New Journey, new blog

I just wanted to let anyone who still visits this page know that I have created a new blog for my trip to China.  You can find it here.  Enjoy!

You win some, you lose some

There were a couple of days this week that both of my parents were out of town on work related trips and I was left home alone with our animals.  Usually for me, being home alone means trying some crazy things in the kitchen.  Sometimes they work out great. More often than not, they don't and I end up with a huge mess to clean up and a lot of wasted food.

 

 

This week's experiment was The Pioneer Woman's alfredo sauce recipe.  Only instead of white wine I was using an IPA.  I've never heard of anyone using beer in alfredo sauce but I figured I would give it a shot anyway and it was working really well.  I don't know if I was too busy planning the blog post I was going to write about how excellent my creation was or what, but I totally forgot that I should be cooking the noodles at the same time ( I have an issue with multitasking in the kitchen).  That's when everything went to hell.

 

 

By the time the water was boiling, the sauce was almost done and it looked, smelled, tasted good.  But by the time the noodles were almost done, the sauce was over cooked.  I'd never seen anything like this happen before.  The milk started curdling and everything was separating.  It looked really gross.  So I dealt with that and by the time I got back to my noodles, they were over cooked to the point of mush.  All I had to show from my adventures in the kitchen were some sautéed mushrooms and asparagus that I was going to use instead of chicken.

 

They were pretty tasty

 

 

I still firmly believe that there is still hope for IPA alfredo and I will be trying it again at some point, maybe with a few changes to the recipe. 

Been a long time

Long time, no see! So a lot has happened since September so let's catch up.

• I did get a job at GAP and started working there in early October
• I finished my last semester of my undergraduate degree, making the Dean's list again
• I graduated
• I left both my job at GAP and at ISA
• I moved back to Louisville and am living with my parents again (you know, saving money and stuff)
• I tried to get a part time job, mainly to keep myself entertained but also to make a little money
• I did not get hired for any of the 30 or so jobs I applied for (even the volunteer position I asked about didn't want me)
• I have been preparing to move to China in June with doctors appointments and Visa applications and trying to learn at least a little bit of Chinese  
• I had my 22nd birthday
• And I have been knitting, cross stitching, spinning, working out, reading and watching a lot of television and movies.



 

My last semester felt insanely busy to me, with a full class schedule, working two jobs and trying to have some sort of social life. Over the past couple of months I've gone from crazy college life to having very few obligations. I've tried to keep myself busy but I have gotten a little bored and boredom is honestly a huge reason why I am getting back to blogging.  Maybe writing about my life will force me to get out and find more excitement in the world around me.

 

I think we all know that I'm not the most consistent blogger, so I'm not going to make any promises on when or how often I'm going to post.  We'll see what happens.

 

 

 

Baby come Back

Have you guys been singing this song, waiting for me to post again??? Well if anyone is out there still holding out hope for my blog posts I guess it's about time to share what's been going on since I last posted. 

• I got back from Italy
• I started my last semester of college
• I started working again at ISA Kentucky office
• I've applied for numerous other jobs
• I had an interview at the Gap

My semester is going extremely well.  I am pretty happy with all my classes, with the exception of my yoga class that I did end up dropping.  I am taking 5 classes, human sexuality, American literature, Spanish short story, a class on Dante's Inferno and beginning guitar.

And now for the big news! I have officially been invited to join a Peace Corps program and I have officially accepted my position.  I will be teaching English (anything from beginning English as a Foreign Language to literature to creative writing) to university level students in China!!!! I don't know exactly where I will be in China but I do know that I will be there from the end of June, 2014 until the middle of August, 2016.  China is one of the last places I expected to be sent but the more it sinks in, the more excited I get.  I can't wait to start learning about the culture and the history.  I've been looking up everything from Chinese tea to popular Chinese music.  I know it's going to be a little more difficult to adjust to the Chinese culture than it was to adjust to the Spanish or Italian culture but I am so excited from this chance!

