To Italia!

Welcome to my blog!

This one is dedicated to my upcoming trip--I'm moving to Florence, Italy for the next three months to attend the Cordon Bleu Firenze (it may or may not have any relationship to the Cordon Bleu schools of other locales) and follow their professional program. This is a class designed for professionals who want to learn more of Italian cuisine, and is a twelve week program. The first eight weeks are in the classroom, with courses on all sorts of regional Italian cuisine as well as wine, cheese, and anything else digestible and delicious. What attracted me to the program, however, was the last four weeks, which are a kitchen internship, or stage (in kitchen-jargon). So even if the program is horrible and useless, I will still get the chance to work in a real kitchen and learn that way. And at the very least I will be living in Florence, which should be pretty amazing.

My plan is to rent an apartment with some Italians, and one major goal of the trip is to actually learn the language--I've been studying from a book for the past few weeks, trying to learn all about the grammar to prime myself so when I get there I can already be talking in multiple tenses and actually have some vocab under my belt. Of course, I'm still ridiculously nervous about this part, and for apartment hunting all these people want me to call them to set up an appointment. However it is so hard to talk on the phone, and that part is actually making me a little bit nervous. It doesn't help that these interactions will be through skype, which just makes everything a bit harder to hear. But I will have to do it eventually, and I'll let you know how it goes when I do!

As for getting ready, I seem to be doing an alright job. I'm almost packed, I have only a little more shopping to do for the last few items, and I have a cheap little hotel to stay in for the first few days while I apartment hunt. I leave Wednesday, flying on Swissair through Zurich. Should be about 13 or 14 hours travel, which isn't all too terrible.

On this blog I hope to post updates of what la dolce vita is like, recipes I've learned in school, at work, and around, and lots of pictures of my travels and life. I encourage you to share this with anyone and everyone who might be interested, and welcome all kinds of advice, from where to eat in any town all over the country (I will be doing weekend trips), to how to fend off the Italian men who explain that they indeed are "the last cassanova". I will have internet at home, so hopefully that means a post every two or three days, and it also means if you want to reach me you can always call me on skype (brightwinds).

PS. Right now the photo uploader isn't working, but hopefully I will be able to include more pics in future posts!