what party type will it be this year?

"Party Type 1: Oh, This Is Nice
You usually end up at this party after Tanya can't come into town after all and cancels or you were just too darn busy to make good plans, real plans, ahead of time. So you put on a sweater you got for Christmas or the cocktail dress you bought for Debbie's engagement party that you never wore again, and drag some poor unwitting sap of a friend to the party where you don't really know anyone. It's super awkward at first and you just stand by the cheese and crackers, nodding your head to the music, furtively gulping room-temperature chardonnay and furiously wishing for midnight."
-Richard on The Gawker blog

read about the other party types...
Party type 2: There's a Place Just a Few Blocks Up
Party type 3:At the Clurrrrb
Party type 4:Oh, we went to bed at 11am
Party type 5:Auld Lang Syne


hilarious article....and it's so true!!

my Butternut Squash Risotto

I'm very accustomed to my family barring me from the kitchen. They don't let me get within a mile of the stove because, A. they've never seen me cook anything or B. they remember that in high school I couldn't even make a box of mac & cheese without messing it up.

But I came home from Italy with more than a year just watching and tasting Tuscan cooking and now after three months of being a nanny, I had my new-found culinary confidence that finally gave me a way to prove them wrong.



Here is my piaciuto and recently requested recipe for risotto:





Ingredients:

• 1 butternut squash (2 pounds)
• 1 white onion, finely chopped.
  
• 2 tablespoons olive oil
• 1 tbl spoon of fresh Parsley, finely chopped.
  
• Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper
• 6 cups boiling water
  
• 1 1/2 vegetable bouillon cube
  
• 1 1/2 cups Arborio rice (10 ounces)
• 1 teaspoon sage
• 1 teaspoon thyme
  
• 1 cup freshly grated Parmiggiano
• 6 tablespoons (3/4 stick) unsalted butter

A. IF you have real butternut squash, roast it and do the following:

Preheat oven to 400 degrees F. Peel the butternut squash, remove the seeds, and cut it into 3/4-inch cubes. You should have about 6 cups. Place the squash on a sheet pan and toss it with the olive oil, 1 teaspoon salt, and 1/2 teaspoon pepper. Roast for 25 to 30 minutes, tossing once, until very tender. Set aside.

B. IF you have a box of store-bought squash, defrost, set aside until instructed.*

1. Heat the oil in a large pan. Meanwhile, begin to boil water in a separate pan. Add the bouillon cube to boiling water. Keep it on a low boil until finished.
   
2. In pan with oil, add diced onion to sautee for 10 minutes, or until brown.
3. Add rice to onions and oil to toast rice for 2-4 minutes, or until slightly toasted brown. Stir constantly.
   
4. Now add all of the squash to rice, oil, onions. Stir constantly for 3 minutes.
   
5. Add spices, add parsley.
6. Using a ladle, transfer boiling hot broth to the rice/squash pan.
   
7. NOTE: do not add broth all at once. Add 1 spoonful, then stir constantly until absorbed by rice. Then add the next spoonful.
8. Continue to add the broth, 2 ladles at a time, stirring every few minutes. Each time, cook until the mixture seems a little dry, then add more stock.
9. Keep stirring and adding broth for about 30-35 minutes. The longer you take to add all the broth, and the faster you stir, the creamier and better.
10. After all broth is added, test a bite of risotto to see if rice is cooked to your liking.
11. Take risotto off the heat. Add butter and stir. Add parmiggiano cheese and stir.

Serve with more parmiggiano grated on top and a few sprigs of parsley.

Buon Appetito!

Italians vs. Americans during the holidays...

I have a habit of comparing Italian culture to American culture. I do it constantly. My friends get annoyed and accuse me of being arrogant. But not all the things I say about Italy are good! And not all the things I say about America are bad!! For example, I love talking about the weather. A real New England cold and white Christmas can never compare to the gray and mild Florentine winters. On the other hand, there is nothing cozier and more enjoyable than the outdoor shopping under the little lights along via Corso, via Calzaiuoli and in Piazza Repubblica of Florence. Everyone is out and about, hand in hand, or stopping for a cioccolata calda while they shop in the little boutiques.

Our idea of Christmas shopping is a one-stop-shop at the mall, where you buy all your gifts under one roof. I took my sister to the Natick Collection (doubled in size while I was away!) so she could buy her gifts in one day at one place. My mom and I went down to the outdoor outlets for more shopping. If you want to shop at the mall, then be prepared to stalk people to their cars in order to claim their parking space. What a sad way to start the holidays, pushing and shoving! I even heard that on the day of the sales after Thanksgiving, some unfortunate store employee got trampled by all the customers running into the store to fight for the sales. It must've been killer sales prices! What embarrassing proof of our materialistic consumer culture...