Home Sweet Homestay

My room

Now that the 2 week homestay is over and I’ve moved on to my apartment I think it’s about time I show you some pictures of where I’ve been living.  For the first two weeks of my time in Italy I stayed with a great lady named Daniela in her beautiful home with on American roommate, Brittany.  Brittany and I were extremely lucky and got our own rooms.  Both of our rooms were brightly colored and filled with art work done by Daniela’s father in law.

Our favorite parts of Daniela’s house were all her balconies (she has 3!!!).  And they were all packed with flowers and fruit plants.  She is particularly proud of her lemons.  She even makes limoncello out of them.  These balconies were our favorite place to do homework.

Daniela was such a great cook too.  I forgot to take pictures of her cooking because I was always so excited just to eat what she made.  One of my favorite meals she made was Piadina, a flat bread that is traditional to the region of Italy where she was born, with sausage.   On the last night we were with Daniela, she threw a big potluck party for everyone in our program.

It was bittersweet moving out of Daniela’s house and into our apartment but Daniela is the owner of our apartment and she has been inviting us over for dinner once a week so we will still be seeing her every once in a while.

Brittany and me

Withdrawl

A few weeks ago now I moved from my home stay to an apartment and one of the few accommodations that was no longer available to me was Internet access so my only means of getting online was a few minutes between classes.  Until tonight, when I found an open network available! I have a lot of catching up to do and I definitely plan on doing that, but tonight I have an assignment that needs to get done. Hopefully this network will still be here tomorrow!

Italian Food: So much more than pasta and pizza

I use to think that I would never meet a better cook than my Spanish host mom, Carmen. And then I met Daniela.  One of the first things Daniela asked me was "what are you willing to eat?" That is a pretty intimidating question.  I really don't I would want to eat any sort of traditional Italian horse testicle soup (if there is such a thing) but I told her that I would eat anything she wants to cook for me.  I can't even tell you how happy that made her.  Apparently the girls that lived with her last year only ate pizza and pasta and according to her that is not "really Italian cooking".   My favorite meal that she has cooked for us has been Piadina.  It's a flat bread that is typical of the region where Daniela was born (Emilia-Romagna) and it can be served with just about anything.  I wish I had a picture of it but it was so good we ate it all before even thinking about picking up a camera. 

This past Tuesday, we got to take a cooking class with an Italian chef.  The chef who taught the class is currently a 3 star chef and throughout his career he's cooked for people like Madonna and the Pope.  For this class we learned how to make three different types of pasta (gnocchi, ravioli and tagliatelle).  It was a lot easier to make pasta than I expected it to be and the ingredients are really simple.

Our cooking stations

Don't worry, I wore an apron

In the process

Finished pastas

 

Venezia, La citta su acqua

This past weekend I went to Venice with a group of 8 fellow students from my program.  We left Arezzo on a train around noon Saturday, got to Venice around 3:30pm and left at 6:30 the next day to get back to Arezzo for school the next day.

 

photo from a friends Facebook page 

 

Venice is on of the few cities I've been to where it's beautiful as soon as you step out of the train station.

 

 

Our first mission, after we got off the train was to find some lunch, which was a lot hard than it sounds because many places were closed for the afternoon but we ended up finding a nice place to have some pizza. We didn't try this "American" pizza with eggs and bacon but the pepperoni pizza I had was very good.

 

 

After lunch we made our way to Piazza San Marco. It was a pretty long walk but there was so much to see along the way, it wasn't too bad.

 

Rialto Bridge

Carnivale masks in progress

 

Piazza San Marco is a huge plaza with many important things all clumped together. There is the San Marco Basilica.  Unfortunately we never got to go in due to our timing.

 

 

One of my favorite sites of the trip was the Piazza San Marco clock tower.  It has balls that move to show the phases of the moon and it is rung by mechanical statues.

 

 

While at Piazza San Marco, we took an elevator to the top of another tower to get some great views of the city.

