Second day of O-chem and culinary
cultures of Italy classes!! I got up around 8AM to get caught up on some
reading for O-chem, and read through what I thought I was supposed to have read
for today. Turned out I was a half a chapter behind still. =( I went to my
apartment on my lunch break though and finished up the reading for what I
hadn’t already done, so I’m “caught up” again. It is going to be really hard to
keep up in this class, because I’m a really slow reader and we are going over a
full chapter or more a day plus our days are sort of packed tight. We generally
have lecture 11AM til 1:20PM then break for “lunch” til 4PM. I like that our
apartment is only about a 5 minute walk from school so I can go back on my
lunch break and read. I have been so exhausted though I end up taking a short
nap as well, so I can’t get quite as much done as I would like. Then we have
class from 4PM til 6PM and after are free to do whatever we want or need to do.
We have to walk anywhere we go for dinner so it generally takes a couple of
hours to get to somewhere for dinner and back to our apartment. Then by the
time I take a shower it is probably 9 or 9:30 or so, and I have a few hours
until I need to go to sleep. I guess it isn’t really that packed of a schedule,
but I feel like it because I don’t have time to take notes from the book as I
would like as well as doing all the practice problems our teacher suggests and
reviewing the things I didn’t quite understand in lecture.
We tasted some wine in class in the
afternoon today and also tried some cheese with it after we tasted the wine by
itself. They wanted us to smell the wine first and get an impression of what we
thought. It kind of smelled like apples
to me, but had a really strong alcohol scent to it more than anything. My
instructor said it was a sweet wine, but it didn’t taste sweet to me. It burned
as it went down, which I really don’t like (which is why I have only had jack
daniels precisely ONE time before). He said most of the wines we will be trying
will likely be red wines and will be dry. I’m kind of iffy on that, because I
generally like white wines that are sweet, and I don’t think I care for dry
wine, but maybe I will be surprised by it! You never know. The cheese we tried
was made with sheep milk and it was really good actually. It had a little of a
weird after taste, but maybe with a different wine it wouldn’t be noticeable.
We learned that the majority of cheese you will get here isn’t made with cow
milk, so that’s a fun fact for the day.
I went to eat at a little place
really close to my apartment tonight, and I think I will probably keep going
back there for meals. It is on our voucher plan, so it is free and it is one of
the places that I get free water at (they don’t really serve tap water over
here… only bottled mineral water, so if it isn’t included in our voucher we have
to pay for the water we drink). Plus they had really good food. I tried gnocchi
for the first time (have always wanted to, but the opportunity never really
came up) and it was really good, and I had a little left over to take with me
for lunch tomorrow. I like that, because I can just come to my apartment to eat
lunch between classes instead of spending an hour or longer wasting time at a restaurant.
I just got back to the apartment again and I’m going to try and read through
another chapter AND do all of the practice problems for the chapters we have
already covered. I’m not sure if that is going to work out or not, but I can be
ambitious!!
Missing
friends and family back home so much! *hugs*
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