Padua and more

So I still haven’t written to tell you about the end of the class trip to Vicenza,Venice and Padua. Padua was beautiful! (I had falafel!) and I made another pretty good friend. It rained almost the entire time we were there and instead of wandering the city on our own for awhile, our professor treated us all to an amazing treat. It’s called pedrocchi. They only serve it at this one coffee shop in Venice. A specialty coffee, if you will. Espresso with mint whipped cream and chocolate. The cold sugariness from the whipped cream balances perfectly with the hot bitterness of the espresso and the chocolate just finishes the job. It was delicious and really great to have after wandering around in the rain all day long. The other students whined and moaned about the rain the entire trip. Even the girl from Corvallis. I still have no idea what this course I’m taking is about. It’s called the Mediterranean City from Antiquity to Modern day (or something like that) and at present, it appears to be about architecture rituals. Architecture is really boring for those of you who don’t know anything about it. This type of column is different from this type of column because there are more ridges – is more or less the gist of architecture. We got to see an old villa on a hill side near vicenza for about 45 minutes. We weren’t allowed inside, so we walked around the outside for 5 minutes and spent the next 40 hiding from the rain storm. A scene from the Don Giovanni movie was filmed there and on the bus ride home, we watched it. Or rather I watched it and got all excited when we got to the part where the characters walk through the garden of the villa and sing. No one else was watching the movie. Whatever, I can have my own party.
On the return trip home we experienced something I’ve never seen before. A giant rest area/ restaurant. It is so large, it goes over the highway. It has two parking lots, three stories and when we were there, I estimated around 200 people were in the entire establishment. It was huge and amazing. I had gnocchi and they were tasty.
I’ve recently started worrying about whether or not I am enjoying my experience in Italy enough yet. I’ve been here for exactly two weeks. I have friends, so I suppose that’s a good thing. I’m learning the language at a decent pace, so I suppose we like that too. I’m just expecting it all to be amazing and it isn’t blowing my mind yet. I guess I like the change of pace from Walla Walla, but I also miss everything about Whitman.
For once in my life I have a few very close friends as opposed to many friends and one or two very close friends. I don’t know everyone on this program yet! 280 students. I’m disappointed in myself. I’ll give it some time.
The last two days have been really good though. A few of us have decided to have a dinner date every Sunday night in the centro. Dress up and have a big dinner together in a relatively nice restaurant. Then we’ll get gelato. We did this on Sunday and didn’t get charged for the wine we bought. Maybe this was morally corrupt, but the portions weren’t very big, so we felt we were just getting our money’s worth. I think fate got me back later because when I was eating gelato, I either found the rind of some mysterious fruit, or a fingernail clipping. I’m banking on fruit rind, but I still lie awake at night pondering it.
I’m making plans for trips for the entire semester. My big plans include but are not limited to: Paris, London, Amsterdam, Sicily and Rome. If anyone has any destination suggestions for any of these places let me know.

-AJC