 

 

Right around the corner was the Bridge of Sighs which use to be used to transport prisoners from the prison to the execution spot.

 

After that we walked back to the train station to catch a shuttle bus to our hostel. The next day we took a water taxi to the island of Murano.  They have been blowing glass on this island for over 700 years.  I did buy some of the glass but most of what I bought was gifts so I won't show you much.  I'll will show you this bracelet I bought though.

 

The owner of the store I went to made everything himself. We walked through this island for most of the day.  It was much more relaxing than Venice because not many tourist were there.

Friends Facebook photo

 

 

After we got done at Murano we tried to go back to San Marco to go inside but there was a really long line of people waiting to get in and no one really wanted to wait so we walked back to the train station and had lunch on the Grand Canal.

 

 

It was a great trip.  Our next trip is with the school.  We are heading to Florence this Saturday.

 

 

 

 

 



Italy: Week 1

Sunday June 2nd:  I got to Arezzo!!!! Then immediately went on a tour of the city with the group and then we all went out to dinner.  We had some really great pizza. I didn't take many pictures because I was so tired from traveling that I totally forgot to take my camera out. I'll remember to take some later.  After dinner, we went home and I finally meet my host mom!  I am staying in a really nice apartment with a woman named Daniella.  Her husband is a sailor and he's in Greece right now and her children are all married and living on their own so it's just us and my roommate, Brittany.  I told her that any weekend she wanted to go visit her husband, I would be happy to go with her.

Monday June 3rd:  Classes started.  My class load is pretty light.  I am taking an Italian culture class that everyone in my program is taking and I am taking an Italian independent study class.  For that I have to keep a blog for the trip.  I can write about anything I want, it just has to be in Italian and I will be given a word limit I have to reach.  If anyone wants to see that you can find it here.

Wednesday June 5th:  We went to a wine tasting.  The vineyard we went to is called La Striscia and we got a tour of the vineyard and tried three different types of wine.  We learned all about the wine making process and how to the alcohol content or type of grape by looking at the color and if it leaves legs on the glass.  I also learned that wine companies sometimes like to make dry wines because it dries out the back of your throat and you want to drink more.  My favorite was the Chianti so I bought a bottle.  I'm hoping to get this bottle back the the States but I might need to drink it before then.

Saturday June 8th:  8 out of the eleven of us decided to go to Venice for the weekend! It was a beautiful city but it deserves it's own post so I'll talk about that later.  I will say we all had a really good time and it was great getting to know the group a little bit better.

Delayed

Right now I am suppose to be on a flight to Rome on my way to study abroad in a nice little Tuscan town called Arezzo.  Where am I? Sitting in the Cleveland Airport Sheraton.  I was suppose to be flying from Cleveland to Montreal and from Montreal to Rome.  I don't know what's going on in Montreal but apparently they did not want my flight from Cleveland to land there.  So after two hours of standing in the customer service line I learned there was absolutely no way I could get to Rome by the time I was suppose to be there.  Instead I am now going to arrive in Rome a day later than planned. 

 

I'm kind of bummed that I'm going to be missing the welcome dinner tomorrow night and probably the tour of the city on Sunday afternoon, but I can think of worse situations to be in right now.  Standing behind me in the customer service line was a group going to Sierra Leone on a mission trip.  Turns out they were originally planning on leaving Monday and then decided to leave today so they could get started earlier. Now they aren't going to arrive in Sierra Leone until....you guessed it, Monday.

