May 7th 2020: Ciao tutti! Sono felice perché posso andare fuori! This week has brought many long walks, plenty of sunshine and smiles. I actually got a sunburn 🙂
The photo above is the first meal I’ve had that hasn’t come from our kitchen! A panino (gf!) from Pino’s Panino that was absolutely delicious! It had tuscan salami, fontina cheese, pesto and fresh tomatoes and was toasted beautifully. Fun fact (or actually not fun fact): while I was eating this, these small birds (uccellini) were basically attacking me and it was not a great experience. Clearly, they have missed being fed during the quarantine.
Today, as I was walking down to the ‘beach’ of the Arno, this guy was playing with a soccer ball against the bike rack. It took every ounce of willpower, but I did not join him and show off my Irish jig style juggling from the French hamlet of Quechee.
This week in class, there are only two students. Both of us are Americans so we spend a good chunk of time discussing the differences between countries’ response to the pandemic as well as the finer points of the great literary film Mamma Mia! We also are learning l’imperativo so don’t worry if you get random orders from me!
I’m getting to the point in Italian where I mix sentences of both languages. This means I just throw the words together and which ever language I think of first goes. Some of my favorite Italian words/phrases I have started to use in regular English conversations. Examples! abbastanza: enough, this is super fun to say and I always think people are talking about me. insieme: together, during quarantine, practically every other sentence was a plan for when this was over or a wish about something to do….together! A phrase that I say allll the time is mi ha detto ___. This means someone told me. I love it and will be talking in English but switch just for this, for example “Mi ha detto Maddie that Mother’s Day is this weekend.” One of my least favorite words is condividere which means to share. I can never conjugate it when I need it so I end up talking around it…which is actually a big language game so maybe it’s okay.
In the last few weeks I have discovered the joy of late night risotto making. My dad taught me that the key to risotto is to stir, stir, stir, stir, and stir some more. I think this is the newest/coolest ways to make yourself more tired! Tonight was a red pepper risotto!
This week, (which started with an awesome two generation best friend FaceTime) I have noticed that my gratitude lists have shifted. It is much easier for me to come up with things that I am grateful for each day and I am having to think more and more for items I took for granted. I think that this exercise has really helped me to keep a positive attitude and still highly recommend it!
In other news: this segment is car themed today! As I was walking to get downtown, I watched a car try to parallel park on the side walk. The mamma mia! mobile and I are not huge fans of this maneuver so this quite a shock to watch! Once I was downtown, a car honked at us and waved and I decided it was because everyone is happy to be outside! Or that they were actually from Quechee…it could go either way!
Abbie Abroad 