On Saturday we went to the mercato aperto (open air market) in the Piazza delle Erbe (pictured below). People in the picture from the left: Me, Katie, Theresa, Carly, Lisa. I bought a lot of fruit including green figs (pretty cheap), apricots, apples and others. At these markets you cannot choose the fruit yourself, you tell the owner/worker that you want "un mezzo kilo" (a half kilo) of whatever, and they pick and bag it for you. I figure this is because Italians are so picky and insistent that they'd pick all the fruit over and fight over it and the owners would loose too much money on unsold bruised fruit (from the Italians throwing it at each other in frustration that someone cut in front of them in line). Actually, I think it's a health regulation, because even in grocery stores you're supposed to wear plastic gloves when you choose your fruit/veggies. Anyway, at the beginning I couldn't figure out how to say a quarter kilo so I kept asking for a half kilo of everything. Finally I remembered and it helped. Fun fact; supposedly that open air market isn't there just on the weekends, it's there daily! Talk about "slow food!" I'm excited that my home-stay home will be so near these beautiful places! After the market we wandered around a bookstore and then went to a super market to stock up on food and get stuff for lunch. After eating in a small piazza, we had some gelato and walked home. All in all, we probably walked around for 4 hours today. But it seemed that it was less than we had walked the night before...
The previous day: Friday; we had our written and oral "placement" exams (they are not really placement exams because they just want to see what level we are at and what we need to work on). I think both exams went pretty well for me. I got to check out the UC study center as well, which has a whole bookshelf of books to borrow that previous students left where I found guides to Paris and Venice and Europe as a whole, in addition to a novel for ages 10 +up that I've already read 3 pages of. There is also a collection of stuff that previous students left like ethernet cords, blankets, clothes, pans, etc. So I also picked up a sleeping bag, some clothes for ultimate flair and a sweet semi-bling (translation: kind of over the top) purse. Later on, Katie, Theresa, and I went for a 20 min run around town (Italians don't do this ...ever. They think you are very weird if you run around on the streets). We went down by the river but this guy who was in his driveway stopped us and told us we shouldn't continue in that direction because he had seen some sketchy guys come by recently (either that or that it was a bad area of the river (was hard to understand)). We thanked him and headed around the other way which turned out to be perfect as we got to run by our classroom and cafeteria and made a nice loop back home. Then we showered and set out in search of....
..Mexican food! Little did we know that so epic an adventure could happen to four young girls out on a Friday night just looking for some comfort food like they used to eat at home... So we set out on a hunt for Mexican food. It was pretty close to the main piazzas (which are about 20 min away) so we found it fairly quickly. Unfortunately the entrees were ~15 euro. which is about $22. We weren't very excited about this so we decided to try the one other Mexican place that was on the list we got from out teachers. After another 15 min walk, we realized that it didn't exist. Either that or the street it was supposed to be on stopped and then continued elsewhere, but we were too sketched out about the small dark streets and decided to find some food on the way back. By this time we were getting pretty hungry; I'm sure many of you can attest; four hungry (and cheap) girls prowling the streets looking for food after a workout, is a dangerous dangerous thing, especially if I am one of the hungriest. Every pizzeria and ristorante did not fit our one constraint: cheap. Finally, we got back to the piazza delle erbe, having checked out many restaurants on the way and found GIANT slices of pizza for 2,50 euro! Katie and I got the vegetarian one with lots of veggies that had just come out of the oven. We sat at the fountain that is pictured above and, started devouring our prey. Of course we both burnt our mouths a bit on the just-couldn't-possibly-be-more-tasty pizza. Theresa and Lisa were smart and got flavors that weren't quite so hot. On the way back we got gelato and had some pretty tired legs when we finally were able to lay down on our beds for a bit. Thankfully though, we decided that the combination of the run and the walking burnt all the calories from all that gelato! This must be how Italians stay so thin and why you can find 60 year old women riding their bike to do their daily shopping. Fun fact; supposedly that open air market isn't there just on the weekends, it's there daily! Talk about "slow food!" I'm excited that my home-stay home will be so near these beautiful places!
The previous day: Friday; we had our written and oral "placement" exams (they are not really placement exams because they just want to see what level we are at and what we need to work on). I think both exams went pretty well for me. I got to check out the UC study center as well, which has a whole bookshelf of books to borrow that previous students left where I found guides to Paris and Venice and Europe as a whole, in addition to a novel for ages 10 +up that I've already read 3 pages of. There is also a collection of stuff that previous students left like ethernet cords, blankets, clothes, pans, etc. So I also picked up a sleeping bag, some clothes for ultimate flair and a sweet semi-bling (translation: kind of over the top) purse. Later on, Katie, Theresa, and I went for a 20 min run around town (Italians don't do this ...ever. They think you are very weird if you run around on the streets). We went down by the river but this guy who was in his driveway stopped us and told us we shouldn't continue in that direction because he had seen some sketchy guys come by recently (either that or that it was a bad area of the river (was hard to understand)). We thanked him and headed around the other way which turned out to be perfect as we got to run by our classroom and cafeteria and made a nice loop back home. Then we showered and set out in search of....
..Mexican food! Little did we know that so epic an adventure could happen to four young girls out on a Friday night just looking for some comfort food like they used to eat at home... So we set out on a hunt for Mexican food. It was pretty close to the main piazzas (which are about 20 min away) so we found it fairly quickly. Unfortunately the entrees were ~15 euro. which is about $22. We weren't very excited about this so we decided to try the one other Mexican place that was on the list we got from out teachers. After another 15 min walk, we realized that it didn't exist. Either that or the street it was supposed to be on stopped and then continued elsewhere, but we were too sketched out about the small dark streets and decided to find some food on the way back. By this time we were getting pretty hungry; I'm sure many of you can attest; four hungry (and cheap) girls prowling the streets looking for food after a workout, is a dangerous dangerous thing, especially if I am one of the hungriest. Every pizzeria and ristorante did not fit our one constraint: cheap. Finally, we got back to the piazza delle erbe, having checked out many restaurants on the way and found GIANT slices of pizza for 2,50 euro! Katie and I got the vegetarian one with lots of veggies that had just come out of the oven. We sat at the fountain that is pictured above and, started devouring our prey. Of course we both burnt our mouths a bit on the just-couldn't-possibly-be-more-tasty pizza. Theresa and Lisa were smart and got flavors that weren't quite so hot. On the way back we got gelato and had some pretty tired legs when we finally were able to lay down on our beds for a bit. Thankfully though, we decided that the combination of the run and the walking burnt all the calories from all that gelato! This must be how Italians stay so thin and why you can find 60 year old women riding their bike to do their daily shopping. Fun fact; supposedly that open air market isn't there just on the weekends, it's there daily! Talk about "slow food!" I'm excited that my home-stay home will be so near these beautiful places!*Piazza delle erbe at night photo found at bedandbreakfastpadua.it