Anyway, in my defense, I just can't help but compare the two cultures because I find it so fascinating to learn and be aware of the differences between them. I think there are benefits to learning more about the Italians. They have a lot of great things (like adding salt to pasta, siesta nap times post-lunch and fresh food markets) that could really improve our lifestyle. Living in Florence has taught me how to relax, eat well and enjoy life to say the least.

Going back to the other perspective in all fairness, Americans always uphold our tradition to relax, eat well and enjoy their holiday season**** (after all the mad crazy stressful rush to buy the gifts of course). We have been cooking for three days in my house. I made a Tiramisu ("pick me up") the real way with lady fingers and brandy too, butternut squash risotto and verdure arroste (roasted veggies with eggplant, potatoes, carrots, zucchini, cherry tomatoes, celery, red onion). My mom and dad made an apple pie, lobster pie, yule log, pecan sticky sweet buns. See!? We know how to eat well!


***ONLY DURING THE HOLIDAYS...
Happy Christmas and eat up!
Auguri e Buone feste!

holidays at home

I am home for the holidays. i flew back last week. I am no longer in florence and i don't know when I'll go back....but i know that sooner or later i will go back to Florence. that's what this blog is about: going back and forth between Boston and Florence. the new blog header is a tryptich of three horizons...Florence and the Boston skyline with a photo of me in Fiesole between the two cities. it is not a coincidence that i am gazing towards Florence. that's where my sights are set. that's where i hope to be. if not now, then in the future.

it's actually good to be home. Refeshing. I appreciate it more after being away. my house is very festive for the holidays. Glowing. I can sleep in and spend time with my family. And the beautiful snowstorm gave me a sort of peaceful feeling and despite the cold, it felt like a warm welcome. i feel grounded here and although im a bit more unproductive (my cozy house makes me lazy!!), i have set many goals, resolutions and challeges to reach. i'm starting a job search in january (despite the discouraging job market). this is why i decided to spend some time at home where i feel stable, protected and encouraged by my family to get things started. the more i'm away from florence, the more i'm desperate and motivated to get back there.

i can forsee that in 2009 there will be possibilities on the horizon. even if i stay in boston for a while, I always have my sights set on florence...

Picnik isn't just a summertime tradition...I picnik all day!

As you have probably noticed from my ever-changing blog theme and header, I am spending a lot of time on Picnik. this is what happens when i get back home. i sit in front of my computer doing pointless time-consuming things on my computer. the only productive thing I've done is create new items for my Etsy shop. And I spruced up my shop header too!

Now it's just a matter of time. I have had no real customers make orders at the shop yet. That's okay because I'm too busy during the holidays to crank out big orders. After the holidays I'll start my job search...and if I don't find a job then hopefully I'll have customers who have orders, so I can at least fall back on that.

blog makeover

In the dreary drab rainy days of winter, i can't stand all the gray, black and brown. i thought of holiday colors for the blog. while, i love Christmas, i hate Christmas colors. so i decided to give this season and the blog some random radical technicolor to cheer up!

i made my blog header from all of my old Florence pictures. I put them on the Picnik website to spice them up....it took me about two hours... and they weren't just any two hours...they were my only solid hours to pack up for my big trip to Boston! ooops....

but at least my blog is colorful and cheery now...
....i hope to be both in my next last few days in Florence before the holidays.

other ideas for blog headers...

the florentine past is always relevant to the present...

Chi vuol essere lieto, sia: di doman non v'è certezza....

-Lorenzo dei Medici

my roomie at Smith is my newest penpal.

Lilly,

ah lilly! hi! i totally just stumbled on your blog somehow, and i was wondering if it was okay if i linked you in my blog...i just started a new anonymous blog because of law school. i was really excited to find your blog...it's so good to have updates on your life. how is florence? i'm so jealous that you're an ex-pat while i'm stuck here in boring old america. how is the boy????

don't a stranger my dear former roomie (gosh, that seems like AGES ago, doesn't it?)

-K
PS: K's blog Hello, My name is Fabulous

........................................................

