Free Weekend Sept 18, 19, 20

(sorry for the delay)

The weekend after Rome was our first free weekend. One student went to Paris and another to Ireland, the rest of us stayed in Montapulciano to sit back and enjoy the town in which we now called home. It was great to actually have a morning to ‘sleep in.’ Since we left Atlanta on August 27th, we had not had a morning where we had to go to school, catch a bus or head to a museum or other tourist attraction. I am not complaining about running around everywhere because I want to get the most out of each of our weekend trips and believe it or not, getting up early for class means the rest of the day is still open and free!!!

Friday night we had ‘Fiesta Night.’ One of the girls apartments suggested a Fiesta night earlier in the week for whoever was going to staying in town for the weekend. I am enjoying all the Italian food and trying new things, but I sure do miss my chips and salsa! Thursday my apartment decided we were going to make some homemade salsa and contribute to the dinner… then we thought what about guacamole… Well sure enough we managed to find the only two avocados at the grocery store… a little more oddly shaped than the ones back home but they tasted just as good. We completed our two dips with some homemade baked tortillas and Sangria! The local winery in town lets you refill your water bottles or rather any container… we paid 10 euro for 7 liters of wine and added some nice fruit to the batch! All the other groups of students brought there own specialties or the best they could do at turning Italian food supplies into Mexican!

After the fiesta we headed down to the Garden bar… a place where many locals around our age hang out… some of the boys who had been in the Barrel parade where there and we tried our best to use the Italian we have been learning in class while they did there best at speaking English to us. While we are trying to learn their language and do the best we can and learn the language, the locals want us to speak to them in English so that they can learn ours.

Saturday we enjoyed our free time! Spent some time walking around town as locals and enjoyed watching the tourists in town for the weekend. It is funny how fast a place feels like home. We have gone from the first week of snapping a picture at every corner we come to, to taking in the scenery and give directions to tourists! That night we went to another groups apartment where we had some good old American hamburgers, complete with picante (spicy) ketchup from the Italian grocery store, and homemade French fries. The restaurant that we eat at Sunday through Thursday had been trying to give us a meal here and there to remind us of home--- hamburger patties with no buns, hotdogs- which we all agreed we could wait to have until we return home, and pizza with French fries on top of it! Our hamburgers were delicious and after that weekend my taste buds had been satisfied and it has been Italian food ever since!!!