Friday, July 18, 2008
Pictures from Rogliano and Sangineto
Here are some pictures from our visit to our host family in Rogliano, and then from when we went to the beach for one day at Sangineto. I may be going back to Sangineto for a few more days, so hopefully I'll be able to get some pictures of the town. Enjoy! Feel free to leave comments! : )
Rome, Peschici, Rogliano, Sangineto, Perugia
Ok so please forgive the punctuation in this post as i have still to figure out how to use these Italian keyboards....I'm in Perugia now! After Rome Adriana and I went to Peschici, a stunningly beautiful beach town on the Adriatic coast, in the region of Puglia. We had a fantastic time, just laying on the beach and swimming in the crystal clear water for two days, leaving the beach only to eat. I guess it has been awhile since my poor body has seen the sun because i got pretty sunburned and now im peeling all over...yuck. After those two glorious days in the sun we made the 12-hour (and 6 different train or bus changes) trek to Cosenza. Our host family picked us up at the train station and all six of us piled in the car and drove to the small town of Rogliano. This is where we stayed along with another friend, Megan, just over two years ago to study Italian. That time we stayed a month, but this year we could only stay a weekend, unfortunately.
Being back with the fam was such a blast, a whirlwind of huge, delicious meals and trips to visit all the different aunts and cousins in the town, each visit complemented with the compulsory snack or sweets with coffee. We ate so much in this single weekend....I cannot stress enough the amount of food we managed to stuff down. We had pastasciutta (pasta with fresh tomato sauce and little cream), fiori di zucca (zucchini flowers stuffed with mozzarella and then fried), pasta with pesto, pasta with a sauce made of onions, tomatoes, carrots, and meat, peppers with mashed potatoes, frittata with fried zucchini and eggs, fried mozzarella with tomatoes...and so much more I'm unfortunately forgetting. And even after stuffing ourselves full of pasta, vegetables, meat, cheese, fruit, and dessert our host mother, Luisa, would lament about how us American girls ate so little, and how we were so skinny and needed some fattening up. Believe me, if we had stayed any longer I'm sure we would have fattened up quite nicely.
After visiting Rogliano, Adriana and I went for one day to Sangineto, another small and beautiful town on the beach. This one was in Calabria, however, and we stayed with a friend from Rogliano. The water was so clear, you could still see you feet after you couldnt reach the bottom with your feet anymore! The next day we made our way back to Rome to meet up with Haley, and got in much later than expected because our train broke down and we had to change to another, then swtich again in Napoli...oh the joys of Italian transportation. : ) Then the next day was our last day in Rome all together, me, Haley, and Adriana, so we spent the whole day doing what we love best....eating! All we did was visit our favorite places to get our favorite foods and broke up the meals by walking so we didnt feel so bad about eating so much. We had coffee, cornetti, granita di caffè, pizza bianca, nutella crepes, and finished off the evening with a bottle of Nero d'Avola red wine and a buffet-style antipasti with couscous, various salads, salami, tomatoes, more pizza bianca, salmon, frittata, and I'm sure I'm forgetting something... That evening we went dancing close to Piazza Navona, and didnt go to bed until 4:30 am!
The next day Adriana left for New York, and I took the train to Perugia to visit my good friend, Maria. I just got in yesterday and of course we had to celebrate me being back by going out...dancing of course! It was so great to see friends I made here from two years ago, and also to meet new friends of Maria. I'll be here for about ten days i think and that after that I'll head south for the festival in Abruzzo. I'm having such a great time visiting my friends and just enjoying, eating, eating some more, walking in these beautiful cities... I'm going to try and post some photos now from the past few weeks...enjoy!
Ciao ciao......Maria
Being back with the fam was such a blast, a whirlwind of huge, delicious meals and trips to visit all the different aunts and cousins in the town, each visit complemented with the compulsory snack or sweets with coffee. We ate so much in this single weekend....I cannot stress enough the amount of food we managed to stuff down. We had pastasciutta (pasta with fresh tomato sauce and little cream), fiori di zucca (zucchini flowers stuffed with mozzarella and then fried), pasta with pesto, pasta with a sauce made of onions, tomatoes, carrots, and meat, peppers with mashed potatoes, frittata with fried zucchini and eggs, fried mozzarella with tomatoes...and so much more I'm unfortunately forgetting. And even after stuffing ourselves full of pasta, vegetables, meat, cheese, fruit, and dessert our host mother, Luisa, would lament about how us American girls ate so little, and how we were so skinny and needed some fattening up. Believe me, if we had stayed any longer I'm sure we would have fattened up quite nicely.
After visiting Rogliano, Adriana and I went for one day to Sangineto, another small and beautiful town on the beach. This one was in Calabria, however, and we stayed with a friend from Rogliano. The water was so clear, you could still see you feet after you couldnt reach the bottom with your feet anymore! The next day we made our way back to Rome to meet up with Haley, and got in much later than expected because our train broke down and we had to change to another, then swtich again in Napoli...oh the joys of Italian transportation. : ) Then the next day was our last day in Rome all together, me, Haley, and Adriana, so we spent the whole day doing what we love best....eating! All we did was visit our favorite places to get our favorite foods and broke up the meals by walking so we didnt feel so bad about eating so much. We had coffee, cornetti, granita di caffè, pizza bianca, nutella crepes, and finished off the evening with a bottle of Nero d'Avola red wine and a buffet-style antipasti with couscous, various salads, salami, tomatoes, more pizza bianca, salmon, frittata, and I'm sure I'm forgetting something... That evening we went dancing close to Piazza Navona, and didnt go to bed until 4:30 am!
