La Fine

Yes I am back in America.  No I have not completed this blog; December was a lovely month that I would love to share.
The last few weeks in Italy were wonderful.  With the start of December came an entirely new atmosphere in Florence.  There was a dramatic drop in the number of tourists clogging the streets, so everything was more relaxed.  Vendors finally started letting me speak to them in Italian, and a lot of people even engaged in conversation with me in Italian.  The streets were decorated with Christmas trees and overhanging lights, it was beautiful holiday spirit.

Mercato

I also got into a routine as my departure date approached.  Each trip to the market left me more and more nostalgic.  There was the sweet woman who always told me how to cook my fresh pasta and my pear and pecorino ravioli, the good-looking butcher who was always so happy, especially for a man who spends his days cutting up strange animal parts, the couple who sells the best clementines and pears, the many vendors with my beloved sheep's milk ricotta, and the old man who was the only one who would sell me a small (aka appropriate) amount of black cabbage. 

Duomo in December

If I wasn't at the market in the morning, I loved to go to church.  The Duomo has multiple masses weekday mornings in both the cathedral and the baptistery, so it was very easy to attend services.  I started to memorize some of the prayers in Italian and understood the mass parts, but sometimes the Homily was too hard to understand.  That's why I had a favorite priest.  He was a small very old man who always seemed to preach about love.  Because he spoke slowly and articulately with many hand gestures, I was able to get the gist of things.  Usually, I was one of the few young people at weekday services, so when Blair came with me one day, we stood out.  My favorite priest was giving the mass and he actually gave us a few shout outs.  When he started the mass, he acknowledged that there were two young girls at mass that day and asked if we knew Italian.  Later at the end of the Homily, he said something about the "ragazze (girls)" and gestured to us.  The personalization was nice and we felt more like a part of the religious community in Florence.  After mass, I was sure to visit Scudieri for a croissant or ricotta sfolia.

Montemignaio

On weekends, I stayed close to Florence, never leaving beautiful Tuscany.  I had a very unique opportunity to visit a small town in Arezzo called Montemignaio.  Mirko has a farm in this adorable mountain village, so he showed me around.  Being so high up, there was more snow than I thought was possible for Tuscany.  Different than Florence where you really shouldn't make eye contact with strangers, everyone in Montemignaio makes eye contact, waves from one car to another, and says hello.   It would be the perfect setting for an Under the Tuscan Sun type of movie.  The fields were snow covered so it was hard to get an idea for what the farm looks like, but I did get to see the chickens; unfortunately there was a rooster, so I had to overcome that fear... We were able to drive to the top of a mountain where we were too high to see the town below, we were above the clouds.  Apparently when you live in mountainous areas, it's normal to just drive to the summit on a regular day.

Mountain top

Back in Florence, we saw snow on our last day.  It was beautiful to see everything covered in snow, everything.  I thought it was strange that no one was bothering to plow the streets as it kept snowing and snowing.  How were people supposed to drive their Vespas home?  By the afternoon, it was chaotic.  People were so excited to see snow that a stranger threw snowballs at me and people were building a snowman in front of the Duomo.  By the evening, all trains were canceled and the highways were almost stopped.  No one knew how to handle the snow.  Friends of mine saw an old woman come out of her house and shake table salt onto her front steps.  People spent the night in their cars.  When we got to the airport at 5 a.m. on Saturday, it was closed because no one could get to work.  Even the main streets were barely plowed.  The airport stayed closed all day, our program director urging us to stay in the airport in hopes that the size of our group would encourage the airlines to organize a flight for us.  Since there was one, possibly two, people working for Luftansa that day, this plan failed.  So for twelve hours, I sat on the cold floor of a closed airport.  For a little while, we were contained in one room and not allowed use of the bathrooms as a form of crowd control.  We all had our parents search for flights from America since we had no phones at this point.  Thankfully there was internet, but there were no outlets for our dead computer batteries.  So I waited in line to use one of the two payphones and had Mirko pick me up at 5 p.m.  The airport was still closed.
I would wait until Monday for a flight out of Rome, but not all was lost!  I got to have one of the best meals of my time in Italy.  Sunday afternoon, we went to Mirko's grandmother's house for dinner.  We started with the best lasagna I have ever eaten (I wasn't a fan of other lasagnas I had eaten in Italy).  It had very thin pasta layers and was filled with meat, vegetables, and sauce.  I was full by the start of the next course.  She served me two and a half chicken breasts and artichokes mixed with other vegetables.  Then she took out leftover lamb and offered me some.  I was interested in trying it, so we added lamb and its accompanying vegetables to my plate.  Obviously, this was too much for me to eat, so I was very thankful when Mirko's mother stepped in to tell me I didn't have to finish it all. I am always worried about being rude by not finishing.  Once I made a small clearing on my plate, it was filled with salad.  At the end of the meal, the gelato and pandoro (an Italian Christmas cake) came onto the table with limoncello.  Thankfully, we finished with espresso so I did not fall into a food coma.
Monday morning, I made my goodbyes yet again and I took a train to Rome, a plane to Munich, and a plane to Boston.  It was way too many hours of traveling (about 22) and I pretty much broke down when I got home.  I'm doing surprisingly well readjusting to America.  I'll admit that I am a food and wine snob and I dream about olive oil and breakfast pastries, but I'm appreciating the comfort of home and being surrounded by loved ones.

Florence in the snow

Italy has so many foods, wines, churches, olive oils, museums, etc. that I did not have the chance to experience everything.  I would love to go back again soon, but in the meantime, I am just very grateful for the wonderful things I was able to do.  From harvesting olives to riding on the back of a Vespa, I had a truly incredible experience.  Grazie e Arrivederci.