Jan. 17 2007

Heather, Lindsey, Me at the wine tasting

Today, we woke up real early and went to JCU to have orientation that was completely worthless. Laura, Heather, Jamie and I walked back to the apartment and on the way we found a little garden place! It had lots of pretty flowers and Laura, Heather and I each got a little flower in a pot for 1 euro for our room! So adorable. We put them on our night stands. Then when we got back we waited around for Marco to come talk to us about our apartment. He owes me a coffee for finding his scarf for him - I'm taking him up on that, he's real cute haha. After our meeting Heather, Laura and I went to the cafe right down the street and Laura and I got chicken parm and the chicken was kind of weird so I ended up eating half of it and also some of Heather's pasta. Then we went to the grocery store (which is RIGHT down the street by the way - the name of it is "Sma," which I thought was funny) and we bought yummy stuff. Wine here is like anywhere from 1 euro to 6 euros for each bottle - it's nuts! I got a 2.50 euro chianti. After grocery shopping, I ate some cereal and then we took a nap. When we woke up Heather and I went down the street to the appliance store and tried to get a hair drier but they didn't have them cause they sucked. We went to a wine tasting in Compo de' Fiori, which was really cool. I saw this purple coat that I'd been seeing a whole lot while walking around by the hotel and I finally decided that I should just buy it because it's only 20 euros and it's real cute. I'm glad I did, cause I've been wearing it a lot...I'll put pics up asap. We went to the wine tasting and had a great time, although we only had 2 glasses (they gave us 1 white, 1 red). I thought that was kind of weird, but it was cool because they taught us how to taste wine and that for example it's better if the wine is bottled in the same place it's made. I actually used that knowledge at the supermarket and also at this little cafe Lindsay and Heather and I went to! After the wine tasting we walked back to the apartment and we found a hair drier on the way in this tiny little shop! This little old woman ran it and I got to use my favorite word ("asciugacapele" = hair drier) and she had to climb up a ladder to get the hair drier (which also included a curling iron!) at like the top of the shelf and it ended up being 35 euro, which isn't bad when it's split between 5 people (half of our apartment). When we got back, 5 of the girls in made dinner for us all (pasta with chicken, broccoli, garlic and olive oil - yum!) and Laura was cold so she started using the hair drier that we just bought to warm herself up. She used it for a long time and I said "you're going to blow it out, you should stop" and the power went out. So that was interesting haha. We had a fun night though, we all hung out and some other people in our program came over, and we just drank wine and chatted. Then we went to bed! More later...