The next day Adriana left for New York, and I took the train to Perugia to visit my good friend, Maria. I just got in yesterday and of course we had to celebrate me being back by going out...dancing of course! It was so great to see friends I made here from two years ago, and also to meet new friends of Maria. I'll be here for about ten days i think and that after that I'll head south for the festival in Abruzzo. I'm having such a great time visiting my friends and just enjoying, eating, eating some more, walking in these beautiful cities... I'm going to try and post some photos now from the past few weeks...enjoy!
Ciao ciao......Maria
Friday, July 4, 2008
This is the life...
So I'm on my fourth day here in Rome with my friends Adriana and Haley and I'm convinced I could live like this (now about that job...) Anyway, we spent the day yesterday walking all around the city, just wandering without any plan or itinerary. Haley made a really good comment yesterday that it's really nice to be in Rome with people who have already seen all the big sights, and to able to just walk and wander, without a scheduled itinerary or the need to run all around the city and wait in long lines to get into the Vatican or see the Sistine Chapel. Instead, we've just gone wherever we wanted to at the moment, visiting old favorite gelato or pizza spots, or happening upon some of the famous sights like the Trevi fountain and the Spanish steps. Yesterday we also visited Villa Borghese, one of my absolute favorite places in Rome. It's a kind of urban park with lots of trees and paths perched on top of a hill overlooking Piazza del Popolo. In the early evenings its usually overrun with young italians running around, flirting, and riding these ridiculous four-person bikes or mini-go carts around, sometimes crashing into each other or innocent bystanders. A lot of Italian families go for an evening stroll here as well, it's a very pleasant place for a walk.
After walking the whole day on hot cobblestones, our feet were tired and sore and upon stumbling across a little fountain decorated with stone turtles, we decided to dip our feet in. It was amazing. The water was the perfect temperature, very cool and refreshing on our poor tired feet! We stayed there for a long time, until we had to get back to the Rome Center to help Haley set up for a movie showing.
We had dinner in Trastevere, a very lively neighborhood across the river from Campo de Fiori where we are staying. The restaurant, La Taverna della Scala, is where I had my first real Italian tiramisu' two years ago. This time for dinner I had the risotto with asparagus and re-lived my tiramisu' experience from before...still the best I've had! Haley, Adriana, and I stayed chatting and drinking wine at our sidewalk table until we were literally kicked out around midnight. Then we took a walk from Trastevere to Campo de Fiori across the Ponte Sisto (Sisto Bridge) where we stayed for awhile watching a live band playing on the middle of the bridge. We then walked to Piazza Navona and then back to Campo de Fiori while trying to escape from these scary French men who were trying desperately to get us to have to a drink with them. In Campo we met a group of hilarious Italian boys fresh out of high school, who cracked us up with their crazy and immature shenanigans for the rest of the evening until we finally returned to Haley's apartment to go to bed at 4:30 am. Whew! Like I said, this is the life.... : ) pictures coming soon!
Ciao, Maria
UW Career Center Story
I was interviewed a couple weeks ago for a segment the UW Career Center has been doing on students and their educational experiences. The want to show how different students have taken various paths and gotten to where they are now and what experiences made the most impact on them during college. My story came out on June 1st on the Career Center Web site...complete with embarrassing (but true!) stories about my high school years. Read it here:
http://careers.washington.edu/myStory/Maria-Rodriguez
Thanks to my good friend Alyce at the Career Center for thinking about me and asking to interview me for this project...it was a lot of fun!
Ciao, Maria
Wednesday, July 2, 2008
I've arrived in Rome!
Ciao a tutti! After two very long and uncomfortable flights, here I am in Rome! I arrived yesterday and was shocked by the scorching heat...but I have to say it's a nice change from the recently dreary Seattle. I've been staying with my friends Haley and Adriana. Haley has been living in Rome for the past year as the UW Rome Center intern, and Adriana flew here from New York to meet us for two weeks. Last night we had dinner at this restaurant that serves typical roman food. I had bombolotti all'amatriciana.....delicious thick, short rolls of pasta with a spicy bacon, tomato, and parmesan sauce. With red house wine and fresh bread of course! We took a stroll around Piazza Navona and then got gelato (me: banana and watermelon) at Da Quinto nearby. Then today we had slices of pizza at this pizzeria called Pizza Art close to where Haley lives in the Campo de Fiori. I had a delicious combination of tomatoes, mayonnaise, and prosciutto between two hot pieces of pizza bianca. Then, gelato again! This time at one of my favorite places - a tiny window in Trastevere that has the best straciatella gelato I've ever tasted. I've missed real Italian food so much, being here feels so great. We are heading out to dinner soon.....I'm craving the spaghetti alla carbonara, spaghetti made with pancetta (ham), eggs, pecorino cheese, and pepper...yum! I'll try and post some pictures tomorrow of our romping around town. Ciao!
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