Basta la pasta! I think I'm having un bambino di cibo.

Wow, where to start?? We are having such an amazing time.  Every so often I have to stop and take everything in, realizing, this is real life! I really am in this cute little city in Tuscany, eating the most wonderful food, drinking fantastic wine, meeting people from all over the world, and learning italian! I feel a stronger connection than ever before to my italian roots and am proud to be a citizen of this fine country. I do wonder, how could my ancestors have ever left?? But anyway, to recap the last few days:

As Sarah mentioned, our day starts with language lesson at 9 am. Most mornings we have been getting up at 7 to run around the wall of Lucca, which is great because then we can eat and drink whatever we want without guilt. There are always quite a few people out exercising, which is very nice to see. Language class starts around 9, usually a few minutes after which is good because Sarah and I are definitely on italian time (ie: not super prompt). Four hours of italian might seem like a lot, but it always goes by pretty quickly, and we do have a half hour break in the middle to grab un cappuccino and a snack. It's definitely challenging, being a complete beginner, but I had been listening to some basic learn italian CDs prior to the trip which I feel helped me a lot, especially with my accent. My knowledge of French is helpful as well. In just four days of lessons, I feel we've come pretty far. Still a long way to go though... I guess I'll just have to return next summer for more lessons!

Sabine and Sarah

Eilidh, Sabine, me, and Maddalena 

The view from our class window

Sarah and I love our class. Maddalena is a fantastic teacher and absolutely hysterical, with her enthusiasm and the way she acts things out to help us understand.  She threw in a quick mini lesson yesterday to emphasize the difference between un piato di (a plate of) penne and un piato di pene (we're trying to keep this blog family-friendly so you'll have to look that one up). Today she emphasized the difference between anno and ano. We were practicing asking questions the other day, filling in the blank for "--- were you born" (possible words: where, when), and someone added "come?" (How).  Maddalena did some hysterical acting to show possible answers for the question "how were you born?" Sarah, Eilidh, Sabine, and I greatly appreciate her humor and patience as we all stumble through.

Our cooking and wine class is simply amaaaazing.  Really, could there be anything better than such a thing in the heart of Tuscany? Tuesday night was our first cooking lesson. Isabella led us through a lesson on a traditional meal of the Tuscan peasant.  Italians in general have a first course, a second course, and of course, the dessert course.  For the first course we made crostini di salsiccia e
stracchino - bread with a topping of mixed ground sausage and a soft cheese that is toasted in the oven. As Sarah was mixing up the topping, it looked positively revolting and I said jokingly, "can I have a taste?" Just minutes later, Isabella actually went and took a taste, proclaiming it to be perfect.  I had to refrain from gagging! But when we sat down later to eat it, the crostini were molto buoni!

Second course was peppers (pepperoni) and zucchini stuffed with a mixture of sausage, ground beef,
cheese, and topped with bread crumbs.  Again, looked gross as raw food, but when cooked, fantastic!! The other part of the second course was homemade pasta, which we had a lot of fun with.  It was cooked with pignoli (pine nuts...side note: my autocorrect really wanted pignoli to say pig oil), pomodori (tomatoes), garlic (aglio), capelli (capers), and olio.  Quite a bit of work, but delizioso.

For dessert, a simple almond biscotti cut into bite sized pieces, called cantuccini. Pretty plain, but enjoyable.

The meal took over 3 hours to cook and an hour and a half to eat. The five of us students - Sarah, me, Arling and Kari (from Norway), and Lydia (from Austria) - and head chef Isabella also consumed almost 6 bottles of wine during the process. We learned the word "Basta!" which means Stop! And Kari said at one point, "Basta la pasta," because she was so full and Isabella was trying to give her more. We all got a good laugh at that.  Sarah and I joked that we were both having food babies "bambino di cibo" as we pointed out our happy but protruding guts.

Then yesterday we had our first wine lesson.  Stefano, one of the teachers at Koine, is a wine expert and took us to a winery "fattoria do Fubbiano" a bit outside of the city of Lucca among the hills of Tuscany.  Jen Farley, I immediately thought of you because it was a painter's paradise.

After a bit of a tour and some background information on the art of wine making, we sampled five of the winery's wines - a white 2013 Vermentino, a Schiller vino Rosato rose, a 2012 Rosso Fubbiano San Giovese, a 2011 San Gennaro Riserva San Giovese, and a sweet 2011 Aleatico red.  We also had some of the olive oil produced at the fattoria.  Molto molto buono. I thought to ask what the italian opinion of American wine was, and Stefano said that it wasn't looked down upon by any means, but Italians really like to stick to their local wine. Lots of regional pride.

After the winery Stefano took us to a local trattoria known for its local, traditional dishes.  We sampled ravioli with spinach and cheese, tortelli with ground carne, and some amazing steak. We of course also had some dolce. Once again, we finished the night with bambini di cibo.

We can't get over what a wonderful time we're having.  The weather has been a little bit rainy, but otherwise pretty nice and Lucca is such a quaint, delightful city.  The food and drink are fantastic, but most importantly, the people we are with are making this such a special time.  We have laughed so much (a good way to burn those extra calories we've consumed, eh?) and I love to see all of us together, representing a dozen different countries, but getting along so marvelously. This evening we were off from our cooking class, having just a walk and tour of the wall, so we had time to meet up with Sabine and Eilidh and a bunch of others from the Koine School. Good times were had by all.

Tour of the wall. Fun fact that we learned: the name Lucca actually has Celtic roots, coming from the Celtic word "loch" because this area used to be a lake. It's like the two sides of my family are coming together here!

Some of our favorite moments:

-Sarah to Sabine in italian class "penso ti colore preferito e vedura" (I think your favorite color is vegetables.")

-Sabine to Sarah in italian class: "penso ti piato preferito e la buca" - "I think your favorite dish to eat is cow" and then Maddalena overhearing this, miming taking a huge bite out of a cow leg

-Sabine calling chickpeas "chicken peas" and bed bugs "better bums...no bed bums"

-us telling Eilidh about our fanny pack count and her saying, "you can't say fanny pack to someone from the UK! To us, fanny packs are [how we refer to] women's bums!"

-not only do Erling and I have the same camera, but we both carry our cameras around in a sock! Two kindred spirits we are!

-In Italy they have coffee after dessert.  Erling insisted on his coffee with dessert, saying "in Norveggia, we have coffee WITH dessert!" So he ordered un cafe and got an espresso. Quite disgruntled, he then asked for a cafe americano, where he got an espresso with hot water. With a priceless look of resignation he shrugged his shoulders and muttered, "oh well" and drank up.

Latest counts:
FP: 38
SoG: 32

Buonna notte, with love (see my cappuccino),
Lisa