The final month countdown...

04/11/11, 04/12/11, 04/13/11, 04/14/11

     Monday morning, I was startled when I woke up to my phone vibrating under my head at about 5:45 a.m. Usually I don’t wake up to my phone vibrating in the middle of a night’s sleep, but looking back, it seems as though it was meant to be that I woke up. When I saw the screen, I saw it was a text from my mom saying, “CHELSEA CHELSEA, I have YOUR passport, do you have mine?” Immediately my heart started racing and I leaped out of bed and when running to where I keep my passport. As it turned out, our passports had been switched at the hotel when the manager took them when we checked in. Knowing I had to make it to the airport at lightening speed, as the flight took off around 8:15ish, I threw a pair of shoes on and went to hail down a cab. Of course, given the time of morning it was, there were no cabs to be found by my apartment so I literally had to sprint as fast as I could all the way down the main street until I hit the Tiber River. I finally found a cab and was incredibly winded. I told him I needed to get to Fiumicino Airport and I think he could sense my urgency and reassured me that we would be there in twenty minutes. Thank goodness he was right and I arrived at Terminal 3, international departures, by a little after 6:20. I walked really fast through the terminal until I found my mom waiting for me at the gate. As it turned out, she didn’t notice until she walked up to check in and the guy told her it wasn’t her! I can’t believe how lucky we are that I woke up and was able to get to the airport in time to still make the flight. Once again, we said our goodbyes and she was on her way back to the U.S. 

     Unfortunately, I didn’t have class until 1 pm that day and was unable to fall back asleep so I just laid in my bed watching some TV until it was time to head to class. Tuesday, for Layers of Rome, we focused on the Jesuits and Piazzas. We started by talking about Piazza Navona, which I found very fascinating as it is one of my favorite spots to hang out in Rome. Originally, this area served as a racetrack built by Domitian. Yet, in the Middle Ages, Rome shrunk because there was limited water supply, making this area uninhabitable. Several years later, water is brought back via aqueducts (currently Rome has 6-8 of them—surprising in my opinion that that few aqueducts are able to supply the water for a city with so many fountains). With the area able to be inhabited again, the Doria Pamphilj family moves in to a house on the piazza and show off their wealth. They built a chapel specifically for themselves that takes up a quarter of the Piazza Navona circuit in itself. In addition to decorating the house, Pope Innocent X (one of the family members) wanted to make sure his family was never forgotten and decorates the space in front of his house. When deciding who to give commission to design the fountain, he throws a competition. While Bernini was the best of the time, the previous Pope had used him and this Pope didn’t want to use the same one. However, Bernini is sneaky and gives Pope Innocent X’s sister a model of what he would build that she leaves lying around the house. Pope Innocent X sees this and employs Bernini without even knowing it! He designed the revolutionary Fountain of Four Rivers, which still stands as the central point of Piazza Navona today. Bernini gets commission for the rest of the fountains in the piazza as well, and designed one that I find funny. Our teacher showed us that if you stand at the right angle, you can see that Bernini purposefully designed it so that it looks as though the figure is peeing in the fountain. 

Old Picture, but the Fountain of Four Rivers in Piazza Navona is in the background

     When Wednesday came around, it was time for our second cooking class. This week’s focus was meats and fish, and we started the class out at a fresh market called Campo de Fiori. We shopped around and the chef Christina showed us what was in season and how she picks and chooses what to buy each week. We purchased some form of greenery to go alongside our fish plate, as well as a type of beans to go with our meat platter. Then, we went to a fish shop and picked up anchovies. I was a little disappointed because I was looking very forward to cooking fish and learning about it, but anchovies are the one fish I’ve had a bad experience with, but I decided to be open minded about it. Then for the meat, we got veal, another meat that I’ve had bad experiences with. Either way, I figured I could learn about the way she prepared the fish and meat and substitute it with a type I like so I was still very excited. 

     When we returned to the kitchen, we were starting with the fish. We were making an anchovy sandwich with mozzarella and sun dried tomatoes. We first had to pull the heads of the anchovies, cut it open, and pull the spine out. At first I didn’t think I would be able to do it, and then I thought, when else will I get the chance to do this so I tried it. While it wasn’t the most pleasant experience, I’m still very glad I at least did it. After doing this, we had to slice the bread and mozzarella, cook the fish in olive oil, and hydrate the sun dried tomatoes. None of this took very long and before I knew it, my sandwich was ready! I started eating it and to my surprise, I loved every bite of it! It was actually delicious and she even mentioned you can use many different types of fish. This is definitely a recipe I want to try again. After eating our sandwiches, we started in on the meat. For this, one partner was in charge of cooking the meat, while the other cooked the vegetables. I chose to do the vegetables because veal is very unappealing to me. I still watched what they were doing though so I would know how to replicate it in the future. Something all of our roommates have picked up since this is adding a little wine to the olive oil after the meat has cooked for a bit to give it more flavor. 

Gutting the anchovies... disgusting

Finalized Anchovy Sandwich

My cooking partner, Alex, and I with our sandwiches

Veal & Beans

     Wednesday night we went out to Coyote with all the guests from Vienna. It was really fun, except it was the first time we’ve had real problems with the security staff at our apartments. They wouldn’t let anyone through without IDs so our friends were all stuck outside until 5 am when security leaves. Thursday, our guy friends from Barcelona were in Rome for the day before heading to the Amalfi Coast for the weekend. They were coming back to Rome for a couple of days on Sunday night, but we took advantage of the full day we had. We met them after Italian class and skipped our Italian Culture & Society class to show them around. We showed them Piazza Navona, the Pantheon, and got gelato, but left the rest of the sight seeing for next week when they returned. After this, we stopped in a pub called Abbey Theater for a couple drinks before going to dinner. For dinner, we tried to go to Casetta di Trastevere, but it was too long a wait for them to still catch their bus on time. Instead, we grabbed kebabs and went back to our apartment. When we got back, I packed up my stuff for our entire class trip to Cilento the following day and then went to bed.  

Some of my roommates & I before Coyote