Myth: It's not easy being green

(Okay really corny but I kept thinking it). At least it's a myth in Dublin on St. Patrick's Day weekend when the airport, Guinness factory, government buildings and people are sporting the color all weekend. After many more hours of traveling than I would have liked to take (a train to a bus to a plane to a bus to sprinting across the airport to another plane to another bus), I finally made it to Dublin! By the grace of God, my roommate Annie and I were able to meet at the perfect time: her flight (from Italy) was delayed a few hours, and I originally told her I was landing a few hours before I actually was (because I forgot about my layover)...but it's all for a reason, right? I was also very grateful for the free wi-fi in Dublin International Airport. They really know how to cater to poor, traveling American college students whose vital forms of communication are WhatsApp and Facebook.

Sand sculpting on Grafton Street

I felt welcomed to the city as soon as I landed and saw the balloons festively decorating the airport for the holiday weekend. Annie, her abroad friends, and I took a cab to her school's campus and I was again welcomed by one of the many friendly taxi drivers in the city. As Annie pointed out, there isn't that much to "see" in Dublin in terms of landmarks, but I was just so happy to be spending the weekend with my roommate and to get a taste of another part of the world. I made myself a rule that wherever I travel to throughout my semester, I'm not allowing myself to get any Italian food outside of Italy. Really all I wanted in Ireland was a burger and a good beer. Fortunately, I had easy access to both.

I was surprised by how "American" everything seemed in Dublin. Of course, it's probably more true to say that we've adopted more of Europe's traditions, and I was just surprised to see everything written in English, but still. Annie and I spent some time wandering around St. Stephen's Green, Grafton Street (the main street in Dublin to go shopping and see street performers/artists), St. Patrick's Cathedral, the Guinness Factory (which was enormous and really interesting to learn about how Guinness is made), and various pubs. I was disappointed at first that my actual St. Patrick's Day had to consist of 12 hours of traveling instead of going to the parades, but it was cold and rainy when I left Sunday morning and I had such a great time the rest of my weekend I couldn't complain.

Porterhouse with friends from home

It was fun walking around that weekend and running into about 8 people I knew: BC students not studying in Dublin, old neighbors, one of my roommate's friends from home, etc. It really is a small world! I also love the laid back pub atmosphere with jolly Irishmen and live music. At this pub called Porterhouse on my last night in Dublin, I also got to see three friends from home who are studying at the same university as my roommate.

The most memorable souvenir I brought back from Ireland was my fifth ear piercing. Annie and I had been wanting to get this matching piercing since freshman year, but we weren't presented with the opportune time until now. We finally just went for it! We found what seemed like a reputable place, paid, and went into the piercing room. I sat down first and was expecting the woman to use a piercing gun like what I was used to seeing. Instead, she used a special needle and then put the earring in. Now, needles have not become one of my favorite things over the last few years and, like I indicated on my form before my piercing, I have a tendency to become dizzy or pass out. I think you see where this is going.

After my earring was in and I was sitting up on the table, I said very nonchalantly, "I'm feeling a little lightheaded..." And I fainted. Once I came to, the very patient woman was consoling me (I'm sure she's used to this) and asked me the last time I ate. As I was thinking of the answer, I fainted again. (It's okay, you can laugh). When I woke up (again) poor Annie was paler than I was from watching what I'm sure was a frightening scenario. I was laughing because I knew this would happen once I started getting dizzy, and I've learned how to recover from this. But I didn't want the same thing to happen to Annie, so it may be a little while before we have matching piercings.

Parfait Paris!

("Perfect Paris"...about two of the ten words I know in French. It makes GG's parfaits that much more special now that I know it means "perfect.")

This weekend was absolutely awesome. Everything I saw and did was amazing, but I was most excited and encouraged by seeing one of my best friends at BC, Ericka! I got to stay with her host family in Invalides with a surreal view of the Eiffel Tower (Tour Eiffel) right outside their front door. Everyone's family and friends have been visiting Parma the past two weeks, so it was really great for both of us to finally see a familiar face!

On Friday morning, my friend Lauren (from my program) and I took the 5:21AM Parma train to Milan, which got in at 6:55. We sprinted across the Milan train station to try to catch the 7 o'clock bus. It knowingly pulled away from us as we stood outside with our tickets, so we had to wait for the 7:20 bus. The bus from the train station to the airport can take anywhere between 40 minutes and over one hour. We were really hoping for the former because our flight was leaving at 8:55! With God's guiding hand, as always, we made it through security, bolted across the airport, and got to our gate as the last 20 people were boarding. While I do not recommend this early of a flight out of Malpensa from Parma, especially not with only four hours of sleep in you, it is possible with a little running and a lot of faith.


