To Stay Or Not To Stay (that is the question, and here is the answer)

You might be wondering whether or not I’m going to stay in Bologna next semester. Or maybe you didn’t even know that it was something I was considering – before I came to Italy I got a full-year student visa in case I decided to stay for the spring semester as well. I decided to leave my options open and make my final decision once I got to Bologna, since I was given until the beginning of November to decide.

And I’ve decided to return to Vassar next semester.

This probably surprises some of you who may have thought I would run away to Italy and never come home. Well, to be honest, it surprised me too. But as much as I love Italy, I definitely feel like I’m making the right decision. There are many classes at Vassar I want to take, many extra-curriculars I want to do, many many friends I want to see again…and maybe it’s cliché, but I miss New York like crazy! As one of our family friends said to me - you can always go back to Italy, but you can’t always be a Vassar student. I think that pretty much sums up my sentiments exactly.

So there you have it. The parents are coming to Italy for Christmas and New Year’s, and then I’ll be back in the good ole’ US of A on January 3rd!

In other news, I passed Roberto Benigni, the Italian actor of Life Is Beautiful fame, on the street the other evening. We made eye contact as we walked past each other because I was staring at him, trying to figure out who he was, since he looked older than he did in Life Is Beautiful, and I couldn’t place him immediately. I think I recognized him because he looked back at me, like he knew I was yet another person who recognized him. Also, I remembered seeing signs that he was in Bologna for a big concert on Saturday night, and I was sure that it was him when the Italian couple next to me recognized him too.

He was participating in a concert series by the Orchestra Mozart ensemble, and their big concert with all of the big choirs and orchestras was Saturday night (and of course, sold out) but a few of us went to the Sunday night performance of the series. It was a smaller concert, in the same venue that we saw the opera Il Trovatore a few weeks ago, consisting of two movements, one by Schubert, and one by Mendelssohn. There were eight instruments in the Schubert piece, and nine in the Mendelssohn (the Mendelssohn was only string instruments.) I haven't been to a lot of orchestra concerts, but I love classical music so of course it was wonderful to just sit and listen to beautiful live music for an hour and a half.

And now on to what you’ve really been waiting for, cooking class #3! This was our last cooking class, and it consisted of farro, a type of grain whose name doesn’t translate to English but looks a lot like barley, with beans, celery, carrots, and leeks. It was similar to risotto. We also had lightly fried vegetables: sage leaves – that was new, and surprisingly good – and artichoke hearts. The second course was oven-baked fish and potatoes with onions, served with white wine. And for dessert, the grand finale, we had tiramisu. I learned to make tiramisu in my intro-Italian class freshman year, but this was a slightly different way to make it, and of course, incredibly delicious.

Lastly, Christmas came early to Bologna this year, at least for me. I made two essential purchases this weekend, but one of them was my Christmas present to myself, and one was my Christmas present from my parents. The first purchase was my Italian leather boots. I have been searching for a great pair of boots since I got here, and I finally found them, and at not a bad price, either. I think we will be very happy together. (In the picture below, I’m wearing the boots pulled up, but the top part can be folded down, and they can be scrunched down lower.) My second acquisition was my beautiful new winter coat. I didn’t bring a coat with me to Bologna, because my peacoat from last year is dying, and I certainly wasn’t about to bring my down, ankle-length, it’s-20-degrees-below-zero-in-Poughkeepsie winter coat, that resembles a sleeping bag, to Italy. So when I (or rather, Nicole) found this green coat, we knew it was meant to be.

Note: I took this picture to email to my parents to show them just what they bought me for Christmas…I promise, I didn’t take it just to put on the blog.

We have a busy weekend coming up, with an overnight trip to Turin with the group, so look for a recap of that sometime next week. Happy Halloween!