Bottles and bottles of wine, oh my!

Last week was quite entertaining and filled with sleep depravation. :-)

We started on Monday night going to a local vineyard with our favorite restaurant owners (the Rossi family). We were treated to a tour and a 5 course meal, complete with 5 different wines. 

I am trying very hard to hold true to my "more people in pictures" rules. I listen to you guys and amend my posts appropriately. :-) I welcome the feedback!

This is Kate, Lindsey, Lauren, Me, and Olivia (Olivia is an incredibly awesome girl from the UK, so you know I am super jealous of her accent!).

At the end of each row of grapes they have rose bushes. The rose bushes are not just for aesthetics, they actually serve a very neat purpose. Farmers use the roses to monitor the health of the grapes. Since roses are so delicate, they will react to things much more quickly than the grapevines will, so if a rose dies, or gets infected, they can either do something to protect the grapevines, or they can get rid of those vines so that disease does not spread! Smart Italians.

Here is the nice outdoor dining area. This picture does not do it justice. It's like a movie set, complete with twinkling lights overhead. This is not a restaurant, it is just the vineyard owners home. They do not typically have large parties, so this is just their porch.

Here are some of the photos of the area where they actually make the wine (these are for you Mr. Mann).

The bottles of wine pre-filling.

Vats o' wine. They were empty. :-(

This is the owner of the vineyard showing us how they fill, label and cork the bottles.

The wife of the owner painted these on the wall and...

the boar was turned into the label for their red.

Wine heaven! SO MUCH WINE!! :-)

Lindsey, Lauren and I with what we wish was a real bottle of wine. ;-)

And now for some photos of dinner: miso fritto! Translation... fried stuff. This fried stuff included: rosemary, sage leaves, onions, stuffed pepper, and a zucchini flower.

This is eggplant parmesan... AMAZING!!! Something worth noting, in Italy it is not breaded.

Starting at the top: wild boar sausage, beef and liver, beef, and potato. (yes, I sorta had to start eating beef... no I did not eat the liver. I am expanding my eating horizons, but not that far).

I took this for my uncle, but then realized that everyone would appreciate it. :-)

We ended up being at the Vineyard until 2am... and then we had to get home... and ready for bed... and in bed by 3am, only to wake up at 7am. It was TOTALLY worth it!

The next day we had a horrible storm!

This is my very unsuccessful attempt to show you the pebbles of hail that were hitting my windows. The worst thing about storms is that if they are really bad you have to close your windows, and that leads to things being very steamy in your apartment.

After the storm (on Tuesday) we went to Punto DiVino (which is the restaurant that coordinated our vineyard trip) for Catherine's dinner. I didn't get pictures at dinner, but I wanted to show you how pretty it was!

Ok, that's all for now. I must stop procrastinating and work on my presentation for tomorrow. I miss you all and will update you on our 4th of July party later! :-)

Ciao ciao (which I find to be less odd, now that I realize it literally means "bye bye")

Celebrations and Music

Ok, this one took a while to post because... well to be quite honest because I am lazy! :-) Ok, maybe it's more along the lines of exhausted, but either way. 

Things have been quiet lately. We are all feeling the effects of sleeping an average of 4-5 hours a night, so we decided to take things easy this past weekend. However, I still need to update you on my birthday stuff last week. 

On Wednesday the boys (Allan and Patrick) invited everyone to their terrace for dinner and drinks. We try to do this once a week as their terrace has the most amazing view (I promise to bring a camera next time). We all pick something yummy to bring and they supply the wine. This time they got Harasyn and I a birthday cake (complete with candles). Harasyn's birthday is the 23rd and mine is the 25th. Harasyn has pictures of this that I will steal soon. :-)

Here is lunch sometime last week. The Bar downstairs from me has these ham sandwiches that they then panini and make nice and warm. I had ham and cheese (turkey is unheard of here... very hard to find turkey or chicken). Those dog tags came in the bag of chips. :-) Fun!

My birthday celebration! My birthday fell on a Thursday, so the entire town was shut down (as it is every Thursday after 1pm). We have found that one pizza place and the Chalet (the outdoor bar I told you about before) are open on Thursdays, so we did that. To make it special we got the Nutella Calzone. Yep, it's as amazing as you think it would be! 

