Hello again to everyone!
I hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas and New Year's and month of January under all that snow I've been hearing about! I was home for a little more than two weeks and certainly enjoyed seeing friends and family and the comforts of home. Yet, by the time I got adjusted to the time zone and an American way of life, it was time to fly back to Italy! I apologize for slacking since I've been back, the past three weeks went by much faster than I thought they would. It has been much easier returning to a life than starting one. With four months down, I have another four to go in this program and I am planning to make the most of it. To catch you all up to speed, let me explain that my roommate Paola, who recently took the Italian bar-exam equivalent, has returned home to Varese. She completed her two-year "in pratica" working at a lawyer's office and now she can look for a job before the results of her exam come out in June. For three days in December, she spent 7 hours a day writing essays and responses to case studies. Now, although she is considered a lawyer since she finished her two years, she will wait to see if she passed her written exams before taking the oral part in June or July. So, she is looking for a job in Como. Ideally, she will be all set up in Como by May when the weather is nice and we can come visit her :).
Paola spent the weekend with us before moving out on Monday. Sometime in November, I found "Skippy" Peanut Butter in the market and brought it home to eat right away. Italians have a version of Peanut Butter that is quite disgusting and so my roommates, especially Paola, wanted to try the American version. They LOVED it! Paola went to the store the next day to buy her own and until Christmas, ate a spoonful of peanut butter almost every night after dinner. This sprung a discussion about various American food and she asked me about pancakes and maple syrup and she even wanted to know about "roasting marshmallows." But, why do you heat them over a fire? Paola still remembers some of the English she learned in school, so I was able to explain the "I want some...more" derivation of "S'mores" and every so often quizzed her on the name of the treat I would bring back in January.
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| Giovanna and Paola with pancakes and maple syrup |
We started the day on Sunday with pancakes and maple syrup. At first they were hesitant, because they couldn't understand if we were eating something savory or sweet and thus whether it was a dessert or a snack, how could it be a meal? They had seen pancakes in movies and on television shows but had never understood what they really were. We ate them as a part of lunch and they loved them! Giovanna brought back homemade meatballs from the south and Struffoli! For the past few years, I kept hearing at home about the Struffoli that Grandma used to always make for Christmas and how we can not exactly be sure of how she actually made it. Giovanna is from a small town in the province of Caserta, the same province that Grandma was born in and so after all I had the closest rendition of Grandma's Struffoli this year :).For dessert, we had Struffoli and S'mores. A pairing of Southern Italian and American treats!
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| Paola eating her second S'more ... |
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| Struffoli from Caserta |
This all happened the first weekend I arrived back in Brescia and today, three weeks later, we had another international breakfast. Our new roommate is ironically also named Paola and was equally interested in pancakes. She saw the real New England maple syrup in the fridge and wanted to know what it was for. Last week, she bought a special tool to use over the stove to make the foam you add to coffee. In Italy, regular caffè is more concentrated and served in a small espresso cup. A cappuccino is espresso with steamed milk and foam. Oftentimes, Italians drink a cappuccino in the morning as part of a breakfast and sometimes in the afternoon as a snack. After a meal like lunch and dinner, the milk in a cappuccino is too heavy and so instead they drink either a caffè or a caffè macchiato which is the concentrated coffee served in a small espresso cup with foam added on top. Since buying the new tool, Paola has been making us caffè macchiato's and has been wanting to try making a cappuccino. Today, we set the date to have a "gemellaggio di colazione" or a "twinning/pairing/linking" of breakfast. I made pancakes again and Paola made us Italian cappuccinos.
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| Il nostro gemellaggio di colazione: italiana - americana |
Che buona colazione!
