Buon Appetito

I feel that it would be a crime to come all the way to Italy and not do a post on the food. It really deserves a whole blog dedicated to it, but I haven't got time for that so I'll give you a sneak peek at my Italian culinary adventures in this post :)

It didn't take me long to adjust to Italian life. After a week I felt pretty settled and after 5 it felt like a home away from home. In fact, it would be difficult to find someone who the Italian way of life doesn't suit. It is really easy to get used to, and the food is a big part of this.

First of all, it goes without saying that Italian food is among the best in the world by anyone's standards, and it is very very true. They have set mealtimes and never snack except on the occasional piece of fruit and everything is cooked from scratch. Although this can become annoying. Trying to find a pre-packaged sandwich in the supermarket to take to the park with me in my first week was impossible and I ended up buying and carrying round with me an entire pack of rice cakes all afternoon. Now I realise that people rarely eat in public here. Snacking on the street is considered slobby from what I've picked up on and you very rarely see food being consumed outside the house unless it's a proper sit-down picnic at lunchtime. I have barely drunk anything but water and peach juice since I got here, which for me is a big achievement (EDIT: this makes me sound like an alcoholic haha, I am referring to my Diet Coke and orange squash addiction!)

McDonald's Happy Meals here don't come with ketchup, instead they give you a little pack of Parmigiano Reggiano cheese! The kids here have very sophisticated taste...

You never ever see signs outside restaurants saying "Children Welcome". It is a foreign and unnatural concept to the Italians that the children wouldn't go out to dinner with the parents. Everything here revolves around the family.

In 10 weeks, there have been only 6 days in which I haven't eaten pasta. I've been keeping count. Sometimes we even have pasta for both lunch and dinner so it works out that I've eaten pasta more times than days I've been here!

There is a strange obsession with pistachios here. I'm not sure if it's just the Italians or a Europe-wide thing as I've noticed it in France as well. Everything that can be flavoured has a pistachio option. Pistachio jelly anyone? For a place that's known for it's amazing food, that is not something I thought I would encounter!

Probably my favourite Italian food item is tiramisu. It is coffee scented, creamy, spongy deliciousness and I will miss it. That brings me on to the coffee consumption habits here. Having friends round for a 9pm espresso is considered normal and a completely reasonable way to consume caffeine. This confuses me.
Seems like I'm not the only one...

In other news...

I had a hilarious/ disheartening moment this week when I logged onto Duolingo to do some language practice. It's this free website where you can practice your languages or learn new ones from scratch. I was doing quite well on the Italian and had leveled up so decided to see what my French is like after 10 weeks in Italy. I tried to skip a few stages thinking that after 9 years of learning, I'd be a bit beyond the beginners' level. How wrong was I! After taking a skills test in listening and translating, the smug little owl who is the website's mascot told me I was not worthy of skipping even the first stage. Hmmm, my brain is firmly parked in Italian mode for now, and this week I have to send formal emails to France. Bleugh. Maybe I should spend my evenings reading and listening to French instead of watching penguin videos...

Unfortunately, my Italian hasn't improved much with the demise of my French. Mistake of the week goes like this. The Italian word for "eyebrows" is "sopracciglia" ("sopra" means "over" and "ciglia" are eyelashes). I went and got "ciglia" muddled with "ciliegia" which means "cherry". So basically I ended up saying something like "uppercherry."

This week the girls seem to have developed a habit of burning things. The 7 year old managed to put her shoe next to the insence which burns in the garden to warn off mosquitoes, resulting in a blackened flip flop. Her response was “I like it. It makes my flip flops look older, like they are from the second world war 300 years ago.” On the same day, I came out of the loo to be greeted by a burning smell coming from the kitchen. I thought what on Earth could they have done in the 2 minutes I was in there that could produce such a smell? Turns out the 11 year old was trying to defrost a bread roll on a plastic plate in the microwave. The plate got a hole burnt through it and the bread roll was welded to the plate. I think she was pretty embarrassed and determined that her parents wouldn't find out so she took it upstairs. When I asked her what she’d done with it she said she’d “hidden” it. Remembering what it was like to be an 11 year old, I guessed it was lingering at the back of her wardrobe somewhere, so I had to have words to make sure it was put in the bin. She assured me it was “got rid of” but wouldn't bring it downstairs so who knows if it actually is in the upstairs bin or not...