Prosecco (pink and normal) at Bar Leonardi (which was closed). I wanted to drink it "pirate style" sans glasses, but everyone didn't agree and I didn't want to use the "but it's my birthday" excuse. 

The sky was absolutely amazing! Look at the clouds rolling in.

Breathtaking! 

On Sunday these guys were outside of my window... we (Lindsey, Lauren, Tulip and I) found them amusing.

They are setting up for a concert. 

At the concert! The town organized a concert for the earthquake victims. This is Allan, Paige and Shannon. Paige and Shannon are two Americans that aren't in the program, but are lucky enough to head to Amelia for the summer. 

This is Monica's (my Italian teacher) brother's band. It turns out that Monica's family is very musical, her cousin also performed! They were amazing. They ended with Hey Jude. 

All day long they were warming up and that very much makes me think of my sister. I think it's funny how much I relate concerts to family, and seeing Monica's grandfather cheering his grandson on was one of the things that has made me most homesick since being here. You know, minus all the cats. :-)

Ciao ciao!

hmmm Blogger

My newest post got posted beneath the one I posted yesterday about the mail. I am not too sure why that happened, and I can't figure out how to change that. 

I started loading the photos yesterday, so maybe that confused the computer.

Who knows? Scroll down to see the Monster Mash blog, pretty neat photos. :-) I told you I would start taking more pictures of people. 

Long Overdue Contact Info

I forgot to send my address and phone info when I arrived. Sorry about that!

My phone number is: 39-377-315-4249. (you may need to add 011 to the front, but I don't think so, the place I ordered my phone from sent some confusing instructions).

My address is:

Katie Ogden

c/o Lucia Lucciarini

Biblioteca Comunale 

Piazzale Boccarini

Amelia, TR Italy 05022 

As far as care packages go, do not feel the need to send one. HOWEVER if you are going to ignore that request I have a request to ask of you. Be mindful of the value of objects you put into the box. Don't overstate the value for insurance purchases. Why? Well, I have to pay to get any packages, and this morning a girl in my class had to pay 92E in taxes and duties to get a package released. The tax is only supposed to be a certain percentage of what you are sending, so it should be a-ok. 

Ciao ciao! (the Italians say it twice, I am trying to pull it off without sounding like an idiot!)

Monster Mash!!

When I was little my parents had some fun records (such as actual vinyl records). Kelly and I would listen to The Four Seasons, the Pinocchio soundtrack, etc. One of my absolute favorite records was a compilation record that had Monster Mash (the good, old version). If I had the ability to, I would add that song to this post!

Monsters... well first Lindsey and I were eating lunch in my apartment with the windows open. One thing I don't quite understand about Italy is that they always have their windows open, but no screens on their windows. So you always have bugs in your apartment/house. Case in point, during lunch a wasp (well.. we think it was a wasp, you can see it here.) with an enormous stinger flew in. We may have freaked out a little bit, but we pulled ourselves together.

After assessing the situation we decided we needed to try to get the wasp (who had flown up to a sky light) out of my apartment. We tried throwing paper balls at him to see if we could get him to fly down, but that wasn't too successful. Finally, after a couple of minutes Lindsey picked up my table cloth and used it to "encourage" the wasp to fly out the window. This picture is right as Lindsey was shutting the window after he flew out.

After lunch we met the rest of our class and professors at Bar Leonardi to head to Bomarzo, also known as "The Park of Monsters." This park was created by Pirro Ligorio (the architect that took over the building of St. Peter's Basilica when Michelangelo died). The actual idea and planning was done by Pier Francesco Orsini, he created it after the death of his wife as a tribute of sorts.

It is a mannerist sculpture park. Mannerism basically caught the coat tails of the renaissance and aimed to depart from the renaissance forms. (as you will now see)

I am not going to go into details about the sculptures or anything, if you want to find out anything else you can go ahead and google Bomarzo. :-)

Above is a turtle sculpture, to the left is the whale sculpture.

Below is a close-up of the whale sculpture.

A crooked house. We went in the second story, and the floor is also tilted and it is FREAKY!

This is me getting eaten by a monster.

See the large legs, the vase on the head?? Mannerism.

At one point we decided to do "Harasyn Poses" with some of the sculptures. Harasyn is an amazingly fun girl in the program who happens to have won beauty pageants.

