#adventureaway

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Since September 24th I have been keeping spoons from every gelato I have had and actively seeking the best gelato in all of Italy. 79 days and 40 gelatos later I am sure of my conclusion. There is absolutely nothing better than splurging on a €3 cup at Gelateria dei Neri with Cioccolato Amaro, Cookies 'n Cream, and Menta.

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I never thought of ketchup this way...

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Rules for Italy: 1. Drink your coffee 2. Sip your water 3. Savor your wine

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Happy Holiday Season! December 8th was the official lighting of the tree in Piazza al Duomo and Florence is officially in the holiday mood. The streets and markets are adorned and we are swathing ourselves in scarves and taking in the view every night.

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Hey look! A picture of people! This is me, Anna, and Andy in Gelateria Dei Neri at the end of today's outing with Andy to learn about the statues in Plaza Signorina. I see Andy all the time and Anna is always on the outings so I thought it was high time got a picture with them.

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Julius Caesar: the Man, the Myth, the Salad

The legitimate title of my classmate Eric's final paper in Roman Achievement

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Week 15

It's week 15 and I should know this already but I had two important realizations this week. 1) Things are different, don't try to make them the same and 2) I love it here. These are pretty obvious but let me elaborate. The first realization was brought to me by cookies. As you now know, I bake a considerable amount and as I'm sure you may have guessed I tried to make my favorite cookie recipe. Unfortunately, even once I found all the ingredients (no easy feat) they did not taste the same. So I tried making a basic chocolate chip cookie, but even that seemed off. And then it came to me, what I have known all along, the ingredients are sourced and processed differently—they will never taste the same. But I still love to bake. And in a way I've gotten better, this semester, at knowing what each ingredient does because of the weird availability and our lack of measuring utensils. I've given up on recipes and tend to improvise. With that knowledge and power in my hand I made made up my own recipe for orange chocolate chip cookies because I had some oranges, and I had bars of chocolate and it seemed like they'd taste good together. They turned out so well I wrote down the recipe in an earlier post. They are not from America, or from Italy, and actually the brown sugar in them was from London; mostly they are just from me, a girl with a baker's heart who has been to all of these places and discovered that sameness is not what defines success, as long as it tastes good, life is good. My next realization came when I was walking home one day. I walked through a plaza, and glimpsed the Arno through the Uffizzi gallery. I had been thinking of popping over to Spain for my last three days but suddenly I did not feel that was important. Sure, RyanAir is cheap is round ticket flights can be $20 and hostels are cheap and three nights can be $30 so I had thought I would want to go while it costs so little. The thing is, when I leave in two weeks, I do not plan for it to be near the last time I leave Europe. I will be back, that is a promise. But I realize I may never live here again. Somewhere along the line this place and this apartment changed from a place that is not only "not a vacation" but to a place that feels like home. The thing is, I can get lost so easily where I grew up but I don't think I could get lost here if I tried. I came here loving modern design and I'll leave here dreaming of stucco, terra cotta, and wood beams. Italy, and moreover Florence, has left a permanent mark and I'm not ready to leave, to say goodbye just yet. I think I get the saying now—you can take me out of Florence, but you can never take Florence out of me. It has changed me too much. So I'll skip Spain for now and I'll discover just a few more pieces of Italy while it is at my finger tips. I desperately love to travel, and to pop around the world and meet new people, but this place is only mine for so much longer, soon it may transform itself into just another destination rather than a home so let me hold on just a few days longer. I love it here.

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Diversity Confrence

Well, I didn't have to attend many classes this week and part of it was because on Thursday and Friday students were excused from class if they attended the diversity conference. Professionals from Kent State's main campus and around the world flew in to discuss "comparing diversities". At lots of professional conferences like this students are not invited, particularly undergrad, but we are lucky Kent actually encouraged us to be there. The paper presentations and dissuasions Thursday were interesting but I really enjoyed the roundtable on Friday. I was in the student section and we got to discuss our experiences and reactions. Unfortunately, with the short time frame we left feeling there was a lot we hadn't gotten the chance to discuss, but with such a large topic and only a day and a half how can there not be. At the end of our round table the boss's boss came in and asked Andy, the staff member moderating, to take a few minutes in the closing remarks to sum up the student remarks to the rest of the attendees because they wanted our perspective. Andy said of course, if he wanted the student perspective, two students would do so (thanks Andy). Charlie and I volunteered—I took the European half of our discussion and he took the American side and feeling we had something to prove, I asked to go first. At closing comments, the main moderator told the others two students would be presenting our thoughts in a delighted tone and asked if we wouldn't mind coming to the front ... like every other person who spoke had done. Well, we may be students but this wasn't some half-baked class discussion we were required to come to, of course we came up front. I started my commentary by thanking everyone for inviting us, thanking the presenters who stopped by our roundtable, and thanking everyone again for being interested in the student perspective because as the younger generation we have a different experience with diversity. I started with thanks because 1) I was raised with manners 2) it <i>was<i> nice to be invited 3) I been to enough presentations to know good etiquette and 4) I felt like they were expecting an ineloquent kid to come up, say umm, and ramble and I needed to prove to them that the students who chose to come came because we are serious and we may be young but we're worth listening to in an exchange of ideas. Charlie and I then summed up our discussion and we got a round of applause as we put down the mics and another as we walked back to our seats and the boss's boss shook our hands—some adults even stood. It was more applause than even the main presenters got and while we had shared our insights, we had not been astoundingly remarkable. We got the ovations not for our merits but because the expectations of the adults had been set too low. Of course we are young, and yes we are students, but we are intelligent adults who choose to get up to attend a conference at 9am on a day we did not have class. Why? Because we care. We care about social issues like diversity, we care about exchanging ideas, we care about other's experience, and we care about making a good impression. If we have volunteered to speak it is not to waste time or joke around, it is because we have something worth listening to. I think the adults in the room learned that and I hope it encourages them not to underestimate our generation, to seek input from all parties they can, and to continue to invite undergrad students to conferences secure in the knowledge all parties can be enriched by it.