dinner.

HAPPY 19^th BIRTHDAY PATRICK!

So this was the menu for last night’s dinner.

Bruschetta with olive oil

Bruschetta with porcini mushrooms and olive oil

Bruschetta with smoked salmon and butter

Gnocchi with porcini mushrooms

Gnocchi with salmon and a cream sauce

Chocolate cake

Yeah I ate the mushrooms and tried the salmon. Go me!

Love ya

Milan and football

Sorry i have no motivation to write anything so i will just upload lots of pics!

Basically i spent the weekend in Milan and it was a blast.
Jo and I in front of the Duomo in Milan.

unfinished statue by Michelangelo. its in some random castle in Milan. we got in for free.

In front of the Opera house in Milan. Its the most famous. We saw the "Merry Widow" in our own box. yeah it was cool

Gourmet hot chocolate from the McCafe.

Saturday was the craziest day ever. We were going to catch the 9.15 train to Verenna. so we got to the train station at 8.50. the entire milan central station had 1 ticket line. So we waited in that line for over and hour. during that hour Jo and i ran to get food. by the time we got back to erika she still hadn't bought the tickets so we 5 min to buy tickets and get on the train. so we bought the tickets and took off running with all our overnight bags through the station. We missed the train. so we went to the top of the duomo.
At the top of the duomo. First day it wasn't raining.

Verenna.

This is the view from our resturant. nice.

Chelsea, Erika, Me and Jo at a Siena football game.
-Siena almost scored right after this photo was taken and the guy that took it broke his seat, threw it into the crowd and got kicked out of the game all within 5 min of taking this picture.. crazy drunk man.

SIENA SIENA SIENA... we won!

love ya

pasta

i hate sitting down at dinner and finding a tentacle in my pasta. something about it just makes me lose my appetite.

tuscany travels

This week was busy busy busy.

Monday we had a surprise exam. I got a 91.

Tuesday Peter gave us the rest of our assignments for the semester. I have a lot of paintings to do and not a lot of time.

Wednesday we had our new Italian class. We have started this program with an acting school in Rome (its equivalent would be Julliard). Every week an actor comes to Siena and teaches us how to pronounce words and letters in Italian. It was like Yoga, Choir and Italian all in one. For 3 hours we learned to pronounce 3 vowels. Eeee. OU, and aahhhhh. Each sound had an action. For the E action we just raised our hands over our heads then for the OU we moved our hands straight in front of us and aaah we made an alligator mouth. We started out class by saying the vowels and singing them. Then our teacher had us lay done and focus on our birth (he meant breath). Then we stood up closed our eyes and imagined we were a piece of grass. We had to imagine the color and then we had to move like the grass would when the wind blew by.. Then we got back in our circle and practiced saying the E sound. We did the same thing for OU except we had to imagine we were a cloud. And the ahh sound we were the sea. We were all doing our best not to laugh but it was hard.

Friday I went to the chocolate capital of the world, Perugia. Every October for 2 weeks there is a chocolate festival in Perugia. So about 10 of us went this year. We took the bus to Perugia and walked around the festival for a few hours.

Me, Charley and Kristen with chocolate covered bananas and our cow hats.

We got a card that let us get free samples and goodies at designated shops. It was delicious.

giant chocolate cow.

Saturday I met Jo and Chelsea at the bus station and we went to Arezzo. When we got their it was raining so we just walked around and we found some nice shops, so we went shopping and we had a relaxed lunch then we caught the bus back to Siena. At 4 the missionaries took the ward bowling in Poggibonsi.

Jo and I at the bowling alley.

I didn’t do very well. I think I got a 60 or something.Then we caught the bus back to Siena and went home.

Sunday our host family took Erika and I chestnut hunting and to a chestnut festival in Santa Fiora. It was a two hour drive into the mountains. We went with 2 other families. We hunted for about 2-3 hours. Erika and I found a ton of chestnuts.

Then we went to Santa Fiora and we had lunch. (in American it would be similar to a fair but on a smaller scale) We had ravioli filled with chestnut and a mushroom sauce, roast beef and chestnut paste/sauce with ricotta cheese. It was pretty good. Then we walked around Santa Fiora for a while and we got back to Siena at 6. It was a long but good day.

siena sends love

Banks, Assisi, Chestnut hunting

Siena is the home to the oldest Bank in the world: Banca Monte dei Paschi di Siena. These is a museum about this bank but tourist are usually not allowed to go in. We are cool though and got to go in because it was part of our cultural experience here in Italy.
We saw one of the first bank notes, some cool architecture and a great view of Siena from the roof....


This past week Peter took us to Assisi, since Erika's family was in town they came too!

We saw the church of St. Francis...


We were walking and I stopped and looked in this mirror and we looked like midgets so we had to take a picture....


Friday I went to Peter's house for the good part of the day with about 11 other girls
Leah made us delicious mexican food..


We went on a hike around his house and for the most part had a nice relaxing day in the Italian countryside.



Saturday I hung around Siena and did homework. It was Gusippie's birthday so he had 4 friends over for dinner. Anna made delicious lasagna and we had meet with fries. Then the cake was 3 layers with nutella between the layers and rum in the layers.. yeah

Sunday we went chestnut hunting! Apparently every Sunday in the fall the woods are packed with Italians looking for nuts. Erika and I had a fun time searching the ground for the best ones. We got a ton...



Then on the drive home we stopped to look at the boar at this far. it had some babies but they ran into the woods..


i ate that.


Siena sends love

if italy doesn't kill me

I swear that if italy doesn't kill me i am going to be the strongest person ever.

our host family fed us pig liver. ew then we had wild boar. Last night we had pasta with clams and calamari- with tenticles.

uuugh. i found some really good granola crackers at the supermercato.

Thursday we went to Assisi. It was cool. lots of churches. Then Erika and her family and I had dinner in Cortona. Friday I spent all day at Peters with some other girls. Leah made us mexican food! it does not exist here in italy. we loved it.

Not much else is going on. We only have 4 weeks left in Siena and that measn 15 more days of school. yessss

Cinque Terre Photos

Sign on the toilet at McDonalds







Erika and I on the Via Dell'Amore



we sat here for about 40 min enjoying the view.


Sunset in Cinque Terre


Hiking along Cinque Terre


Beach in October. :)