Peanut Butter Consumption: >50%

It was getting hard to scoop out the peanut butter with the cookies I buy here 'cuz the peanut butter is now way down in the bottom of the jar; so, I finally broke down and bought a big jar of Nutella. We'll see how long THAT lasts... (for those who don't know the greatness that is Nutella, it's kinda like peanut butter made with hazelnuts, but it's sweet, AND chocolate-y. Yeah, game over. PS - you can buy it at most big grocery stores in the US. Try it on strawberries!)

So it's been more than two weeks since I updated! Sorry for the delay gentle readers, but the in-between time has been a mix of nothing much to talk about and massive amounts of schoolwork.

Backing up to Halloween, I didn't really do much to speak of. They DO celebrate Halloween here in Italy, but not like we do. It's really only been in the last few years that it's become popular, and pretty much just with the university-age crowd. Kids don't go around trick or treating, which is a shame! But students get together, dress up, have parties and things like that. There were a couple parties I was invited to but I didn't really have much of an urge to try and find a costume at the last minute. Plus I was wanting to make a pumpkin pie, so I did that instead! I had found a nice recipe online (http://www.pickyourown.org/pumpkinpie.php) for making it from scratch (yes, from scratch. It's next to impossible to find a can of Libby's pumpkin pie filling here!). Although carving pumpkins are readily available here, I came to find out that the pumpkin pie we eat in the US doesn't come from carving pumpkins in the first place! They have all different kinds of squashes/gourdes at the markets here, and I found one that had the perfect taste and already came pre-cooked from the market, which made the process that much easier. Cinnamon, clover, and nutmeg are all readily available here; the only thing I was missing from the recipe was allspice, which supposedly tastes like a mix of cinnamon, clover, and nutmeg.... so I just put more of those things in. It came out tasting great! Trying to figure out the right amounts of stuff to put in was a hassle because of the english-metric conversions. And I couldn't find any evaporated milk so I just bought some milk and evaporated it myself over the stove. The only thing I'll change for the next time I make it will be to use less eggs; I had to reduce the amount of the recipe because I didn't have enough pumpkin for 3 cups, buuuuut I forgot to reduce the number of eggs in the recipe and it came out a little like a pumpkin souffle. But the taste was right on! I may try making another pie tomorrow.

The week following Halloween, I had two final exams. Our classes are mainly on the quarter system, so courses run about a month then have an exam. The exams were in Competition Policy (aka Antitrust) on Tuesday and International Trade on Friday - both difficult subjects. So needless to say, everyone from class including myself were basically holed up at home for the week with our noses in our books. I was really looking forward to the weekend after the tests to finally let off some steam, but of course I began getting sick on Friday so I ended up staying in bed literally the entire weekend. Thankfully, it was just a head cold and not the swine flu, and I feel much better already. On the plus side, virtually every MST3k episode is available on Google Video, so I watched a bunch of those while I was in bed! Laughter is the best medicine, after all. Ernest Scared Stupid is on Youtube, so I watched that as a late Halloween celebration too! It's just not Halloween without it.

I was looking forward to this week being a bit more relaxed, with the new classes and all, but that was not the case. On Tuesday our Customer Value Management teacher announced that we had the option of taking either the final exam in December, OR we could do a presentation/report on a case study instead - with the presentation portion being due that Friday (ie yesterday). Of course no one wanted to do the test, but unfortunately that left little time to prepare for the presentation. So between that and my B2B Marketing class, I spent two straight days working on school stuff from 9am to midnight/1am-ish. So much for relaxing. But everything went well and the weekend finally arrived.

Friday night one of the students from our class was having a graduation celebration (like I explained in a previous post, Italian students can begin their post-graduate studies if they are finishing their undergraduate degree in the Fall term). It was at a community-center type place with a bar and a dancehall, and pretty much everyone from class went. Drinks were free and unsurprisingly we had a lot of fun!

Today I had wanted to go to Rome. A friend from back home that I know through ASU's Italian Club was visiting, and I intended to go hang out for the day. But it turns out train tickets to Rome from here are actually pretty expensive (about $100 round trip). That wouldn't be too bad in itself because I had also planned on seeing a bunch of things in Rome that I hadn't got to in my previous trips there; but it also turns out that the train ride is about 4 hours long, so the first train i could take didn't arrive in Rome til 2:30pm, and if I wanted to take the cheap train back I would have to leave at 10pm, or else get a hotel room for the night. So, I decided to wait for another time to go to Rome when I can get the most out of it. That ended up being ok because I definitely needed the sleep today after getting home late last night from the party!

I've got another test coming up this week, on Monday. It's for my Financial/Management Accounting class, and yes, I am sure it will be as much fun as it sounds. But at least it is early in the week, and hopefully the rest of the week will be much more relaxing (then again, that's what I said last week).

I've been asked a lot for photos of my new friends here, and some have finally become available, so please enjoy!

From last night's shenanigans:



Ham it up 1

Ham it up 2

Aaand ham it up 3

Gillo's graduation party a couple weeks ago:

Not exactly red party cups, but it'll do


I hang out with these two characters quite a bit. Jason is from Seborga in the north and Gillo is Bolognese

I used this photo to introduce the concept of 'Big Pimpin' to the Italians

Some of the ladies from our program


From our picnic in the park last month: