Turkey

I bought tickets to Turkey for one of my Spring Break weeks :) April 13-19th. I am going with a friend from VCU, too. Half of my spring break is officially planned. I still have to buy tickets for the other half. ..

In other news...

I do nothing here.... Absolutely nothing..

Quite bored.. Waiting patiently for my birthday and spring break..

Gelato Discovery

I was looking on the internet for places to see in Milan and stumbled across a list of the "best" gelato places here in town. I took one of my roommates to one of these places and we were quite impressed.

I had two scoops, one of Cassata, which is kind of like fruit cake, and one of a vanilla-ish ice cream with caramelized almonds, maybe?

But, as you can probably see, it was not a very easy choice..

They also have cakes and gelato balls?

It was definitely worth the 30 minute public transport ride ...

First Cooking Class

So I am in a class taught in Italian, about Italian cooking. We finally had our first session in the kitchen. We have to go to a cooking school which happens to be down the street from my house (like the only thing that is near my house). This woman in this picture is my regular teacher, and the blurry man is the chef we work with. Hes cooking meatballs for us.

The chef was actually born in England, but moved to Italy when he was ten or so. He seemed like a pretty cool guy. He is teaching one of my classmates how to make risotto here:

The finished product, with some extra sausage on top:

I helped make these roasted potatoes. They were very delicious. Roasted in peanut oil with garlic and salt.

And the evidence that I helped make the potatoes:

Snowboarding Pics

So the snowboarding trip was fun, but a bit disappointing because I could not do very much. My leg started hurting again, so I decided not to push it too hard. I did manage to get out on the slopes each day, though not for very long. Weather was great, almost hot.

I stayed in an apartment style hotel with these two Russians and a French girl. It was definitely an interesting weekend. The French girl, who is actually one of the trip organizers, spoke little English but she was very nice.

This is another one of the trip organizers. He is a very interesting character, and always very well dressed.:

One of the slopes:

This is the French girl and the other guy. We had a pizza night our first night of the trip. We got there at 9pm and finally got our pizza at 11pm. Apparently it takes a while to make 50 pizzas..

So all in all, it was a good trip, but I think I will have to give up on snowboarding. At least until my leg is completely healed, if it ever gets to that point..

Around Town

So I decided to bring my camera along tonight on my way into town. I was heading to a pub to watch the Manchester United v. Inter Milan soccer match. (For those who care, Inter Milan lost, 2-0, but they also played really poorly). So here is the entrance hallway to my apartment building:

And this is where I catch the bus. I lovingly refer to my neighborhood as Turkey/Morocco/Egypt, take your pick, because there are literally like five Italians. And you can always spot them because they look really scared. My neighborhood is very ethnic...

And this is the front of the bus...:

So if I ever want to go into town after about 6pm, I have to ride the metro. To get to the nearest metro stop, I ride a bus for 5 or 6 stops. Then I walk down to the metro:

And wait for the yellow metro to come. Later at night, the metros come about every ten minutes, but during the day, they are pretty regular. After the yellow metro, depending on where I am trying to go, I have to transfer to the green metro..

And finally I get to where I am going. This is my friend Costanza:

And another friend, Elizabetta:

Tomorrow I am heading to Bardonecchia for some snowboarding. I will be back on Sunday. Ciao

My Apartment

Finally got around to taking some pictures of my apartment. This is the basement:

The pullout sofa is a lot more comfortable than my bed...and also not surrounded by lots of girls waking up early, so I sometimes sleep there...

This is my "room." As you can see, the walls do not actually reach the ceiling...:

This is the kitchen/dining room/living room (along with two of my roommates):

And this is my messy bed:

Address Correction

So I was walking down my street the other day and saw a building with the number 64 on it...soo... the address I posted last time is not correct... Here is the CORRECT address:

Carolyn Morris
c/o MIL Service
Via Brusuglio 67
Milan, Italy 20161

Once again, if you send anything, use Fedex or UPS, etc, otherwise I will likely never see whatever you send me.

I have missed calls from lots of people this weekend and I apologize for that. Hopefully we can connect some point this week.

Heading for a snowboarding trip on Thursday. Will try to have some more pictures up before I leave. Sleep now.

Address

I have a post box at my apartment, but no key to it... Apparently the door man is supposed to give us our mail, but here is my address if you need to send anything. Italian post service is terrible, so if you send anything, you have to use Fedex or DHL, etc..

Carolyn Morris
Via Brusuglio 64
Milan, Italy 20161

OK - I do not know which address is right, because the apartment website lists 14, but I have always known it as 64... So... send it to 64 because I think it is correct..

Carnevale

So this weekend was Carnevale here in Milan. It is apparently mostly for kids, but some adults also participate. It is kind of like Halloween, because kids dress up in costumes, but they also throw confetti and silly string EVERYWHERE. There were shows and parades as well. Most of the celebrations were in front of the Duomo, a big church here. Here is a picture of the facade:

And part of the Duomo square:

Another part (if you go through the archway, you can find big, expensive brand name stores):

And here are some of the costumes:

I don't know if you can see, but the ground is covered with confetti:

A friend of mine from VCU came to visit this weekend for he birthday. She is studying in France, about 3 or 4 hours away from here. It was nice to talk about home with someone who knows what I am talking about. We are both waiting to hear about the Critical Language Scholarship for this summer..

Nothing much going on here really. I signed up for a ski trip in a couple weeks. Hopefully I wont injure myself again.. Otherwise, just kind of hanging out and trying to get into the Italian society. It is a bit harder when you live with 7 other American girls, but I have managed to find a couple of nice Italians. Hopefully I will find more...

I hear snow is coming towards Richmond...Watch out for the flurries