 

Because I am arriving late, I am going to miss the nice chartered bus the program got for us from the Rome airport to Arezzo, so now I am responsible for my own transportation from Rome to Arezzo.  I figure if this is going to happen to anyone, it might as well be me.  I am comfortable enough with my experience traveling and my Italian language skills that I am positive that I can get myself to Arezzo. I just wish I didn't have to 

 

Maybe you can imagine that I'm not in the best of moods right now, so I'm going to write a list of things to be happy about:

 

1. I am going to Italy.  I might be getting there late, but I'm still going to get there.

 

2.  I am going to get there before my classes start,  I don't have to worry about having to catch up with everyone else.

 

3.  I am only missing a dinner and a city tour.  There will be many other dinners and plenty of time to learn about Arezzo.  It's not like I'm missing a tour of Rome or the day trip to Florence.  I am not missing anything that I would be truly upset about missing.

 

4.  This is a great way to jump right into using my Italian.  If I was traveling to Arezzo with the program I would not have to speak Italian until I was left alone with my host family.

 

5.  This is a pretty sweet hotel they've hooked me up with.

 

6.  I had a sandwich and glass of wine for dinner that would have cost me $20 and I didn't have to pay a cent.

 

7. I have my suitcase with me, so I don't have to wear the same thing for 3 straight days.

 

8. My flight out of Cleveland tomorrow isn't until noon so I don't have to wake up early.

 

9. I have a 3 hour layover until my flight to Rome so, unless my flight out of Cleveland is delayed, I won't have to rush.

 

I'm sure there are many more things I could be happy about, but these nine things are already making me feel a lot better and I'm too tired to think of any more. I'm going to go decide which big, fluffy bed to sleep in tonight.

Roll out those lazy, hazy, crazy days of summer

Emphasis on the crazy.  

 

This morning I had my last final exam of the semester at 8am.  I was done by 8:30.  And so began my summer!!!!   I have some pretty crazy plans for this summer, mainly, going to Italy.  I'm leaving on May 31st (that's this month!!!) and I will be gone until July 16th.  In the mean time, I've been making plans for what else I want to do, particularly what I want to read and what I want to knit.

I want to finish all of these books plus On the Road, Old Man and the Sea, La Sombra del Viento and maybe an Italian novel.  Nine Hills to Nambonkaha, Festival for Three Thousand Maidens,
The Village of Waiting and Mango Elephants in the Sun are all memoirs written by return Peace Corps volunteers and To Touch the World is a collection of essays about the Peace Corps experience.  I have a list of about 10 more books about the Peace Corps that I want to read at some point but I think I should read the book I have first. It might be a little unrealistic for me to get through all of these books this summer.  It's a good thing I don't usually get too disappointed in myself for not meeting my goals.

I was going to make a list of all the things I want to knit this summer but that would probably end up being even more ridiculously long and impossible than my reading list.  I do know that I want to knit The Old Man and the Sea cardigan by Mel of Single Handed Knits and I would like to knit through as much of the yarn that I already have as possible.

It also sounds like the ISA office on campus will be open for the summer so I will hopefully be working there a bit before and after I go to Italy.

This summer is just going to be full of fun things for me!

Peace Corps Update

So I think I mentioned awhile ago that I applied for the Peace Corps and then I kind of just stopped talking about it.  I'm kind of afraid that if I talk too much about what's going on with the Peace Corps and really let on how excited I am about this possibility that I'm going to jinks myself or something like that and I'm not going to get in.  But I thought I should just give a little update about where I am in the Peace Corps application process. 

Over my spring break, I had an interview and shortly after that I received a nomination for the education program.  A nomination isn't a guarantee that I'll get in, but it's a pretty good sign.  So what's going on now is that the medical people with the Peace Corps are looking over my health history form to see if they need anymore information from me and I've sent in a couple of copies of my fingerprints for a background check.  Seeing as my health history is a couple of broken bones and a pair of dental implants, I'm not really expecting that they'll need much more information from me.  The background checks can take between two and six weeks to finish and then after that and my health history have been cleared, all my information will go to the head administrative team and they will look through it, maybe contact me and ask me a few questions and then they will make the final decision. 

I'm not expecting to hear from the Peace Corps for at least another month or two, but I'll keep you posted!

Featherweight: The Remake

In the past couple of months my Featherweight cardigan has gone from this

 

to this

 

 

and ended up like this.