(Sidenote: This has been a week of me realizing how counterproductive it is for me to worry. Friday morning I hopped on a train, a bus, and a plane with much less angst than I normally would have had in this situation. Because worrying wouldn't make the train leave on time, or the bus go faster, or the plane delay a few minutes. Even if we didn't make our flight, the worst thing that would have happened is I waste/spend more money...I'm still in Italy. I'm still living and breathing and enjoying God's wonderful creations all around the world. I'm still able to find joy in what's around me, sometimes even more so when things don't go exactly as I've planned them.
My mom my favorite verses to me in third grade, which continue to be probably the most important ones throughout my life: "Be anxious for nothing, but in everything, through prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus." ~ Philippians 4:6-7)

Back to my trip. Friday was really rainy. While the movie "Midnight in Paris" claims that Paris is most beautiful in the rain, I bet that's probably most true in the summer and if you're wearing the proper shoes. Despite my blisters and fatigue, I still very much enjoyed the walking tour Ericka took us on. We saw Notre Dame and several other cathedrals, the Luxemburg Gardens, ate sweet and savory crepes (what I was probably most excited for in this city), walked along the Seine River, wetn into the bookstore Shakespeare and Company, went to a really fun dinner, and saw Sacre Coeur at night. We went to Les Refuge des Fondues for dinner, which was this teeny tiny fondue restaurant where you sit really close to people you don't know (some pleasant, some not as much), the walls are covered in people's signatures, and you drink wine out of baby bottles. I would recommend this to anyone around my age.

Rodin's "Thinker"

I caught up on some sleep Friday night, and we toured for around 12 straight hours on Saturday! Even though it was supposed to rain all weekend, it was sunny and fairly warm, which made everything that much more enjoyable. We went from Rodin's Museum (where I got to see "The Thinker") to Napoleon's tomb (the largest funerary space I've ever seen for such a small person) to the Eiffel Tower. We were going to climb the Tower, but the nice weather brought an insane amount of tourists out at that time. Tourists are the worst, right? So we climbed the Arc de Triomphe, "Triumphal Arch," a monument commemorating the lives of those who fought for France in the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars. There is a Tomb of the Unknown Soldier beneath the arch honoring a soldier from WWI.

We headed down the famous street Champs-Élysées and ate macaroons and drank hot chocolate at the esteemed La Duree. It was expensive but delicious and worth the experience! Then we went to the Louvre Museum, which would apparently take 3 weeks nonstop to actually look at every piece of art in this former palace. I was really struck by its enormity. Among other works, I saw the "Venus de Milo" and "La Gioconda," better known as the "Mona Lisa." When
we studied Da Vinci in my Art History class, we learned a lot about this portrait. It is a beautiful painting, but the reason it's so famous is that it's been stolen so many times. (Also sorry to disappoint anyone but her eyes don't really "follow" you. Well they kind of do, but the reason is because the vanishing point of the painting's perspective is in between her eyes. Many other painters have done this too. BUT it was amazing to stand in front of something so important). Lauren and I also walked Ericka down the Italian painters section of the Louvre and shared any knowledge we could give her on what we know about the iconography of the paintings or stories of the painters.

Best dinner ever

Crepes at the Eiffel Tower

(I'm almost done I promise). We walked along the lock bridge where couples write their names on a lock, attach to the bridge, and throw their key in the Seine. Paris really is such a romantic city, which was typified by the bride taking pictures on that bridge in her wedding dress. We got wine at Le Fumoir where Hemingway used to hang out, then came my favorite part of the weekend: dinner. I was at the peek of contentment at this cafe in Saint Germain. The girls and I got the best French Onion Soup I think I've ever had, a Caesar salad (finally something healthy besides a crepe and
baguettes), and delicious escargot. The food combined with the ambiance of the restaurant, the slow jazzy music playing in the background, the clarinet player outside, and the people I was with just made my heart melt. After this dinner, it seemed like the perfect time to finally venture to the top of the Eiffel Tower and get another crepe while we watched it twinkle at midnight. Truly amazing.

Never Quite Home Alone

View from the balcony

I was originally planning to go to Vienna the weekend of March 1st with some other BC girls. When I waited too long to buy my plane ticket and realized how expensive the travel and whole weekend would be, I decided to save money and stay in Parma for the weekend. But that meant I would be the only one of my four apartment-mates who would be staying here.