It's tipping down with rain at the moment. It is strange to see this place in the rain and I'm annoyed because I was planning to go back to Venice this week but won't be able to if it's like this :( We made the most of it though and embraced the rain to have a proper English afternoon! We made English tea and watched Harry Potter with the shutters closed and it was wonderful :) It's strange that living abroad has turned me into a tea drinker! I don't think it went down too well with everyone else though. Mixing milk and hot water was just too much of a weird idea for them to handle!

I've only got little over a week left here before I return to England, but I'll fit in another post before I go :)

Until next week chums!
Alice :)

The Hills Are Alive...

With the sound of chickens cock-a-doodle-dooing at 5 am every day. Living on a farm isn't nearly as peaceful as they make it out to be on Escape to the Country. But the amazing scenery in the Dolomites and the abundance of apple strudel more than make up for it :)

This was the beautiful view I woke up to every morning for the past week:

We've been staying half an hour away from Austria, most people here know me as "Maria" (no-one can pronounce Alice so they call me by my conveniently Italian sounding middle name instead), and it's my job to live with a family and look after the children. I'm basically a von Trapp :)

I have truly climbed every mountain and forded every stream this week, including part of this scary looking one:

It made Duke of Edinburgh look like a light stroll and all that was running through my head while climbing over slippery rocks on my hands and knees was whether my travel insurance stretched that far. I doubt it, so maybe from now on I'll stick to walking in the park.

Speaking of perilous situations, Italian ideas of what constitutes safe driving + bendy mountain roads with huge drops down one side = many terrifying experiences. I have discovered that there is aptly no Italian word for "passing place" so they use the English word to refer to the concept, even if they do not use the actual passing place in practice. They call the blind spot in a driver's field of vision the "angolo morto" which means "dead angle". It certainly is a dead angle because I never see it being used! Oh dear, I'm a terrible backseat driver... I am sorry for all of you who ever have to drive me somewhere, but at least all driving in England will seem perfect now that I've got used to their interpretation of it here!

One of the girls who lives on the farm where we stayed is called Astrid. The kids I'm looking after had even more trouble pronouncing her name than they do with mine, and kept thinking her name was pronounced "Hagrid". Suddenly the problems I have with my name don't seem so bad anymore...

The Alto Adige/ Sud Tyrol region of Italy is so different from the rest of the country that it felt as though we'd left Italy all together. All the TV was either in German or the dialect of Italian that they speak in parts of Switzerland and the radio played this weird Austrian punk concoction which made me glad that the signal was sketchy. I found that it was lovely to have a change of scenery and experience what was almost a different culture in the mountains; the humidity was a lot less suffocating at 2500m and after 8 weeks of nothing but pasta for lunch everyday, dumplings and apple strudel were a welcome change! As lovely as it was to get away though, I am glad to be back in Treviso where I have work to do and an established routine for the next 3 weeks before I can come home and speak English all day everyday :) Being understood in my own language is something which I will never again take for granted, and I think this experience has given me the ability to have a new level of patience with people in Britain who struggle with English. I think learning another language gave me a degree of heightened patience a long time ago, but it's impossible to imagine the exact feeling of isolation and frustration that sometimes comes along when you can't make yourself understood, or you run through a sentence in your head 10 times before saying it to find that people are looking at you blankly when you finally get it out. The good news is that those moments are thankfully becoming fewer and further between, but if I didn't have the wonderful enthusiasm of the Italians and the encouragement to learn their language that they willingly give, I would be in a bit of a pickle.

In other news, it's forecast to hit 42 degrees this weekend, and as much as I worship summer and the heat, that would be going too far. My laptop shuts itself down every hour or so because it can't take the heat and the insides of my phone are melting to the extent that it would probably be quicker for me to send a letter via the Italian postal system than a text.

That's all for now wonderful people :) There is freshly made pizza wafting up the stairs calling my name...

