Day 72: Confined to the Chigi

Wednesday - July 28, 2010:

Today was random, almost surreal. It was just plain odd, but in a good way! Here, let me explain:

We woke up and had class as usual -- no changes there. After we were dismissed from class, it was lunch time. But I wasn't ready for lunch and neither was anyone else, so we got our creative juices flowing and began working on our 12 page paper that is due next Monday. The Palace doesn't offer the best study environments... really we are confined to either our room or the common room -- both of which echo noise pretty well. So each of us takes to our little cubicles in our room, put in our ear buds for music and get to typing.

Well, time passes... and it passes... and pages are written... and before we know it, it's lunch time. So I break for lunch, see a few people in the kitchen, and then come back to my room to work. Everyone is just so zoned out and into their paper that no one is talking, so it's like a cave in here. And the weather outside was beautiful, but for some reason we felt like it was a really gloomy day... even though it wasn't.... it was just odd!

3:30 rolls around and that is the time we are supposed to have our afternoon classes, but right at that time we all get an e-mail from Cinzia saying that there is terrible traffic on the road and Maurizio and Rossella won't be able to make it in time for their lectures. Shuckss..... (psych!!) so this leaves us with two more hours of free time. How do we spend it? The same as before! In our cubicles, with our noses in our computers and our ear buds in our ears. It was like this all afternoon. I don't know what got us in the work-mode, but we all were so into it! And it paid off too, I got 5 of my 12 written... I know what you're thinking, "Only 5?! You worked for like 4 hours on this..." Well, yes that is true. But, I may or may not have gotten distracted on the Internet a few times....

{And this is pretty much where I was the entire afternoon -- this is my set up, my cubicle, 8x8 foot area that was making me stir-crazy!}

At 5:30 Rossella and Maurizio show up to the Palace and we find out it is because they are having to say good bye to us -- so sad!! Their family is leaving tomorrow for a vacation and so we won't be able to see them before we leave, except for now. So we say our good byes, do our best to convince them to come to Auburn for a football game (I think it might have worked) and then they leave for their house and we leave for our nightly activity -- a pizza making lesson!

There is a restaurant just across the bridge in Ariccia and we call it "Cheap Pizza". Want to take a stab at why? Because it's pizza and it's cheap -- tough to decode, right?! Seriously, we can order an entire meal of pizza, suppli and wine and it will be less than 5 Euros! I'm going to miss it so much. Luckily, we have been very good patrons this summer and they are rewarding us with a lesson on making a pizza. So we get there and go in 3 groups to see this cuisine creation.

For this lesson I thought we were going to be wearing aprons, tossing our pizza pies in the air and singing "Itsssss amoreeee!!" I guess I got a little carried away with my imagination... because all John Lucas (that's the one-man-pizza-making-machine) showed us was how he made the dough (they call it pasta) and how he made the dough into little dough-balls that would rise for 3 hours... it wasn't quite the lesson I thought it was going to be. I guess he didn't want us in his work-zone when we was trying to make our dinner! Nonetheless, it was still really sweet of him to let us into his kitchen and see him work.

Dinner was at 7:30 so some girls went back to the Palace and the rest of us stayed at the restaurant talking. Everyone showed back up on time and the sweet waitress came by taking our dinner orders. We all got a suppli (it's this heavenly creation that's a mixture of rice, tomato sauce and mozzarella cheese friend into a ball) and then we all got our pizzas. John Lucas is a master at pizza-making -- I think I heard Peek say she would pay for him to come back to Auburn with her and make her pizzas every night because he is THAT good.

{John Lucas going to town with the pizza dough}

{Just a sidenote -- we asked him where he learned and he said he taught himself. Pizza making is his passion, so he gave us the sage advice of this: "In life, you just have to find your passion and don't give up on it" -- so there is some daily inspiration for you! Find your passion :) }

{Pizza dough balls that would soon be a delicious pizza pie on our plates!}

{Becca, me and Katherine at Cheap Pizza with the whole group}

{Stacy, Anna Curl and Katie enjoying their dinner at Cheap Pizza}

{Table picture}

{I broke out of my norm and decided to order something different -- Amatricana Pizza with mozzarella, tomoato, parmesan and proscuitto -- delicious!!}

We had a very Italian-style dinner at Cheap Pizza -- meaning, we were at the table for practically 3 and a half hours! It was so much fun, we just talked and reminisced and enjoyed our night in Ariccia :)

Delicious pizza? Check! Good friends? Check! Carpe Diem? Check!

Ciao for now :)