 

 

I should say that I am ten to fifteen lbs lighter that I was the first time I finished this sweater so it did look a little different on me when I took it apart, than it did in that first oh so lovely picture.  It was pretty large, especially around the arms but then the bind off on the bottom and the neck band where too tight so it kind of clung to me in those areas.  I also knit this for the first time when I was at a point in my knitting where I felt the need to knit everything exactly as the pattern says.  So I knit the body of the sweater for exactly as long as the pattern said, when I would have felt more comfortable with a longer sweater. Basically, I felt uncomfortable in this sweater so I never wore it.

 

Anyway, I reknit the sweater and made it exactly how I want it and it looks awesome and I love it.

 

Next up is....finals week and papers due. I don't have time for knitting.   

KWLA Festival

Friday, during my Spanish American Civilizations class, the professor passed around a piece of paper to get volunteers for the KWLA Festival (I'm pretty sure that stands for Kentucky World Language Association and it's basically a festival for any student (high school or lower) of any language to come and practice and show off what they know).  The Festival was today, from 8am to 2pm so I really was not all that interested in volunteering, but when the paper got me ( I was the last person to get it) there wasn't a single name on the list and I felt bad that no one else wanted to volunteer so I went ahead and put my name down.  So today, I got to lead 4 rounds of Spanish Jeopardy, 2 beginning level rounds and 2 intermidiate rounds.  It was a pretty fun day but I'm pretty sure I don't want to be a high school Spanish teacher.  I don't think I have the patience to work with some of these students.

 

Although it was an early day, this gig did come with some pretty sweet perks.  I got free lunch and $20 worth of gift cards! I think my professor is also giving me some extra credit for helping out.

Keep on the Sunny Side

Cloudy Side:  It's really cold! Definitely not Spring weather.

 

Sunny Side:  I can still wear my hand knit sweaters!

 

 

Tuesday I wore my just finished Hoaloha

 

 

I got more compliments on this sweater than I think I've ever gotten on a sweater.

 

Then yesterday I got to wear my Aidez. 

 

 

I'm glad I got to wear my sweaters again but to tell you the truth I wouldn't mind if it was too warm to wear them again.



Some times your natural hair color is your best hair color

Before anyone freaks out, this isn't some horror story about how I tried to dye my hair and it turned out bright orange or pitch black or anything terrifying like that. 

 

 

 

On my 21st birthday, I decide I was going to do something crazy, partly because I was all excited to be 21 and wanted to do something exciting and partly because I was really early for my tutoring session. So I stopped by the Walgreens and took a look at the hair dye.  I didn't want to go too dark because I have really light sick and I didn't want to look like a witch.  I didn't want to go too light because I have really dark eyebrows and I didn't want it to be totally obvious I dyed my hair.  So I picked up a box labeled medium brown. 

 

 

I was so excited to go home and dye my hair,  I even took before and after pictures.   

 

 

 

 

Can you tell which one is which?  Because I can't.  That's right, I dyed my hair pretty much the exact same color as my natural hair color.  Morals of the story:  1) My idea of "crazy"  is really not that crazy and 2) Sometimes it's best to just not mess with your natural hair color.

Sweaters

This past week was Spring Break for me.  I was packing to go home for the week and I came across two sweaters, one that I knit about 2 years ago and one that I knit this past summer.  I've never really like the way these sweaters looked or fit on me. 

 

 

 

 

 

 Since I've knit them I've just kept them around, tried them on every once in a while and hoped that one day I'll put them on and love them.  But that has never happened.  So I did something crazy.  I ripped them out.

 

 

 

I decided that it was better for me to rip out the sweaters and re-knit them into sweaters I will actually wear.  I'm starting with the purple sweater and I'm actually knitting the same pattern...sort of.  I am going to change a few things to add just a little more shape to it.  I also managed to get another skein of the yarn at a pretty good price so I can make it longer.