Alice x

*Insert Witty Title Here*

I tried finding a common thread to link all the random drivel in this post together, but couldn't come up with anything (have pity on me, it's 36 degrees and my brain has turned to mush- last night I asked a 7 year old "come si dice fish in inglese?"). So here are a bunch of random bits and bobs from my week :)

I find that I get pangs of homesickness when there is something going on at home that I want to be part of. Things like people's birthdays, Andy Murray winning Wimbledon and getting exam results. However, I was actually quite relieved to be away when the Royal baby was born because if the sheer volume of coverage given by the Italian news channels is anything to go by, it would've been crazy in Britain. Watching the news coverage of the Royal Baby announcement was very entertaining. I was watching it live on Monday evening and there was a correspondent outside Buckingham Palace with the crowds and it looked like absolute chaos but the reporter was assuring us that people were forming a queue. Oh England, how I miss your silly ways. Other examples of questionable reporting I heard were the headlines "What does it take to be a Royal baby?" (I'd imagine not a lot) and "The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge have given birth to a baby boy." Now THAT would've been worth being in England to see!

I mentioned in a previous post that the questions I get asked most as a British person here are almost always to do with the Royal baby. Now that it's arrived though, the topics of conversation have shifted and I've been asked some very strange, but admittedly hilarious things in the last few days. My top three are:

1. "What is Buon Appetito in English?" I've been asked this almost every time we've eaten dinner with someone new. At first I was like "Um, bon appetit?" but got tired of explaining that we use the French, so now I just say "enjoy your meal" even though that would seem a bit out of place if it were said in a normal dining situation at home. Please enlighten me so I can tell people here the right thing, what is the English phrase for Buon Appetito?
2. My 7 year old never fails to make me smile. Today she asked me, "Is Harry Potter also called Harry Potter in English?"
3. At a BBQ earlier in the week I was asked if I am a Catholic or a Protestant (they aren't shy about asking personal or deep philosophical questions here). I replied that I was a Protestant and believe it or not was then asked if Protestants believe in Jesus! I almost spat out my UHT infested tea! This was followed by much debate about Henry VIII and the origins of the Church of England and whether the Queen or the Archbishop of Canterbury is the head of it, including the 11 year old having to turn to her religious studies textbook in order to convince people that Protestants and Catholics aren't actually all that different!

I can't believe how quickly this week has gone. I'm already on week 7 of my trip and on Saturday we are finally leaving for the mountains! I'm very excited about seeing a new and completely different part of the country and spending my birthday in the Dolomites. Although it does mean that I will be senza internet for a week and likely without phone signal too (we're staying at an "agri-turismo" halfway up a mountain where you have to hike to reach the nearest shop and you milk the goats in the morning- no UHT stuff for a week yaay :) ). Anyway, these are the top three things that I've learnt this week:

1. Chocolate is overrated. Yes, I said it. Although maybe I should amend that to "all chocolate in Italy is overrated." My emergency rations of Dairy Milk ran out a while ago and nothing available here even remotely compares. It's not the same when it's hot anyway. I suppose I'll just have to make do with some of the world's best gelato. What a real shame that is...
2. Nobody needs four pairs of sunglasses. No matter how sunny it is and how long you're away for. A waste of precious luggage allowance.
3. Carb-free diets are overrated, pasta everyday is the way forward (Alexander, I've joined you on the dark side!).

Until next week amigos!

Alice x

Domenica Pomeriggio a Venezia

Last Sunday afternoon, I was given the wonderful opportunity of being shown around Venice! I was very lucky to have locals as my tour guides so there was no stopping to look at maps or taking long winded routes to the main sights.

I could've cried when I got out of the train station it was so beautiful and I'd already decided it is my new favourite city (sorry Bath) before we even got to Piazza San Marco or the Grand Canal.

I think the photos speak for themselves and they say a picture tells a thousand words, so I'll let them do the talking. Have a look at the "snaps" tab or my Facebook page for all of the pictures I took :)

Our trip provided me with the opportunity to use a train for the first time ever abroad! I've been told horror stories about Italian public transport with remembering to stamp the ticket on the platform to validate it etc, but my host family made everything look easy. And people actually talk to you on public transport here! They will actually strike up a conversation randomly. Normally I'd find this wonderfully friendly and a welcome change from the London trains, but I spent most of the journey terrified that someone would start talking to me and when some random lady asked me if it was my first time in Venice (and something else I couldn't understand), I just smiled and nodded and tried not to prompt further questioning. She turned out to be quite chatty once she got going though so I got swept into the conversation. Terrifying, but undoubtedly good Italian practice. 