Ciao carissima K!!

mamma mia it's been forever since we've talked. I am soooo flattered (and pleasantly surprised) that you found my blog and enjoy being caught up on my dolce-amara vita.

i always forget somehow that you showed up to smith knowing tons of italian and already being an italophile ....and i was the frenchie....now look what influence you had on me!!!

first of all, great blog!!! i can hear you saying everything in your voice and your K-way of talking...it's not anomymous in the sense that i can totally see the K-ness about it. but i wish mine was more anonymous. i had intended it that way but there's so much that i just can't resist putting up (fotos, personal stories). so far you can't really find my full name on there. but i send the link to everyone so obviously they know it's my blog!!!

boring old america here i come, by the way. im going home for Christmas and then for an indefinite amount of time. i have to rethink-research-restart my life plans to live and work in the states or in italy. i think graduate school will be a detour. and i need to make money!! there is no money in my bank and no money in italy. im an aupair and i think ill go crazy if i have to keep doing this job. i want to do what i like to do and what im good at!!!!

Florence is beautiful though as always and it is so hard to leave. the river is overflowing with water, the streets are overflowing with christmas lights and the atmosfere is overflowing with holiday cheer. and leaving the boy is going to be ROUGH. o man it's always so dramatic. he's my best friend. my latin lover. we are going on our two year anniversary date this weekend. he's got 3 more years of law school and he lives with his parents. so if that explains anything...yeah.

aww my dear estranged 1st-ever-roomie. thank you for sharing your blog and filling me in on your life. im so damn impressed and jealous that you are (already) in grad school and heading in a direction. i have yet to find my direction. i feel like a freaking weathervane...a gust of wind can send me in a different direction. do i want to design? be an architect? be a translator? a world traveler? an english teacher?

so congratulations and ill hopefully see you around Boston!!! what a great city!!

.......but not as great as Florence....hehe:)

un bacione
Italilly

the word of the day is FURBA.

FURBO. No, not the cute little alien-eyed talking toy, Furbie!! The adjective that defines a key to survival in Italy. To get by, you need to be seriously furbo. If you're passive, you're not going to get through a crowd, you're not going to win an argument with the Tabacchi shop guy (although the consequences of being passive are not a matter of geographics). If you're passive-aggressive, you might win the argument but you certainly won't get as much respect if you are seriously fiducioso and furbo. You need to be assertive, you need some serious confidence, self-assurance and cleverness to get any respect and dignity. I was starting to feel helpless...they responded to me in english, they cut me in line or push me off the sidewalk, they stared me up and down. For the longest time, I couldn't figure out why the Italians* wouldn't change their attitude with me.

Then I realized that I had to change my attitude with them.

I started to pick up on what gives the Italians that extra kick of energy and assertiveness (strong horsepower fuel called Italian espresso two times daily), what gives the young and old the assertive confidence in any situation (causing them to use the "umbrella gesture" or some parolacce), and the ability to be unashamedly confrontational.

Today I took the preparatory steps to becoming furbo that an Italian would take on any given morning. I had a cappuccino and a corneto integrale on via Gioberti. I walked fast and in the middle on the road so confidently that no bike or three-wheeled truck dared to honk me out of the way. I spoke with my best accento fiorentino and self-assurance. I was assertive when making purchases--I wanted a discount for purchasing more than one item or I wouldn't buy it.

And then I got to the Post Office centrale near Piazza Repubblica and I was running late for my lunch in Gavinana outside of town. Come al solito. I pulled a ticket for 142, when the customer being served at the window was at 114. Porca miseria!. So I did some quick calculations. I could look at the flower market under the arches around the Poste, and then make a quick visit to the Smith College sede in Piazza Signoria before my number was called.

I tend to talk too much and lose track of time. I did exactly that with my former study-abroad coordinator. I got back to the Poste and the board beeped a 149. Oddio, che palle!!!

I knew there was only one solution to avoid waiting for my new number, 174. I needed to be furba. I needed to be confident and very convincing.

The number 151 came up. The post officer waited, looked around, finger on the button for the next number. I vecchietti in line looked at their numbers and sighed, so I made a mad dash to the desk.

Che numero hai? she wanted to make sure I was number 151.
Ah, well I have 142, but I was outside and customer 151 has left the poste office, I said in a whisper as to not draw angry glares from the crowd of customers.

And in two minutes, I paid and ran to the bus. Menomale!

.....................................................

