Since Casserole Night

Since the casserole night I have had some fun. Last Wednesday (November 14) Julie, somehow, convinced our friend Tom to come over to our apartment and cook dinner for us. Tom and Julie went shopping for food Wednesday afternoon, and later Julie and I ‘baked’ a cake aka we bought it from the pastry shop that about 30 seconds from our front door. Around 8pm Tom and his roommate Sean came over and started cooking chicken and pasta with pesto sauce. They made Julie and me appetizers of cheese, prosciutto, and some other meat first, and then refused to let us into the kitchen. So we lazed around on the couches as the boys cooked for us. And then we ate. I ate so much. It was delicious. We had chicken with some seasoning on it, grilled vegetables, the pasta with pesto sauce, and for dessert, the chocolate mousse cake. The conversation was also very interesting and included such topics as: can jellyfish sting other jellyfish, do bees sting other bees, and what exactly are daddy-long-legs if they aren’t spiders. Needless to say, they ended up staying for a long time, and we decided that this should be a weekly thing. Julie and I offered to cook steak for them this week as long as we could all get dressed up and have a mini formal party.

Friday I had to be at a bus station at 7am for my Roman Empire class. We went on a 2 day excursion to Rome. It was pouring down rain when we got there Friday late morning. And it rained for the entire day. The rain messed up our plans a little bit since our teacher, Giempiermo, did not take us to Palatine Hill since only half the class had umbrellas. But we did see the Ara Pacis, the Coliseum, and the Roman Forum. Around 4pm ‘class’ was done for the day, so 3 of my friends and I walked around to the Pantheon and Trevi Fountain. We also snacked on some gelato before meeting a friend of mine from high school, Maggie. I had made plans with Maggie a couple weeks ago to hang out for the night, so we met up at the ‘Wedding Cake.’ I’m not really sure what the building is actually called since everyone in Rome refers to it as the Wedding Cake, but it’s a huge white building with a statue of Victorio Emmanuele II in front of it and its located near the Forum of Nerva. No matter. We walked to her apartment in La Travese(?) which was amazing. We all loved the apartment and I was especially jealous of her giant kitchen. Getting late and hungry we went in search of a restaurant and happened onto a very little cute restaurant. Our waiter was this little old Italian man who we ended up taking pictures with later in the evening. And, of course, the food was delicious. I had the closest thing to fettuccini alfredo I think I’ll have in Italy. After dessert at the restaurant we walked to a gelateria for a nightcap. IT was so cold, but it didn’t matter since the ice cream was amazing. I need to come up with new adjectives for the food here; I just don’t know to explain how good it really is. Night came and we had to be up early so we said bye to Maggie and headed back to our hotel. The next day our class got back into our little bus and we drove to Ostia, an old port town now in ruins. It was also bitterly cold, but the area was very pretty and the ruins were interesting. I feel like I’ve seen so many ruins in my short life that they start not to get so exciting, but the area was pretty. After a couple of hours looking at the town, the bus took us to the beach for lunch. And from there we went back to Perugia. I had a nice quiet Saturday night which was very nice. Erica, Jeanette, Andy, and I watched an episode of Flight of the Conchords, a comedy group from New Zealand. It’s hilarious in all sense of the word hilarious. Parents, we need HBO just to watch Flight of the Conchords. It’s worth it. Sadly, I was unable to sleep in because my body refuses to let me sleep past 8:30am now. Sunday went by pretty quickly with homework and such. Sunday night, however, got more interesting. Jeanette’s ‘boyfriend’ came and surprised her with a visit to Perugia for a week, so we have Andy sort of living with us this week. He’s a real nice guy, but for some reason he brought a spelunking light with him; it’s like a sweatband/headband with a light that you can turn on. So late Sunday night while Julie, Erica, and I are in procrastination mode, we found the light band thing on top of the fridge and had a game of hide and seek in the apartment. I am awful at the game. It took me so long to find spaces to hide in that Erica was done counting and I would be standing in the middle of the living room. But I have a spot that I know is good and does not take a lot of moving things to get into. I’ll tell you how it goes when I use it for our game.