Fortunately, Nice also counts as an apartment-mate and she's always seeking to make sure we're all happy and having fun. After a nice passeggiata (walk) with Nice on Friday afternoon, she made dinner for the two of us and we went to bed early. She was taking me to see her friends in "the mountains" (Dolomites) for the next two days! She drove three hours to a little village called Monclassico located in the Val di Sole (Valley of the Sun) where the sun basically always shines.


This trip was breathtaking. Parma is by no means a dirty city, but it was so obvious how fresh and clean the air was in the mountains. We had a picnic on her friends' balcony when we first arrived, and then they drove us to Madonna di Campiglio one day and the opposite side of the mountains another. I understand why this is a tourist attraction for skiers. Most of what I experienced was sharing meals with these three wonderful people and bonding time with Nice and getting to know her better. This was a lot of fun and made our adventure home along the beautiful Lago di Garda and through the miniature roads her TomTom guided us to more interesting. (I also very much appreciated how she named her TomTom "Chiara." I think Chiara and my TomTom Susan would get along since their owners do so well!)

La Giornata dei Cibi

(The Day of Food...I apologize for the delay in posts but formatting these pictures on here is very frustrating...enjoy!)

I could not think of a better way to describe last Wednesday than with the words food coma. The adventures began at 8:30 in the morning when my fellow BC students and I headed to the Parmesan cheese factory. In anticipation for my day, I purposely skipped breakfast. Those who know me understand what a rarity this is and how serious I must have been about enjoying every bit of free food I was getting to eat that day.

We suited up in white coats, masks, hats, and shoe coverings before entering the factory. Once we stepped inside, my sense of smell was overwhelmed...in a fantastic way (contrary to others' descriptions of the whole place as horribly smelly)! I breathed deeply as I learned about the process of making Parmesan cheese, which began 800 years ago in the stomach of a cow. The basics are as follows:

1) Everything that makes the cheese is heated, steamed, mixed, & examined in large vats.
2) Once the cheese is ready, it's scooped up with a cheese cloth by two strong men who do their job because they enjoy it.
3) A third strong man splits the cheese in half to make "twins." Each vat makes one set of twins (two wheels of cheese).
4) Twins are now in two separate cheese cloths, and the pipe pumps the whey to feed the 2,500 swine out back.
5)  The cheese sits in these wheel shapes for one or two days(?) and is imprinted with the Parmigiano-Reggiano "label" on the outside. There is no wax added to the wheel of cheese, so all of it is edible.
6) I forget how long the cheese has to stay here, but it's turned in the water frequently.
7) Hundreds of wheels of cheese are stored here until they are sold...each wheel weighing around 40-kilograms and costing 500-euro.
8) The final product! :)

  

 

After touring the factory for around two hours, we made our way to the Palazzo Ducale in Colorno near Parma. This used to be a palace where the Farnese's and two other ducal families lived but is now an international culinary school called Alma. We were toured around the premises and were treated to a special lunch cooked by one current and two former students of Alma. The lunch included (of course I'm including pictures):

Codfish salad (not my favorite)

Rice, beetroot, and Resiling wine sauce (amazing!)

"Three flavor" dessert

Fillet steak with liver

I could have very well not eaten anything else for the rest of the day and gone to sleep around 3pm. But a bonus (sometimes) to living here is that the more I eat, the more my stomach expands, and the more I can eat (and sometimes the more I need to eat in order to be full). So...my stomach kept stretching to make room for Anna's dinner that night at 7pm.

We were taught how to make Chicken alla Marsala, which tasted like home (much like the Orecchiette con i Broccoli we made the following week tasted like Cavatelli and Broccoli we make a lot in NJ). But before we ate the chicken, of course we had to start with a pasta dish. And of course, even after the day of eating I had, it was one of my weaknesses: pesto. What a wonderful way to end a great day!

In 1451...

...Columbus was born in Genova (Genoa - like the salami), Italy. While he may have not been an upstanding gentleman as a whole, he still discovered America and his hometown is beautiful. Two other girls and I were planning to visit the city on Saturday, but as of Friday night we still didn't know what we should do when we arrived. Fortunately, Nice had friends who were visiting for the night who happened to be from Genova. They told us everything we should do and everywhere we should go.

Some colors of the market

Farinata

Once our early morning train got in, we wandered around the city for a few hours. We visited the Church of San Giovanni, the Museo di Palazzo Reale (an old palace that's now a museum), and a food market full of delicious cheeses, salami, and pesto. We ate farinata (an unleavened pancake made of chickpea flour that's traditional of Genova) in Piazza de Ferrari. After asking several people for directions on how to get to bus #31 to take us to Bocca d'Asse, we finally navigated our way to the bus stop. My weekend trips are really teaching me to be less of a compulsive planner, which is something I need to keep learning.


