Wednesday May 11

Class at 8:30am is not easy. I guess it's nice to train my body to get ready for 7:45 morning exercises, which will be my daily schedule when I return home to camp, but still...my goodness. Thank goodness this week we only have classes tuesday, wednesday, and thursday. Field trip Friday. I feel like I'm back in elementary school, just with wine.

What makes waking up even harder is that the weather outside is real foggy and cold out in the morning because we're so high up on the hill. But you can't beat being able to walk out of your door and walk 90 seconds down the hill to your "classroom" overlooking the small towns below. It makes your morning a little better.

We had a five hour break yesterday between our morning lecture and our afternoon lab, so 6 of us went into town for lunch. We ended up at this little restaurant. It's kinda funny how you have to order and pay for water here, and when I saw an Italian lady next to me drinking a Diet Coke, I had to laugh. But on a massive amount of food note, Caroline and I don't get a pizza without splitting. These so called "personal pizzas" are the size of at least a medium american pizza. We don't even finish half a pizza a piece.

What fascinates me so much about Cortona really is the lifestyle and culture of the people here. So different from my 8 years trying to learn any French and just always feeling like I was butchering the language, they really love when we try to speak Italian. Every time Caroline and I go out we always talk about how to order in Italian and then come show time, huge fail. We resort back English. But I'm definitely getting better, and every time I do try, Italians are so helpful in pronunciation and how to say different words here and there. Around noon, everyone comes out and almost just socializes in the square. They are so free on time and what they are doing. Almost without a care about what's about to happen or where they need to be. When you go to a restaurant for a meal, we didn't realize this, but you almost have to ask for your check. You can have your wallet or money sitting out, and they really are in no rush to get you out. For some reason it sounds almost lazy, but it's not. But you also don't ever see anyone in real workout clothes or anything. Have yet to really see anyone "run" anywhere in Cortona. Except this one man we passed who was running down the alley. But the people of Cortona love their pets. There really are cats everywhere, and its so funny. The word for cat is "gatto" (need to check the spelling on that one), but it's fun to call every cat "gatto". And they love their little dogs. They really are everywhere. So my Italian lesson at dinner consisted of me wondering how I could say "I like your dog" so I don't seem like a dog snatcher when an unleashed dog walks up to you and I start playing with it. It's so true that everything almost shuts down after noon until four. And most places will stay open at night until they feel like it's time to go home or there's no one else around. After 12, they all go take naps and then reopen their stores around 4 or 5. You have to seriously plan accordingly.

Wednesday after lunch we came back to our room to get caught up on Facebook and blogging. It's hard to stay up to date. But Daniel came to visit us in our room. He somehow discovered that the door frame above our open french doors makes a great swinging and pull-up location. We decided we'd test that out later.

We had our first official wine tasting lab at four at the school. The theme of the day was white wine grapes. So we all did the look, smell, taste test for a Riesling, a Sauvignon Blanc, a Pinot Grigio, and a Chardonnay. I'll make a separate blog for the wines I test, but in all honesty, it's not easy. Trying to describe different aromas all of white wines was so crazy. Definitely also a work in progress.

We had our second Italian lesson before dinner. Caroline and I went before hand and had our wine date. We've started going before dinner and enjoying a glass or bottle of wine. We ordered our first rose wine. Not our favorite, especially after I thoroughly enjoyed the Chardonnay we had at our tasting.

Daniel was late for Italian with us. He apologized in Italian and I understood. We worked on directions and how to order certain things and random other Italian phrases. Dinner was vegetable soup instead of pasta for a starter - thank goodness. And then dinner was cheese pizza (good Italian cheese pizza) and chick peas, and salad. Then dessert...this amazing cake with strawberries sprinkled with chocolate. But we've picked up on things being really salty. The beans we had to dinner with chicken seriously tasted just like boiled peanuts. So good.

We spent some time at the restaurant after dinner to finish our wine, and then headed out to Lion's Well, the pub we were at the night before. I love the fact that the name is in true blue English. The owner/main bartender John Lucca is teaching me Italian too. I asked if he would hire me to be a bartender and he told me I started Thursday night at 9, and then went into a full on training lesson on everything behind the bar. Unfortunately I think I'm gonna have to miss my first night's work due to performance we're going to. I hope he doesn't fire me...