Dinner at Della's - Bellissimo!

Well, I'm behind blogging schedule already again. Life moves so quick here. Too quick. This week was also just extremely eventful. So Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday's adventures were covered in the previous blog. Now onto Thursday which was incredible. Then Friday was Tivoli, Saturday was homework catchup day and Sunday was the beatification ceremony.

So first of all, Thursday started out great because my friend Nick told me about Gnocchi Tuesday's at Simone's (tavola calda (take out buffet) by school) for lunch. See my classes on Thursday are at 2:05 and 5:15 so normally I grab a slice of to-go pizza on my walk to school and am never near Simone's on Thursdays. Turns out they do gnocchi every Thursday so I participated in that this week because of him and got gnocchi pesto and it was incredibleeee. That's when I knew that day would rock. Spent the rest of the afternoon hanging out in the garden watching Michelle go through my 90's iTunes playlist while going to class in between. Typically, I would go straight from Business Law which ends at 6:30 to M8 Bar for the Extreme Language Exchange which I love doing but for the first time since January, I didn't go to that. I had my Italian oral exam instead.

My Italian teacher has a book conference thing to attend this week (she writes children books - so awesome - I'm working on getting an autographed copy, the reading age is 6-7ish so I'm hoping I can handle it ha) [Update: Have my autographed copy of Tenere, but, turns out, I'm not as smart as a 6 year old] so she canceled our May 4th oral exam. To make up for it, she offered to have us over to her house for dinner Thursday night and grade us on how well we conversed at the dinner table. Could it get any better than that? I'll take an informal oral exam and a home cooked Italian meal any day. She's also one of the nicest and caring teachers I've ever had and my class is only about eight of us, and we all get along great so I knew it was going to be great. Also, I was finally going to experience what an actual Italian family style dinner is like so I got a good dose of Italian cultural at the same time. This is why my school here is so great, never at UMD would you get to do something like this where your class is small enough, school is flexible enough and people live close enough for this to actually work.

Eggplant Parmesan, yum!

So me and Rose went over together since we live right next to each other, and after only getting slightly lost, we used our local instincts and direction asking skills and found our way and were there on time just 5 minutes before 8pm. We weren't sure then which door in the apartment complex was hers, and there were two different units with her last name, but judging by the decorations on her door, we knew we had the right one. Rang the buzzer and two kids answer the door. Thought for a second we were wrong but they quickly greeted and introduced themselves as her children. Her daughter was my age and her son was a year older. Once we stepped in through the door, I didn't speak a word of English until I left over two hours later, intense right? After meeting her husband and mother and waiting for the others to arrive, we started with the food. First up was an incredibly delicious melanzane alla parmigiana della nonna (eggplant parmasean made by her mother) that everyone agreed afterward was hands down the winner of the night. [New: Today in class she gave us the recipe for it, hit me up if you want to have the most delicious meal ever] Then came fresh diced tomatoes, a huge slice of fresh buffalo mozzarella and fresh bread. Next up was a delicious zucchini quiche, a hot spinach-like dish (it wasn't spinach) that's unique to Rome, it was incredible but I forget the name despite her husband explaining it in detail to me twice since I kept forgetting. Then penne fagioli (beans) and a type of meat with a nice sauce over it. But wait there's more! We finished the night off with fresh strawberries and whipped cream. Are you kidding me!? What an incredible meal, all homemade and all beyond incredible. She doesn't know I have a blog so don't think I'm saying all this great stuff for extra-credit, it honestly was one of my best meals I've had since I got to Rome, and that's saying something considering how extremely often I eat out.

Pasta Fagioli!

Now that I've gotten myself, along with all of you hungry, I'll stop teasing. In between all the feasting I was busy in conversation with her, her family or my classmates in Italian. We were all sitting in chairs in a circle in her family room just talking about whatever came to mind. One part that was great was how well prepared I am for starter conversations because of that language exchange I do. Since there I do the thing where you switch people every 15 minutes, I'm used to meeting new people and all those icebreaker conversations. Therefore, I was 100% ready for meeting her family. I felt like I was back at M8 when I was going on with her two children my age about where I'm from, what I study, what I like about Rome, when I leave etc etc. As a group, we had conversations about comparing the Italian and American education system to each other, comparing our movies and music and what we all want to do when we grow up, along with lots of other stuff I can't remember right now at 1am Sunday night after being up early to go to that beatification downtown. Bleh, I need to get some sleep. All real interesting conversations though.

Okay wrapping up, if all Italian families are as warm, welcoming and kind as hers, then I'm officially coming back here to live or study (again). It was an awesome night, I learned about new Italian foods (and tried new ones - anyone who knows me knows that I've never had half that stuff I listed up there before) and I learned about Italian culture both through the eyes of her and her husband and through her kids that are my age. Awesome night and spero che io abbia ricevuto un A! (congiuntivo joke to my classmates - ha)

Ciao Ciao, I've got 2 huge 10 page papers due this week but I'll try and fill you all in on my amazingly fun day in Tivolio - see my facebook album to see why - and then of course let you all know what it was like being at the beatification ceremony of Blessed John Paul II as 1 of 1,500,000 earlier today at St. Peter's.