I think contentment would be the one word I would use to describe my hour in Bocca d'Asse. I was sitting on the coast of the other side of the Atlantic, in 50 degree sunny weather (which is warm for me right now), having girl talk with my friends, and eating fragola (strawberry) and nocciola (hazelnut) gelato. It was such a relaxing day and I'm so glad I chose this trip over a cold and expensive weekend in Switzerland! God really does make all things work together for the good of those who love Him (Romans 8:28). Sometimes that good is manifested in difficult situations that help us grow, but other times it can be found in a simple cone of your favorite gelato.

Bocca d'Asse from Corso Italia

Leonardo in Milano

Beautiful Gothic Duomo of Milan

My second to last Art History excursion was this past Friday to Milan. This trip far surpassed the first time I went to Milan three years ago. Honestly, I barely remember my first visits to many of the cities I've been going in Italy. I also feel like I'm learning a lot more about what I'm seeing this time that the things I "should" know about these places are sticking better.

We went to a few museums and the Duomo (main church) in Milan, but the main reason for our visit was to see Leonardo Da Vinci's Last Supper. My professor had to make reservations months in advance for our 15 minutes of seeing the glory of this fresco. No more than 30 people can enter the room at the same time, and everyone must pass through two rooms with the doors closed behind before making it into the old refectory (dining hall) of the Dominican convent where the fresco still stands today. We all stood in awed silence for the first five minutes. I love how the vanishing point of the painting is Jesus' right temple, because the viewer's eye immediately looks directly at Him, where all of our eyes should stay fixed daily (Hebrews 12:2).

It amazed me just how massive and faded the painting was. When Da Vinci painted the Last Supper in 1495, he experimented with different kinds of paints, some of which slid right off the concrete requiring immediate touch-ups. Had he stuck with traditional paints, it may be better preserved today. Yet over the past four centuries, the room was also used as a stable and barn, military barracks, and its adjacent walls were hit by a bomb during WWII. I think it's safe to say those factors also contributed to the fresco's fading appearance. Regardless, it is still arguably the greatest quality painting of all time.

Perugia vs. Assisi

St. Francis Basilica

These two parallel Italian cities warred against each other centuries ago, but the beauty of each still rivals the other today. A group of 15 BC students and I took this last-minute weekend trip together, and I think it's been my best investment yet. The four of us who went from Nice's apartment had the privilege of staying with her friends in Perugia for the weekend - another unofficial host family! They were so welcoming from the moment we arrived (no surprise there), showing their hospitality by making us a full meal of spaghetti and sides at 11pm after our 5 hours of traveling.

The whole group reunited the next morning for a 20-minute train ride to Assisi. The walk from the train station to the city was breathtaking. We walked through a strange weather mixture of snow and heat to make it to the top of the hill where this medieval city rests. Since this is the birthplace of St. Francis (who is credited with creating the first Nativity Scene and a well-renowned saint for Catholics), we visited St. Francis Basilica and attended part of a mass there. It's a beautifully fresco-ed two-story church where St. Francis is also buried.

The walk to Assisi

The hills are alive...

We continued up a road to further explore the city and somehow found our way to the Rocca Maggiore. When we first caught sight of the fortress surrounded by magnificent rolling hills, a group of us instinctively started shouting "the hills are alive with the sound of music." I stand in awe of my Creator when I see landscapes like this. In these moments, I can't help but think about how creative, awesome, and mighty He is!

View from Rocca Maggiore

My slightly new obsession with castles and anything medieval made exploring the fortress an exciting adventure. This also brought me back to the days when I went to Medieval Times. But this was real.

After making our way back down the mountain, through the town, into the McDonald's taxi van, and to the train station, we arrived safely in Perugia to make pizza with our weekend host "sister" Milly. (Don't worry, Britt, she could never replace you).

(left to right) Me, Vanessa, Milly, Paul, & Kelley in Perugia

Milly became our personal tour guide around Perugia on Sunday. She showed us the churches we "had" to see, the Rocca Paolina fortress, and five different angles of the same beautiful landscape. Even though Perugia is known for its chocolate (Baci especially), I sadly didn't purchase any while there. After our unofficial 2+ hour walking tour with Milly, we rejoined the family for a delicious lunch of white lasagna, fennel, and several types of chiacchere (a traditional pastry made during Carnevale, the days/weeks before Lent). Fortunately, this lunch held me over for the 4-5 hour train rides back "home" to Parma.

Not only did I save money this weekend on food and a hostel, but I got delicious food, an extremely comfortable bed, authentic Italian company, and unforgettable experiences!