I Corsi

Ciaoooooo! It's taken me four days to write another post because just about zero has been happening since I last wrote. This was partly a conscious effort on my part and partly a result of the school week being in progress. Being in Italy and having the freedom to do absolutely anything I want is soooo tempting, but then I remember that when I go back home in May, I will have both my GPA and my mother to deal with....thanks for keeping me in line, guys. The daily journal thing was a giant failure, literally from day one. I wrote about four lines in it and haven't written since. Perhaps this is a result of my deathly (read: mild) illness/cold/hacking cough, which has put me in bed before midnight two nights in a row, which hasn't happened since I was probably 14. Also could be due to the basic monotony of classes, which I still rather like (I'm a Taurus, we're creatures of habit).

Sunday....this may have been the night of the delicious dinner. Or that could have been Monday. This weekend, Micki's friend and then also Micki's bf's roommate came to visit. Their visits have effectually blurred in my mind as one long stay. One night (now that I think about it, maybe both nights), dinner was cooked in our apartment. I'll describe the one I more clearly remember, that of Monday night. After class that day, we all went to the supermarket and bought supplies. I was in charge of chicken, Micki of salad, Daniel of pasta sauce?, Carvin if that is in fact how you spell it of dessert, and the other girls of pasta. Turns out we bought the wrong lettuce, by which I mean it was not at all lettuce and was instead actually sour cabbage that got even worse-tasting when you cooked it. The remedy for this was to chop up my chicken and mix it in with the cucumber/onion/tomato/seasoning salad ingredients, and it basically made for the most delicious mistaken "salad" ever. No joke, it was SO GOOD. [P.S. I have just now realized the reason my timeline was so messed up was because I forgot to describe Saturday night. Basically, we went to a club called Lagare and did lots of dancing and there were stage contests and one of the girls got second place, missing out on free tickets to LONDON but instead receiving many free drinks, which all told, was probably an equally good prize. The Italians we met at Chalet were here as well, which was awkward in some ways (one way in particular) but comfortingly familiar in others. We walked home again, but this time without getting lost, mostly because we were led by Giovanni/Stefano/other Italian. On a related note, I find crossing the street at five in the morning to be far less terrifying than, say, five in the afternoon. Can't think of much else relevant to say about Saturday, except that one of the bouncers, Pier, was quite nice and the lady I was supposed to pay for my drinks tried to rip me off, but she did not succeed, because I am FAR too savvy for that...someone please tell my nonna, who thinks I am going to get raped and killed in Italy because I have "no street smarts."] I have also realized that I must have done absolutely nothing on Sunday, because I have genuinely formed no memory of it. So back to Monday's dinner. So we had the chickensalad, pasta with Italian sausage, and glorious homemade garlic bread. If it didn't take so damn long to cook, I would have it for dinner every night.

No other meals of note in the past four days, although I am gradually familiarizing myself with every kebab vendor in Torino. Once I've made my decision of which one is best, I'll let you know. In school-related news, I decided to stay in the unholy 9 am Composition class. The wake-up schedule is already wreaking havoc on my social life (as in, I have gone to bed at 10 the past two nights, thus causing me to miss out on OLYMPIC ice skating, thanks a lot, morning class) AND I have already had a test three days into the class. It was definitely harder than I anticipated, but thank god I'm only taking the class pass/fail, so I am slowly persuading myself not to stress out too hard about it. I also completed what is apparently only the first step in getting my permit of stay, which makes me a more legitimate visa-holder in the eyes of the Italian government. I did this by meeting with some lady who stamped something, made me sign something else, then gave me some bit of paper to keep. Awesome. And finally, I had my first non-Italian class today, International Affairs since 1945. I absolutely LOVEEEE my professor, Prof. Ferrari. He's obviously Italian but speaks English with a charming British accent, went to Stanford for post-grad on a freaking FULLBRIGHT fellowship and then worked at the UN for a million years before retiring and coming back to Italy to teach. It's like he lived my life for me already...........I have to make him love me somehow, so he can tell me all of his secrets. The class essentially consists of him rambling for two hours once a week, but I find him incredibly amusing and not all that difficult to pay attention to. I think it's because he has spunk, and I like spunk (V.V., if you're reading this, I mean spunk as in [spuhngk], –noun 1. pluck; spirit; mettle). Still haven't started my other two classes yet, but I'll get there.

Final thought, I met my landlord last night to pay rent for the first time (annoying) and she seemed incredibly relieved that we were able to communicate via my pidgin Italian (racist?), since she speaks ZERO English, which I actually kind of like about her. She came and looked at our death mold and said she'd call someone or something. I nodded a lot as if I understood her, but I didn't really. In fact, she may well have been telling me to lick the mold off the wall and eat it for dinner, for all I know. But I'm giving her the benefit of the doubt here. Well, that's about all for now. I'll try and keep writing. And I'm no longer going to promise photos with every post, because it seems very clear by now that photos are simply not going to happen with any semblance of regularity. Let's all pretend that endless pages of text are exactly what we all hope to find when visiting this page. I KNOW I DO. Okay, buona sera! xo