A wonderful end.

Ciao amici :)

Today was an interesting kind of day. Most people from my program left today yet I still had the whole day here in Rome. I walked all over my favorite places, completing the near 15 items that were on my to-do list for today. It has been quite busy, but it's been a good day.

And I must say it ended wonderfully. I went to the delicious bakery right next to our apartment and I wanted to get a "ciambella," Italian for donut. I am so glad that I didn't discover these ciambelle before last week, because I would have been eating far too many of them. For just discovering them last week, I have already eaten three. I like donuts in the States, but there is something different about these Italian donuts!

They're larger than American-size donuts and they are just plain with sugar covering them. They are so simple and delicious, I really don't even know how to describe it. But fortunate for me, when I went to the bakery for the last time tonight, wanting to get a ciambella for tomorrow morning when I leave for the airport, I got scared because I didn't see them at first! Yet to my happiness, there was one single ciambella left for the day, and I told the barista how happy I was that I got the last one. "Che fortunata!" :) Such a great end to a bitter-sweet last day in Rome.

Too, I've been meaning to mention and was reminded today on my walk home, something interesting about Italy that I have found is that the Smurfs are incredibly popular here! They sell special jars of Nutella with Smurf characters on them and today walking home, I saw Smurf stickers and other merchandise for sale. Just about everywhere you go you can find something about the Smurfs and I think it's fascinating. :) However, here in Italy, they are not called the Smurfs, they are called "Puffi!" So everywhere you go, you see Puffi, and it still fascinates me to this day. :)

Off to Norway tomorrow!! I am so very excited, I cannot wait! I just want to leave right now; I don't want to wait until my flight tomorrow morning. :)

A presto!

Love and Style,
L.M.

American food.

The more time goes on the more I find myself missing American food. Right now, I just had a flashback to Steak n' Shake and I literally almost ascended into food heaven. A steakburger, fries and a chocolate milkshake sounds sooooooo good right now, it is not even funny! :)

Then thinking about the milkshake got me thinking about American ice cream in general and goodness do I miss that! The other night I got gelato for the first time in over three weeks and honestly, I didn't even miss it that much. At first its allure was daunting, but now I find it to be too rich, to fancy and too thick. I long for delicious American ice cream, either from Baskin Robbins or even just Dreyer's at the grocery store. Some double-churned would be absolutely amazing right about now.

Hamburgers, good ole' American french fries and ice cream are all things that I miss so very much and it all collided in my memory banks just now. I cannot wait!! So glad there's a 24-hour Steak n' Shake near the airport...definitely going to ask if we can stop. :)

Love and Style,
L.M.

It looks like Christmas!!

It isn't just beginning to look a lot like Christmas here, it already does!! There are Christmas lights down so many streets (my favorites being the red, white and green Italian-flag Christmas lights spanning close to the entire width of the street and going all the way down Via del Corso, one of the main shopping streets in all of Rome).

Too, they have these things called Christmas markets, which I had never heard of before. I went to check out the one I kept hearing about, located in Piazza Navona, and it was almost like a taste of home! It was set up just like a small carnival or fair with stands lined up in rows and lit up by florescent lights. They had a carousel, food stands that sold Nutella crepes and these giant donut-looking things that seemed to be very popular, and then they also had games and vendors. The games were much like those of an American carnival (hit the balloon with the dart, etcetera) and then the vendor booths were very unique. You could buy jewelry or leather notebooks, big hanging lights or even nativities. That stand stood out to me the most - it was an entire stand devoted to the selling of Christmas nativities. In a phrase, it seemed to me to be an American-style carnival similar to those we have back home but with a definite Italian twist to it. :) It was so much fun!

What made it even better, too, was the fact that I got a Nutella crepe for my journey to check out the festival. A restaurant worker recommended a good crepe place and he was right! It was quite delicious and made the whole experience even better.

It's already December 10th! Where has the time gone?! I feel the Christmas spirit getting stronger and stronger and I couldn't love it more.

Love and Style,
L.M.

I want to take a moment..

to re-emphasize the deliciousness of Italian yogurt. I know I've said this before but it just is so true. That's one of the things about the food that stood out to me last time I was here, as weird as that may seem and I was so excited to come and eat it again. It's truly been wonderful. Yogurt is such a healthy snack for you yet I'm so picky with my yogurt in America. For me, Yoplait is too sweet.