Now the Disclaimer: So if you want to have any success at being furba, you need lots of sleep, siesta's and caffe'. My good friend M forgot those key steps but was saved by her innate furba-ness. She had to talk her way out of a 50 euro fine to the bus-ticket controllers, for having ripped a 4-way paper ticket in half, which was unstamped because it was too short at that point to fit in the machine. She later made the mistake of misreading a Eurostar sign on a train and got on with a regular priced ticket, and the ticket controller kicked her off. Two trains later, she found herself on another Eurostar (she had no money to buy a higher-priced ticket) that afternoon so she decided to be fake being deaf. But she was a bit sfortunata, because it was the SAME ticket controller! Despite being sleep deprived, despite having forgotten a crucial espresso before her nine-hour ride from Vienna to Modena, she was naturally furba and talked herself out of being arrested.

So if you are not my friend, M, and not prepared to be furba, don't even try it because it's exhausting...comunque, you should prep yourself first before you take on the challenges of being tricky, or else you might find yourself in a tricky situation!

*not my friends or acquaintances, but those Italians who see my cappelli biondi and put me in the outsider category subito so they can stereotype and undermine me

in my element....

thank you, Uncle Chris, for this fantastic panoramic of our gita around Florence. we saw palazzo borghese, kent state univ study-abroad palazzo, caffe' rinascente, chiaroscuro, the post office and san lorenzo market. in the evening we had a glass of Castiglioni chianti at an enoteca with a little bit of souvenir shopping in the leather shops of Borgo Greci. also, we were on a mission to find three giant Babbo Natale cioccolati di Kindercare...

un incontro all'improvviso became una bellissima giornata!

if i want good news, i read The Florentine

these days it is so rare that i find any good news in the news. so that's why i read The Florentine. they have a way of informing you about all the positive happenings in a positive way. nice stories and upbeat reports. it is a thoughtful, newsy, educational free little newspaper. i have put off my travel and coming-of-age novels just to read this in all my spare time. i seek it out desperately every two weeks at all the drop off locations....somedays it requires that i pretend that im getting a drink or looking at the menu at Old Stove as i spy the stack of papers and make a mad dash out the door with one. but why am i running if it's free? im not used to free, senza prezzo. that's almost too good to be true. anyhow, if i don't find it, i know it's online, but i love keeping it folded up in my bag for a moment of potential boredom on the bus or in a queue.

they have this wonderful way of writing about the culture & customs, sketches of local Italians, a weekly "fatto bello" (nice fact) of the week, and book reviews. this week i was really touched by the story about the colorful altruistic taxi driver, Caterina aka "Milano25".

I was lucky enough to ride in her taxi two years ago one night after a long evening out with the girls at YAB, Lochness or Slowly (or all three). surprisingly we found her taxi at a stand in Piazza Repubblica. this was a real lucky streak considering she is a famous taxi driver (for all her volunteer work for kids with cancer) and so we jumped in her car for our ride home. it was such an experience let me tell you...it was as smooth as an airplane, it was like being rocked to sleep in a cradle with all the toys and DVD screens showing a Disney movie, it was like going back to my childhood for those twenty minutes. I thought I was in a fairy tale.

But when you read about her life...you realize her personal story was not like a fairytale.

And seeing that my point is that The Florentine is a wonderful newspaper that focuses on the positive, you can bet that they really showed you the beauty and upside of her story.

Thank you, TheFlorentine!

i like reading the good news in newspapers

this NPR article makes me smile...it's about a woman who has lived 100 years and has seen it all in the 20th century, who was a volunteer in the Obama campaign, and the best part of the story is that her name is Lillian too!

i like to see the glass half full

Now I know this NPR article is just telling the facts about jobless rates going up...but, um, a little encouragement and optimism would do us all a lot of good! i can't find a job in Italy so now let's see what happens when i look in the States. I'm keeping an open mind for my job searches in both places.

(My LinkedIn profile explains what I'm looking for if you're curious)

they don't call it the world wide WEB for nothing

I feel like spiderman. I'm spinning webs everyday in the digital world of cyberspace. I have a bazillion links between facebook, linkedin, picasa, blogs, email....everything cross-references everything else, have you noticed that? if you go to your facebook, you list like 10 links or pieces of information that you can ALSO find in five other different profiles. My blog tells you about my LinkedIn profile now (finally updated!) and my LinkedIn tells you about my blog. Don't worry if you don't know about my LinkedIn "professional" network profile, because you could either A.google my name or B. find the link on Facebook! I mean I feel like a real-estate agent just buying up property on the web. I'm getting my name out there which makes me feel some entitlement to all these pages dedicated to me. I've got the social page (facebook), the professional page (linkedin), the artistic page (picasa), the personal page (blogspot), the entrepreneur page (etsy).

