27. November 2011: Mambo Italiano

Yesterday I spent 9am until 10:45pm working on my finals for Medici and Dante so this morning, Kari and I decided to take a break to watch the Florence Marathon. The traditional Renaissance-costumed flag throwers and drummers were the entertainment before the runners made it to the finish line. The first to come through the ribbon were bicyclists on bicycle-like contraptions that were pedaled entirely with arm strength. Clearly, these contraptions were actually incredibly difficult to move because the first bikes only came in twenty minutes before the first runner. The first male time was 1:46 and the first female came in at 1:51. As they were coming in, the jumbo-tron showed the leaders of the foot race and it looked like it would actually be an exciting kick to watch. About five minutes before the first man came in though, one of the men took off and left his competitor in the dust. The time of the first male was 2:09:51 and the first female came in at 2:31:36. Both of them were from Ethiopia.

Through the magic of technology, I discovered that an old friend from band camp, fellow cellist Hugh, was in town visiting his girlfriend for Thanksgiving. So of course I had to show them both the best gelato in Florence at the Gelateria de Medici. They agreed with me that it was the best. We shared an hour of catching up and good conversation before I had to run back for dinner.

Because it was our turn to cook dinner! My host parents have been hosting International students for fifteen years and every student must cook them a traditional meal from their country. Neither Kari nor I are cooks, so we decided to make breakfast for dinner (they don’t have real breakfast in Italy anyways). For dessert, we made pumpkin bread. It takes the longest time to bake so we started that early—good thing too because it turned out that we had to grind up the cloves and grate the nutmeg ourselves. Our menu for the evening was as follows: Scrambled eggs with mozzarella and sausage (my job), hashbrowns (my job), French toast (Kari’s job), fruit salad (a joint effort) and pumpkin bread (also a joint effort). You don’t believe that I cooked? Yeah, I wouldn’t believe it either. That’s why I made sure to have proof!

Instead of the traditional Italian courses, we served our breakfast in true American style: everything at once. Our host parents were a little surprised by this tactic but decided that it all tasted so good that they didn’t mind so much. I was actually quite impressed with how well it all turned out—neither Kari nor myself prides ourselves on great cooking skills. To watch during dinner, Daniella and Andrea had bought Il Mago di Oz. That’s right. The Wizard of Oz was dubbed in Italian with English subtitles…except for the songs, which were the original sound. Thank goodness. It was a wonderful evening.

In the excitement of Thanksgiving, I forgot to show you my drawing from last week. Class was cancelled on Thanksgiving so we only had two days to complete this drawing…which is not actually enough time to complete a drawing so we were just supposed to get a good outer contour down on paper. The point was to get used to drawing on a much larger paper before we start our final drawing. So here is my work at the end of day one and day two. I also included a photo of the studio since I realized you probably don’t know what it looks like. It’s just a big circular room but it’s where Botticelli used to show is work so it’s kind of intimidating.

Ok, now I have just found the entirety of Ahmal and the Night Visitors on YouTube so…guess what I’m going to be doing tonight? While reading Medici, of course, but in the Christmas spirit.