I forget how much it costs, but it's not toooo much I don't think, and it's free for me, so if you get the urge, give it a shot. Try texting first, since I get no reception in the medieval castle that is my apartment.
Ciao.
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