Now that everyone else I know directly or indirectly through friends (facebook tells me i have 814 friends*, linkedin tells me i have 11 connections, my email has 234 contacts) has a tangled web of their exponentially growing collection of pages on the world wide WEB, I can't even keep up with friends, family, colleagues...let alone my own pages, me.

*are they all true friends i see and talk to daily? no of course not

see what happens when you google your name

I found my incomplete, outdated LinkedIn profile (which is now been updated) a few cross-country race statistics from my collegiate and highschool races and a link to my Facebook profile....

Good thing that's all that came up. *


*I'm not saying there is more to find, I'm just glad that's the case.
**On facebook someone could tag some horrible unflattering or scandalous pictures to your face. On google you may accidentally find other scandals with your name attached. PHEW so far so good...

thanks tina!

Awww. I googled my name on the Smith College website and found a reference in a Smithie JYA student blog.

but what would Margaret Edson say about Lingueo???

On Sunday May 18th, the day of my commencement from Smith College, Margaret Edson '83 told us what is so valuable about an education as it was originally intended ( in the classroom, as "a physical, breath-based, eye-to-eye event."). In this days I've been thinking a lot about my four-year undergraduate American liberal arts education. About what it has done to help me grow, about how I should've taken more advantage of it, how I want more of it, about the differences between the benefits of our system and those from an education here in Italy.*

Anyway, Margaret, an award-winning-playwright-turned-Kindergarten-teacher-by-passion gave us her reasons for the valuable, priceless event of classroom learning, saying:

"Classroom teaching is a physical, breath-based, eye-to-eye event.
It is not built on equipment or the past.
It is not concerned about the future.
It is in existence to go out of existence.
It happens and then it vanishes.
Classroom teaching is our gift.
It's us; it's this.

We bring nothing into the classroom -- perhaps a text or a specimen. We carry ourselves, and whatever we have to offer you is stored within our bodies. You bring nothing into the classroom -- some gum, maybe a piece of paper and a pencil: nothing but yourselves, your breath, your bodies.

Classroom teaching produces nothing. At the end of a class, we all get up and walk out. It's as if we were never there. There's nothing to point to, no monument, no document of our existence together.

Classroom teaching expects nothing. There is no pecuniary relationship between teachers and students. Money changes hands, and people work very hard to keep it in circulation, but we have all agreed that it should not happen in the classroom. And there is no financial incentive structure built into classroom teaching because we get paid the same whether you learn anything or not.

Classroom teaching withholds nothing. I say to my young students every year, "I know how to add two numbers, but I'm not going to tell you." And they laugh and shout, "No!" That's so absurd, so unthinkable. What do I have that I would not give to you?"

The point being that I want to go back to classroom, whether to teach or to learn. Basically she got me thinking about the incredible wonders that happen in a classroom (the kind of thing you appreciate and understand once you're out of one) and about the magic of learning (this is not intended to sound corny)...because now I'm thinking about my career and that means thinking about more time in the classroom for a Masters.**

P.S. You can read her speech here.

*(Ask me how many times I've had to defend and explain the liberal arts education while in Italy... Example: "why do you have two majors? you didn't do a thesis undergrad? you took classes of all subjects? you don't already know your career path? YOU HAVE NO IDEA WHAT YOU WANT TO DO WITH YOUR LIFE?" etc. )

*now I have to think WHAT Masters do I want to do...?

why laptops make you lazy (but allow you to be productive)

i guess it would be incorrect to say that laziness is what made me sign up to be a Lingueo language tutor because while it doesn't necessarily mean you need to get off your chair, you do need some motivation (and free time) to register, make a profile then create the video classes for the language you want to teach. it's an online site for students and tutors to give video language lessons. it's relatively new from what i've gathered so there are only about a 100 tutors and 150 students from around the world who have signed up. as a tutor, i make a schedule of my hours in my time zone, my hourly wage linked to a paypal system and a series of video classes. it's sooo 21st century, isn't it?

i mean it's not that i was too lazy to go out and do face to face lessons, because I currently have one student that I meet with in person and on Skype, the problem is our generation has their face to the computer screen all day that Lingueo takes advantage of that. it's a really powerful tool for obvious reasons....now i can learn japanese with someone both from japan and in japan at the same time while I stay comfortably in front of my computer at home (in either of my homes in italy or the states*).

now i just have to figure out how to sign up as a student...and decide which language to take.

I'm thinking Japanese or Finnish....

*yes i do call Italy and the States home

and now we know he was right....

"I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies.

If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by

inflation, then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around the banks will

deprive the people of all property until their children wake-up homeless on the continent their

fathers conquered."

Thomas Jefferson 1802