4th

For the 4th of July we decided to throw a party on the terrace... our go to place for parties. The funny part of this is that the terrace is a part of the two guys in the program's apartments, and neither of them are American. :-) However, they are very gracious hosts and let us throw the party there regardless. 

Here is the view from their terrace... it is unbelievable.

They have apricot trees, so we tend to pick a few for breakfast the following day.

For our 4th of July festivities we tried very hard to make all of the items very Americana. Lauren and I made a flag cake. Sadly a lot of ingredients were hard to come by, such as: whipped cream, strawberries & blueberries. So we used sweetened ricotta, apples and purple grapes. I think it turned out well considering.

Kate (in the white t-shirt) made caprese salad... which may not be super americana, but we all love the mozzarella here, so it is always welcomed. Lindsey was a super American and made potato salad and deviled eggs! They were FANTASTIC!

Here is some of the group at the gathering.

Some how we always tend to invite the musical Italians to our parties and we were serenaded with live music. 

After the terrace we moved down to Porcelli's (the pizza place) to hear the jazz band (from a previous post) play. Isabel (the patterned dress) is quite the dancer, so she got us all on the dance floor at one time or another.

This is our professor and his wife. We will be very sad to see them go next week!

The day after the 4th we had a walking tour of Amelia with our Italian teacher Monica. This is one of the many clock towers in the town squares. I thought it was quite lovely, esp. with the storm moving in.

All around Amelia you will randomly see pictures of Mary. A while ago (I don't remember exactly how many years) a pretty bad Earthquake hit this part of Italy and somehow Amelia was unharmed. They attribute this to Mary and have honored her ever since.

Here is a kitten friend. :-) So sweet! Kate and Lindsey have found a literal kitten near their apartment... I am trying to convince myself not to take it. 

This is Amelia's theater. It is pretty opulent. The curtain has a scene on it that was painted by a famous artist of the region. I think it is pretty neat that their curtains have scenes on them, they aren't just burgundy/red velvet.

After the theater we went to the cisterns. The Romans build the cisterns here and they are pretty remarkable. At one point one of the cisterns (there are 10 rooms) caved in and they couldn't figure out how to make it as well as the romans, so it leaks a lot. 

That is Monica on the stairs. Those stairs were pretty steep and creepy. The cisterns are absolutely freezing and damp so it was 100% like going on the Pirates of the Caribbean ride at Disney. You know, you were out in the hot sun and then all of a sudden there is the breeze of air conditioning... same feeling.

I have no idea why I thought this was the best way to stand for this photo. You can't see but I am in one of the really big rooms. The cisterns were made by the Romans to trap rain water so that the Amelian's could have water. There are no natural sources of water within the walls. 

On Tuesday night we convinced our Professor and his wife to join us for dinner at a restaurant that we had not been to, but they had. For some odd reason I was not very good about taking photos this meal, so there are none after the appetizers. We ordered wild boar prosciutto and bruschetta. It was amazing. 

We also ordered this... which was mushroom caprese. This lead to the most hilarious interaction we have had thus far in this town. Our table consisted of 6 girls and one guy. When this got to our table the owner/chef came out very excited with a huge smile and started talking very animatedly (is that a word?) about the dish (in Italian). We finally were able to pick out one word... Viagra. At first we figured... nope, it cannot mean what we think it means, it has to mean something else. Nope... he meant viagra. He was trying to tell us that the mushrooms were aphrodisiacs, and he then added that Derek had about an hour before they kicked in. I don't think we have all laughed so hard since we got to Italy. 

Back to class. 

Ciao ciao!