Tuesday, January 17, 2012

I'm not in Kansas anymore

Tuesdays are definitely going to be my longest days of the week. I have four classes starting at 9:15 and ending at 6:00. I have a break from 1:45-3:30, and I took a quick "napski," which refreshed me a bit.

Today I had two of the classes I had yesterday, and then I had my Italian Art class and my Practicum in European Media. I am really excited for my Italian Art Class. We only meet a few times in the classroom for lectures throughout the semester, and the other days we meet we're out touring museums and churches. I took the class because I want to learn about the art and history of this city. I knew that if I had a teacher introducing all of the information to me I would be more prone to learn it.

For the Practicum in European Media class, we are making one documentary for the semester. It's going to be interesting because I only know a little about producing a video. I made a few in my videography class and one for a fashion blog I wrote for last semester. So I know something about Final Cut Pro, the computer editing software, but I don't know everything.

With everything in journalism going online, it's vital to know how to post interesting things with your story, and a video is something that will add to it.

Besides school I did something I rarely do. I cooked, and I was quite happy with myself. Now, I can bake really well because it requires exact measurements with a strict recipe to follow, but with cooking, you can just throw stuff together.

So I decided to visit online recipe websites and start with something simple. I found chicken salad with mayo. Easy enough, right? I ventured to one of the supermarkets, Meta, and picked up the essential ingredients. One of which was chicken — of course. Now everything in this store is in Italian so it said Petto di Pollo a fette. I knew di meant of and pollo was chicken so I assumed it meant something of chicken. Now I pondered on what a fette was. It looked like chicken breast, so I just grabbed it.

Once I got back to the apartment I had my friend Jess look up what it meant. Thank God it was chicken breast. For all I know it could have meant feet of chicken.

After that situation I whipped up a very satisfying meal. You have to understand I am not a very domestic woman. I've burnt grilled cheese before, BUT I'm learning. I signed up for an Italian cooking class which is free through the school for next Tuesday, and I am looking forward to that.

Fun fact I keep forgetting to post is that at that the supermarket they charge you about 20 cents for bags, and you bag your groceries yourself. You feel like an idiot in the beginning when you stand there thinking the cashier is going to bag them for you like at home. In that sense I think we're spoiled in America and don't think about too much. It's the little things here that are different, but they make you realize you aren't at home.

I have to go to the post office sometime this week to get stamps to mail a few things, and I have to admit I am nervous because I don't want to screw it up and overpay for something. It's definitely a learning experience. Our teachers have said if you don't feel uncomfortable at times here, you're not getting the full experience. Culture shock is something very real.

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