The train journey into Venice is a wonderful experience in itself. You have to go across the low bridge and if you sit on the left side of the train, all you see is water directly beneath you, giving you this strange sensation that you're on a boat.

Inevitably, there were plenty of British weekend-trippers out and about in the city and I took great pleasure in listening in to a few conversations. Being on holiday, they probably wouldn't bat an eyelid hearing other British people walking around, but when you haven't had a face to face conversation with a fellow countryman in nearly 6 long weeks, it is the most wonderful feeling to hear a familiar accent. The general consensus from what I picked up on seemed to be that people are annoyed they chose this week to go abroad when there is equally good weather back home!

A Glimpse of My Week

Believe it or not, I'm five whole weeks into my time in Italy already! The last two weeks especially have just flown by and by the middle of next week I will be half way through my stay. I think I underestimated the adjustment it would take to go in such a short amount of time from living in a student house and being very very independent, to moving into a family setting again where independence and privacy are extremely limited and there is literally no-one else my age who I can talk to face to face. The town I'm living in is comprised of mostly young families and elderly people, and the lack of students around has definitely taken some getting used to! On the whole though, I am enjoying the change of scenery and enjoying discovering the benefits of being away from other people my age for a while.

• There was an epic thunderstorm raging last night which I enjoyed immensely :) The storms here aren't the same as the pathetic ones back home which last a minute and then fizzle out. The humidity here is pretty intense and a storm can crop up completely out of the blue. Yesterday evening we sat outside eating dinner and enjoying the sun, then 10 minutes after we'd finished, the skies opened and I had to shut the shutters on my windows and curl up in bed watching the Apprentice and listening to the tuono e fulmine.
• The 7 year old I'm looking after has become quite clingy this week. I think that very recently I've noticed a breakthrough in my confidence in speaking Italian and she has realised that I actually do understand what she is saying most of the time and that I can tell when she cheats at games! While we've been getting on well all along, I think it is only recently that she has seen the "fun" version of me that speaks Italian rather than the version of me that is there to get her to do her homework. She therefore takes every opportunity to stick to me and follow my every move. I don't mind really, I'd rather it was this way than have her completely reject me, but as someone who values my alone time very highly, I will enjoy when I'm at home and I'm able to have a shower in peace without her banging on the door trying to coerce me into building a barbie palace from straws and sticky tape!
• Everyone here is very excited about the Royal baby's arrival in the next few weeks and it is the opinion of many people here that since I am British, I must somehow have infallible knowledge of exactly when the baby will arrive, what gender it will be, and what name will be chosen. I've been telling people that I think it won't come until August and it will be a girl called Charlotte. I had to form an opinion on the matter because I am constantly being asked when they should be checking the news!
• Up until this morning, I had managed to go a whole 5 weeks without having to deal with any Italian administration organisation. I was quite enjoying being able to live here without having to worry about all the paperwork forced upon my classmates doing an Erasmus or work placement. Today came the point though when I couldn't possibly avoid it any longer and I was faced with the task of finding the post office and telling them I wanted to send a courier letter to England. My confidence had been knocked substantially after I received my second year results yesterday and found out the worst mark I've ever received at university was in Italian speaking, and I spent the entire walk there going over in my head what I was going to say and feeling really properly scared about the whole thing. Turns out though that they understood me just fine and I understood them just fine, and it all worked out pretty well! I was given two options for sending this letter: 1) The cheaper option which would take "a week" (translation: 1 Italian week= 3 British weeks), or 2) the more expensive 1 day option (translation: no post on weekends so it wouldn't be sent until Monday, and 1 Italian day= 2 British days so in reality my one day option turned into a 4 day option.) So obviously I went with option 2. Thanks a bunch French government for asking me to send a bunch of random forms halfway round Europe. It really makes my life so much easier ;)
• I've noticed that I have become very attuned to British people out and about. Yesterday in the park I spotted a family on the other side of the field who I knew within 3 seconds were British. I don't have a clue why, I just somehow knew. And sure enough when they got into earshot they were complaining about the heat in Yorkshire accents.

Aside from all that, my week has consisted of dressing up as a bride and staging a wedding between two toy monkeys, playing tiddlywinks and building a farmyard scene under the kitchen table. We also watched Harry Potter in English, and for those of you who have ever watched Harry Potter or Titanic with me, you will know I am really annoying because I recite lines during the film. I managed to hold my tongue this time, but not joining in with Hermione's "It's Leviooooosa, not Leviosaaaaaa" was the hardest part of my day.

Ciao until next time!

Alice :)

One Month In

Today I reach my first big milestone of my year abroad! I've now been out of Britain for a month, twice as long as the longest time I've previously spent abroad and one out of the 13 or 14 months I'll be away altogether. In some ways it seems strange to be over a third of the way through my time in Italy this summer, but in other ways it seems like a lifetime ago that I left Crawley on a damp day back at the beginning of June. I feel like so much has been crammed into these 4 weeks and I honestly feel that I've learnt more in a month here in terms of the language, than I did in the entirety of my last semester at university. My understanding of Italian is a lot better than when I arrived. On my first day here, I sat at the kitchen table not having a clue what direction the conversation was heading in, with the exception of the odd word here and there. Now, I'm able to follow what's going on most of the time, even if I don't catch every word. I think I've been shocked by how fast the pace of speech is. Before I started learning Italian I always thought it sounded incredibly quickly spoken, but at university I found that it wasn't as fast as expected. Naively, I expected this it what it would be like in Italy, not really realising that my lecturers probably slowed down their speech when talking to us. My spoken Italian is still pretty basic, and I end up accidently blurting out what I call Fritaliglish (French/Italian/English) words sometimes, but it should come more naturally with practice.

This week has been a busy one and I've been spending lots of time helping the girls with their English, which I absolutely love. I had a really rewarding moment the other day when I caught the 7 year old singing to herself in English after we'd spent the morning listening to songs from her school textbook! Coming from the girl who 4 weeks ago would put her hands over her ears when her parents put the English news on TV, I felt this was a sign of progress :) I didn't realise quite how rewarding it is to see kids improve and use something you've taught them.

In preparation for going to the mountains at the end of the month, we are doing power walks round the neighbourhood a few times a week followed by half an hour on the Xbox doing Just Dance. It's exhausting, but the only way to prepare for hiking and the best way to work off all the tiramisu we've been eating! I happen to be staying in the town where tiramisu was invented, and despite not liking coffee, it has become one of my new favourite things :) Not something to be eaten every day though at 800 calories a slice! Although cold dessert is wonderful in this heat. Speaking of which...

What is this voodoo that's going on back home?

Meanwhile here...

That's all for now folks, I'm off to watch the tennis :)

Alice x

Al Mare

If you are here procrastinating/ time killing, feel free to read on. But if you're here for a quick read then I'll warn you in advance that this is essay length and you might want to bookmark the page to come back to :)

As I mentioned in my previous post, this past week I accompanied my host family to the beach! We went to a resort called Bibione on the Adriatic coast for the week. I was pretty worried before going because after 2 weeks in Italy, I'd settled into a good routine with the girls of helping them with homework and chatting with them in English during the mornings and watching a film or drawing pictures in the afternoons. I was anxious that on holiday they wouldn't be interested in doing homework/ English stuff with me and would just want to do holiday stuff, which is exactly what I would do if I were in their situation! This did happen to a certain extent with the 7 year old, but I quickly got into a good routine with the 11 year old. We did an hour or two of word games after lunch and then taught each other card games in the evenings to learn some new vocab. One of our new favourites is Happy Families, although "Mr. Sole the Fishmonger" caused problems in that "sole" is the Italian word for "sun" and is pronounced "sohlay."

