a new approach to this blog situation.

As a way to remember the more detailed information about my time here and to generally keep up better with my blog, I am going to try and do shorter, more frequent posts as things occur. As a part of my one credit Italian culture course, we watch about a total of 5 movies and have one cooking class. The first movie we watched was Amarcord, then the second film I missed because I wasn't feeling well. The third film was entitled Mio Fratello e Figlio Unico, and the most recent film was La Vita e Bella (Life is Beautiful, which many people had already seen). Amarcord was very different, even for my taste, and the other two I saw were very good films. There's still one more left, and I'm quite excited for it, and I think I'm going to ask Claudia (my Italian professor) if I can borrow the one that I missed.

Last night I had my cooking class. It was amazingly delicious, and surprisingly very simple to make. Yesterday afternoon we went to the market to buy all of the ingredients, and she read off everything we needed as we wrote it down so we could ask for the items and do everything ourselves. Somehow I ended up at the counter most of the time, so I did practically all the talking, in Italian. It was a little bit difficult, and sometimes the shop guy couldn't hear me or I put the emphasis on the wrong syllable, but it all worked out and I felt very proud of myself.

For dinner we made lasagna with a meat sauce, parmesan and mozzerella cheese. It was delicious -- especially since there was no ricotta cheese like traditional lasagna. I am in no way a fan of ricotta cheese. Our second course was mortadella, a kind of ham or bologna, wrapped in veal and cooked in tomato sauce, and Roman broccoli on the side. One of the most delicious meals I've ever had. And the best part, dessert, was a strawberry tiramisu. It didn't have cocoa or coffee like traditional tiramisu, it instead was made with lady fingers soaked in pineapple juice, had a kind of strawberry cream/puree, and topped with homemade whipped cream and fresh strawberries. We get to keep all of the recipes, so I will definitely be attempting them again in the future.