I have to confess to something... I bought a pair of crocs! I know, I can hear your gasps halfway around the world. Let me tell you though, normal shoes do not cut it here, my shoes are failing. For instance, after two weeks I have a pair of very nice sandals that I bought right before I came here that already need new heels. Crocs are a necessary item! (and I think these ones are pretty cute)

The only downside about these crocs is that sometimes when your feet get hot your foot will slide in them, thereby making walking an even bigger hazard for me. :-)

Lindsey, myself, and Harasyn and I doing a tribute to Home Alone.

Lindsey and I needed a rest.

Ok... so... I didn't look around the building before I did my little pose, but I sorta feel bad now because it is a mausoleum. It houses the remains of the owners that bought it in 1954 in order to fix it up for the public to come and see it. I apologize if I offended the dead. 

If only I had looked at the skull and crossbones first! :-)

No photoshop, this is just how the shot turned out. I get increasingly annoyed with how I cannot capture the actual beauty I am seeing, but this comes pretty close!

That's all for now!

Ciao Ciao!

Stormy Times

On Sunday we decided to have a nice relaxing day. I don't think we realized how hard it would be to go to class 6 days a week. More specifically I don't think we realized how hard it would be to go to class 6 days a week and then spend our day off fitting in as many day trips as possible.

We realized that we had yet to hike to the top of the town. (In all of the pictures I post, the top of the town is the building surrounded by scaffolding, the Duomo (church).) We had the brilliant idea to hike up because the weather was cool so we figured we wouldn't die of heat exhaustion. As we started making our way to the top we realized that the storm clouds that seemed to be safely in the distance were starting to close in... did we stop? Nope. We are troopers.

We met up with Patrick and Allan (two boys in our class) who decided to join us for our hike. We made it up there (not before I almost busted my bottom by slipping while going up the incline of the "short cut") just in time. Look at the views of the storm. I have a video, and I am going to go to a restaurant in town to try to load it, but it is amazing. These pictures are too calm, the wind was amazing up there, I thought my camera might get blown away.

We made it down, and to Lauren's apartment, just in time. The rain started pouring and did not stop until late at night. While waiting out the storm at Lauren's (Lindsey and I naively thought it would stop at some point... since we did not have umbrellas or anything and were still a little far from home) Lindsey and I decided to investigate this random door in her apartment. Where does it lead? What's behind it? 

The best way to describe it would be a Scooby Doo episode (Lindsey playing Daphne and me being Velma - Thanks to Kate for helping me spell those correctly!). It was a dark and stormy afternoon, thunder was clapping and our imaginations were running wild. 

After finally figuring out how to use something (we tried butter knives, string, other random tools and items found around the apartment) to slide the latch back we unlocked the door and ran back up the stairs (we had completely sensationalized what may/may not be behind the door so we had freaked ourselves out).

We got Lauren to come and then explained to her that we thought she should open the door because she has a criminal justice background. She tried to point out that she is not an officer, and therefore was not a better choice than either Lindsey or I, but we didn't buy it. So Lauren went down the stairs to the door, opened it and ran back up.

We were not nearly as entertained by what was behind the door. No stolen art, no bodies, just junk. Apparently it is a storage space with paint and other odd items. A fun adventure anyways! :-)

I realized the other day you hadn't met Tulip! Lauren was smart enough to bring her dog with her for the summer, so we all claim her as our own since we miss our animals so much. Tulip (or Tulipana as the Italians call her) is an adorable, sweet, happy little puppy. I love her mainly because she is cat sized. It helps me resist the urge to "borrow" one of the cats I find outside my apartment. :-)

In her adorable bag.

Final updates to this blog and then I am officially caught up:

1. It is COLD (well... cold to a Florida girl) here... high of 69 today. We are going to try to get to Rome this weekend to buy a jacket or something. The clothes in the stores in Amelia are CRAZY expensive.

2. There was an earthquake on Monday night. We were out and about and I didn't realize it, but apparently other people had things shaking, etc. Neat! I lived through an Earthquake. :-)

3. The kids outside my apartment at night have decided to start using high pitch sustained whistling instead of talking... grrr. 

4. In Italy you cannot buy conditioner in a normal sized bottle. A 4 ounce container costs 6E, I don't get it.

5. You can buy a huge container of freshly made ricotta for 4 E.

We are going to a creepy sculpture garden today (you'll understand when I post pictures) so you should have something fun tomorrow. 

Ciao!