 

 

I've also just recently finished another sweater.

 

 

This is my Hoaloha sweater.  It was a mystery knit along run by Mel of the Single Handed Knits podcast.  Mystery knit along means that I really had no idea what this sweater looked like when I started it.   I was a little nervous about it at first but I figured that if I didn't like it, I could always rip back and knit a different sweater.  But I did end up really liking this sweater. I do need to add buttons to it and then I'll post some pictures of what it looks like on me !



Oil Pulling aka The Grossest Thing I've Ever Done, Ever

I thought about writing a post about how I have so much to do this week and how I wish it was spring break so I could go to Louisville and see my cat and do nothing but knit all day long.  Luckily, I thought about it and realized that nobody really cares about that.  I barely even care.  So I'm just going to talk about my oil pulling experience instead.

 

 

Before anyone gets too excited, let me just say that this had absolutely no effect on me what so ever.  I look the same, I feel the same and I weigh the same.  I did only do this for a week, but according to what I read about it, a week should be enough to see differences.  So let it just be known that there is no benefit to sitting around for twenty minutes with a mouth full of olive oil.

 

 

Now, I am dedicating the rest of this post to talking about how disgusting oil pulling is.  In fact, if there weren't certain family member who I know read this blog, I would use some pretty nasty words to describe it.  It's not the taste I had a problem with.  I really like the taste of olive oil.  On pasta, bread, salad...that's good.  But sitting around with a tablespoon of it in your mouth takes it from "That's a flavor I really enjoy" to "Oh my God, my mouth is so greasy and slimy. I don't even care what it tastes like, it's nasty." I totally understand why it is suggested to do this first thing in the morning on an empty stomach.  If you have any sort of gag reflex and you decide to try oil pulling right after a meal...good luck to you.

 

 

So a) no effect and b) so gross it's beyond gross...I think it's safe to say that I am never going to try oil pulling again.  I also would not recommend anyone try it, but hey, I'm just one person.  What does nothing for me might work wonders on someone else.  The only way to know if something works for you is to give it a try.

The Year of Try: Oil Pulling

Oil pulling is an old Ayurveda healing treatment that is basically sitting around for 20 minutes with a spoonful of oil in your mouth.  I have heard some pretty crazy claims about the benefits of oil pulling like it can cause a  5 lb weight loss in one week and it apparently cures everything from tooth pain to malignant tumors.  I don't have any malignant tumors to try it out on so the validity of that claim will have to stay a mystery, but from everything I've read about oil pulling, if I do this once a day for one week, I should be feeling and looking better than I do right now.  So, let's find out if it's true!

Yay! It's done!!

The 8hr diet officially ended yesterday.  Official weigh in :151 lbs for a totally weight loss (for the six weeks I've been doing this stupid thing) of 2.5 lbs. I'm not even going to waste the time taking my other measurements because losing 2.5 lbs (without really exercising) is not enough to make significant difference in my measurements. How underwhelming is that?  But at the same time hahaha I was right.  I love it when I'm right. 

 

 

My opinion on weight loss (which is based on no actually research and only on my personal experience) is that what you eat is the most important factor.  Exercise is important too but if you're eating junk all day your workout is not going to have that big of an effect.  Having this diet plan tell me that what I eat isn't as important as when I eat made me feel like it was ok to eat much more junk than I normally would have.  I ordered take out more than I usually do, I bought low quality, overly processed food,  I bought ice cream for the first time since I moved into my apartment 6 months ago.  If someone losses a significant amount of weight on this diet I can almost guarantee that it is because of what they are eating instead of the fact that they are only eating during an 8 hour period.

 

 

Now that this is over, I'm looking for some new crazy things to try.   I think next up will be oil pulling.  But I will need some new ideas soon enough.  So, if you have anything you would like to see me try, let me know.  It can be a new food, recipe, activity, weight loss program...anything.  As long as it is safe and can fit into my budget, I'll be willing to give it a go.