It was a strange feeling to be in a holiday park but "working" at the same time, however on the whole it was a lovely week :)

The resort seemed to be the preferred holiday destination of half the German population. To the point where I actually picked up some very basic German! Der Fischmarkt ist am Mittwoch. Ja. I even had someone start talking to me in what I presume was German, although I can't be sure as there were also many Dutch, Polish, Slovenian and Czech people floating about. I suppose the curly blond hair, blue eyes and horrifically pale skin (the tan is yet to make an appearance) don't exactly give off an air of Italianness (Yes, I've resorted to making up words, this is how bad my English has become in the last few weeks.)

I never understood when people said that they have a favourite ocean. I always thought all seas were the same. But the Adriatic really is beautiful, and on a clear day we could see the Trieste mountains and even Croatia in the distance!

The weather turned "brutto" for a couple of days, but it was a relief to have a break from the humidity and we made the most of it by going for a long bike ride along the beach :)

It may seem strange, but I've discovered that one of the best ways to cope with the heat here is to listen to Christmas music! I challenge you to listen to this song and feel summery:

On Sunday we went for a trip to the countryside to see my host Mum's family at their farmhouse. It was a wonderful way to spend a Sunday and really gave me the experience of a typical Italian get together where lunch lasts for 3 hours and everyone sits outside playing cards, chasing chickens and playing on a makeshift swing in the garden. Think of the Dolmio advert and you'll have a pretty good idea of it. I even ate stinging nettle lasagna! I thought it was spinach at first so tucked right in and it was only halfway through that the dictionary was cracked open by the cook and I was informed as to it's true contents! It was actually very tasty, but most of all it was a horrifically bright shade of green.

Being at a family gathering meant there were inevitably going to be greetings and the social etiquette which surrounds them to deal with. I thought I'd mastered the Italian cheek kissing greeting (two kisses, starting with the left cheek.) But I was thrown when someone greeted me with two and said goodbye with three. There is obviously some strange code that I'm as yet unaware of...

On the subject of mealtimes, dinner here is late. I was expecting this before coming out here but seriously even with the time difference putting you lot in England an hour behind me, you're probably finishing dinner before we've even started to prepare! I don't mind because it makes sense not to be cooking in the heat that still lingers around in early evening, but it must get tiring in the winter eating several hours after it's got dark.

My host family have asked me to cook them a classic British dish this week for dinner. This terrifies me to the core because none of the stuff I cook for myself at home is really very British. Despite my love of all things food industry and nutrition related, the only things I can confidently cook from scratch to any kind of acceptable quality are chocolate brownies, couscous, vegetable curry and spaghetti Bolognese. The couscous is out because we had that this evening and I was the only one who enjoyed it and made it through a whole portion without declaring that it was "schifo". The curry is out because I doubt there is a shop that sells coconut milk or tikka masala paste this side of the Alps. And the Bolognese is out for obvious reasons. On top of this dish being British, it also has to be gluten-free, safe enough to please a fussy 7 year old and be possible to make without the use of a microwave. I think I might do baked potatoes or cottage pie but they would be horrific to make with the current temperature hovering in the high 20s so if anyone has any better suggestions, please make yourself known to me asap!

On the subject of food, one of the highlights of the holiday for me was going to a "Europarty". This involved all the people staying at the resort being invited to go to a field and sit on long picnic tables under grape vines while eating huge bowls of spaghetti and listening to Italian jazz music. The kids' entertainment involved the most cockney rendition of the hokey cokey ever recorded being played over the loudspeakers resulting in a very strange contrast of surrounding and music!

Being here has made me realise how un-European Britain really is. As well as the Europarty, we walked around a "Europamercato" on our last day in Bibione. It promised stalls from all the various European countries, but I was disappointed to discover that Britain wasn't represented. Ireland was however, in the form of a stall dedicated to selling Guinness merchandise. Hearing Irish people speak Italian has to be one of the strangest yet most pleasing sounds it is possible to hear!

Cutest moment of the week was courtesy of the 7 year old. The other members of the family were talking about their relatives who live "giu". Giu means down, and they were talking about the south of Italy, but the 7 year old was sitting there with a fascinated look on her face and eventually asked "Do our relatives really live underground?" At least I'm not the only one who gets confused by the language!

Thank you all so much for continuing to read my blog! I'll be back with another post later in the week :)

Much Love, Alice x