I have really gotten into the Greek yogurt craze, where the yogurt is thick and plain and kind of even sour, but then you mix in the fruit or what not in it and it's so delicious. However, this yogurt is just normal yogurt that I buy at our local supermarket for €0,22!

It's 1:36 in the morning and I'm studying for my art history final later this morning and I literally craved a yogurt. So odd. But so healthy, so I'm definitely not complaining. Well, only about having to leave Italian yogurt yet again in just 11 days now. Oh well. Maybe Italian yogurt will become the next new big yogurt craze. I would like that.

Love and Style (and yogurt yumminess),
L.M.

Schoooool.

This semester's school schedule while in Rome has been so fantastic for many reasons regarding schedule, yet one thing in particular that has been so nice for me is having no class on Fridays! I have not yet been able to successfully plan my schedule at my home university to have Fridays off (though it seems as if eeeveryone else is able to do that just fine), so having this semester without class on Friday has been a real treat.

However, now I'm spoiled.

I don't ever want to have class on Fridays again, and on the rare occasion that we do have to go to class on a Friday while here, for a field trip or makeup class, etcetera, it is a near dreaded event. Like tomorrow, for instance. This coming Thursday we have off of school because of a national holiday (Immaculate Conception), just like we had All Saints Day off of school because it, too, is a national holiday here in Italy. However, I'm guessing it is because our program is so short anyways, they cannot simply let us have the day totally off, rather, we have to go in on Friday (as we did for All Saints Day make-up) and have a make-up day for the day we are going to get off.

Thus, I don't want to go to class tomorrow! I've become so accustomed to having Thursday nights be the start of my weekend that having to go to class tomorrow is not something I'm loving. Honestly and truly, this is not a big deal. However, I've much enjoyed all of my Roman Fridays off, having time to catch up on all of the sleep I've not been getting during all of the excitement, as well as getting an extra day to go out and explore the city in ways that I normally may have deemed that I didn't have time for.

But as they say here in Italy: Basta! It's a saying that I have come to like a lot; it means "enough!" So enough with my ranting and off to bed. I actually have to get up for class tomorrow. Purtroppo! :)

Buona notte!

Love and Style,
L.M.

An up and a down.

One thing I keep being thankful for every time I go to the grocery store is the price of food. Grant it, I've only recently started doing a lot of hard-core shopping at the grocery store, but I generally know the prices of things and food at the grocery store here in Italy is so much cheaper than in America! If I want to buy a box of Barilla pasta it will be about 50 cents, a single hamburger will be about 75 cents, a loaf of Italian bread also 75 cents. There are so many things you can get here for cheap! It's so wonderful and I could definitely get used to this! 

One down I ran into (yet again) today that really stuck out in my mind is the pace of pedestrians on the sidewalks. The pace in Italy is certainly a lot slower than somewhere like New York, and this is quite evident whenever you walk on the sidewalks here. People often stroll, rather than briskly walk, which is wonderful but I must admit when you're trying to get somewhere on a time schedule, it can be a bit difficult to weave in and out of all the leisurely strollers. Today, I was booking it to class near the Colosseum and no one else seemed to be in near the hurry I was. That slower pace is certainly a good thing in the big scheme of things, but it definitely is something that I've had to get more used to.

Anyways, just some random thoughts for the day. Buona notte, tutti!

Love and Style,

L.M.

An Italian Thanksgiving.

Thanksgiving yesterday was a lot of fun. It was incredibly sad being away from family for the first time on a major holiday, but it was really great to be amidst the company of friends. And while Thanksgiving isn't a big holiday here in Italy, our program took us to an exquisite restaurant where we had turkey dinner with an Italian twist and it was so posh and wonderful. A really great evening indeed.

Today, however, would normally be a monumental day for me, as it is Black Friday in the States!! Being that Thanksgiving isn't a big holiday here, definitely neither is Black Friday. This makes me sad, as it is a true experience and such a fun thing to go shopping on Black Friday, in my opinion. 

But oh well, there is always next year! It's crazy to think that now it's past Thanksgiving and one step closer to Christmas. Time really does fly.

Love and Style,

L.M.