Quiet Nights

Yesterday evening Nico took us to Baffetto (which means mustache) Pizzeria. It was perfect. A true hole-in-the-wall Italian pizzeria with a woodfire oven and zero elbow room. Thankfully she called ahead for us and put in a reservation because when we showed up there was a line maybe 30 people deep waiting outside, popular spot for Tuesday night dinner! We got a table after 10 minutes to the disgust of the people in line. It was nice having Nico around again and of course dinner took place almost entirely in Italian. Fun words that tripped us up : english --> italian "Boom!" and spaceship  italian-->english "awesome".  After dinner Nico and her friend (who is also an ISC for IES students) went out with two other girls from my apartment. Kat, Ginny, and I went home to try and finish watching a movie we started some nights ago, La Dolce Vita. We watched another half hour before it was making us sleepy and realized that we still have and hour and a half to go! We called it quits and will try to watch more some other night.

Clean plate club!

   

Our wine jug 

Kat joined the clean plate club too

Felt well rested and woke up at a good time this morning. It's hard for me to switch into an Italian morning routine. I want to eat a bowl of cereal and wake up with a mug of coffee. Here I grab a small yogurt and maybe make a piece of toast, most mornings I also make or buy espresso. It's just not the same. I need to find an activity in the morning that will help me wake up, maybe I'll start showering in the morning instead of afternoon/evening? I did my homework for Italian then Kat and I explored Chiesa Nuova since it's 2 min from our apartment. It was interesting inside but we didn't see the sanctuary because we didn't want to open doors that we shouldn't. Another trip will be easy enough to make. We grabbed panini from the cafe across the street and ate outside in the sun next to the fountain. A beautiful meal in my opinion. Then off to class!

Italian class today still seems not challenging enough but my professor is really reluctant to let me move up for some reason. None of my classmates had ever studied pronomi combinati before, ever. My professor suggested tomorrow I take my normal class with her then stay and take the next level up just to see if it's really what I want. That means 5 hours of straight Italian classes tomorrow from 13-18:00  oh goodness! On top of that my roomies and I signed up for one of the cooking classes that IES offers. So in the morning we'll go and make some yummy food to munch on for lunch, then I sit in class for 5 hours straight and come home to do homework. Sigh. Today I finally took off my nailpolish (every guy reading this just groaned) but nailpolish remover is absolutely the hardest thing to find in Rome!! It's incredible because they sell nailpolish in plenty of places just no remover! I'm glad my roommate brought some but I want some of my own. grrrrr.

I've made plans to meet up for lunch with one of my high school friends who is studying in Rome this semester with another program. I'm excited to see her on Friday and touch base on our experiences and on all the art we've seen because she took AP Survey of Art History with me, gotta love that class and Sturd! I'm hoping to see some tiny pea-heads while I'm here ;)

Quiet night here, Ginny and I walked over to the Pantheon for gelato after dinner (you know cause it's ten minutes away hahaha) thanks to Ginny's superior Italian translation skills we helped some Americans understand directions from an Italian woman, turns out the gentleman used to live in Pgh!! while at the Pantheon people watching we also saw a man in a green Pittsburgh basketball shirt with "South Hills" written on the back where an athlete's name would go. Small touristy world.  Homework and bed now

baci!