Study Abroad
My Delicious Blog
Aug 2nd
Before embarking on my semester abroad in Rome, all I heard from family and friends was, “You are going to eat a ton of pizza!” They said, “Roman pizza is so delicious. You will never want to have the junk we call ‘pizza’ in the States ever again.”
Having been to Rome once before, I did not recall what the pizza was like, and I just assumed they were wrong. I love pizza. How could I ever turn my back on my favorite Friday night food done U.S. style?
Naturally, as soon as I got to my apartment in Trastevere, I immediately went to the local pizza shop and got my first slice. I was blown away. Not only was the pizza in rectangular slabs, but there were so many different varieties. Some pizza had fish while others were coated in mushrooms and oil. The choices were endless, and each pizza looked better than the next.
I stood at the counter frozen with indecision. A Pizza Boom employee asked me, in Italian, what I wanted. That made me even more uncomfortable. Finally, mustering up the minimal Italian I knew, I shyly asked for the margarita pizza. The employee took her scissor-like tool, cut me a rectangle of pizza and weighed it. (That same weighing method would come back to haunt me later when I would get slices loaded with heavy goodies.) Then the woman asked me, “Caldo?” I had no idea why she was asking me if I wanted cold pizza, so I just said, “Si,” and hoped for the best. Fortunately, she was just asking me if I wanted it to be warmed up. After getting the pizza from the oven, she wrapped it up in wax paper and handed it to me. Needless to say, this pizza was great! The flavor was bursting and every ingredient tasted like it was harvested earlier that day. From that moment on, I knew I was a Pizza Boom-er for life. It helped that the shop was directly next to my apartment.
Traveling around Italy, I had to try the pizza everywhere I went. Every region had its own take. While the pizza in Rome was delicious, it was the pizza in southern Italy, pizza nepoletana, that stole my heart. Sitting at a restaurant in Catania, Sicily, my roommates and I were introduced to a pizza very similar to the personal pan pizzas we knew from back home. Slightly bigger with a nice thin crust, my favorite was the capricciosa. Although it was slightly different each time I had it, it always had hard-boiled eggs, mozzarella, tomato, mushrooms, artichokes, cooked ham, olives and oil. It was amazing; my mouth still waters just thinking about it. I had pizza all over Italy, and I fell deeper and deeper in love with it each time.
Coming back to the United States, the first thing I wanted to have, after a huge bowl of my mom’s spaghetti, of course, was pizza. To be quite honest, despite the deliciousness of every slice I had in Italy, I was thrilled to be back to the pizza of my childhood. Now that time has passed and I have been home for almost three months, I have started to miss the pizza. Every Friday, as I contently eat my American pizza, I think about the pizza of Italy and anxiously await the next time I will be in a pizza shop being served a rectangular slice.
– Mary Carpenter, intern
An Experience to Remember
Jul 8th
This past spring semester, I had the amazing opportunity to study abroad. I was based in Rome but took advantage of weekends and breaks to travel around Europe. After all my trips and travels, Rome remains one of my favorite destinations.
Living in a place gives you a unique feel for the city, one that a week’s vacation could never provide. It’s the little things that the usual traveler will never be able to experience that create the most substantial memories.
I lived in Trastevere, a section of Rome across the Tiber from the main historical sites. There, I was able to experience the Roman lifestyle firsthand. I attended Santa Maria in Trastevere every Sunday for Mass and went to the same restaurant every week for their 10-euro student meal. These little treats made my time in Rome special and gave me a genuine experience abroad.
One of my fondest memories in Trastevere was going to the grocery store every few days. I bought the same things every time I went, and there were even times when I had no idea what I was purchasing. With poor Italian skills, my purchases were often random and occasionally wrong. Many times I just bought things because the picture on the box looked good or the name sounded exciting. Fortunately, I was never disappointed — even with my miserable skills in the kitchen.
One day in particular stands out to me. I was going through my usual shopping routine when I got to the check-out line. The store was a family-run business, and there was often a line at the register. I was waiting in line and I lost myself in thought and replaced my usual smile with a pensive expression. As I approached the cashier, an Italian man in his late 40s turned to me and said, “Smile!” He also broke into a big smile. It was this little act of reminding me to savor every moment that an average traveler may not get to experience. For this reason, that moment and this store will be a huge part of my Italian memories.
Another unique experience I had while in Rome was seeing all the sights without the crowds. It was amazing to walk right into the Colosseum and tour the Vatican as slowly as I wanted. I was able to see the beauty of Rome without being distracted by the tourists that flock the city come May.
Travel not only for the sights but for the experience of the culture. After my time abroad, I firmly believe no trip is complete until you wander into the little shops, eat the local cuisine and interact with the locals. Hotels are everywhere; it’s the culture that makes a place.
– Mary Carpenter, intern
Becoming a Global Traveler
Feb 28th
My globe-trotting daughter’s overseas travels will soon be coming to an end. She has finished up her month-long community health nursing studies in England and will be flying back to Chicago this coming Wednesday. She’s had a thoroughly marvelous time and says she will really miss lovely England and all of the other places she has visited. Clearly the travel bug has bit hard, and neither of us is unhappy about that at all. Fortunately, aided by plenty of planning and preparation and a slew of good advice from others who were familiar with the cities on her itinerary, she met with few bumps in the road or unexpected difficulties along the way.
Since this journey was first planned, the final leg, after the studies in chilly England were complete, was to be a long weekend in Greece, primarily in Santorini. Jenny and her friends decided that rather than spend time in another big city, they would only stop over for a night in Athens on either side of some island time. The idea of warm days (at least, comparatively warm) spent at a relaxed pace after all the rush and bustle of the rest of the trip has been a bright beacon for the last several months.
So it is with some trepidation and more than a little interest that I’ve been watching the news of financial crisis and strikes in Greece over the last several weeks. Jenny has had little desire or opportunity to closely follow the news while abroad, but I didn’t burden her with constant updates about what I was hearing concerning her final stop. I did give her a brief heads up a few weeks ago when the stories of the first batch of strikes cropped up. I purposely kept my remarks low-key; I saw no need to make her anxious and figured if something of the events in Greece filtered through to her, better that it come from me. I didn’t want to scare her or her friends off of their plans; the situation doesn’t seem dangerous to them, and the last thing the Greek economy needs is tourists and their money staying away.
This past Wednesday saw the largest demonstrations (mostly peaceful) yet in Athens, with civil servants protesting the government’s austerity plans aimed at fixing the debt crisis and proving to the European Union that it can get the economy under control. In addition, strikes grounded flights, stopped ferry service and affected public transportation in Athens. I let Jenny know all of this, since they were to fly to Athens, take the metro to Piraeus where they would then catch a ferry to Santorini. I told her that I doubted more strikes would follow so quickly on the heels of this one-day event. I was glad to hear that she was not overly concerned, even if her travel plans might be affected along the way. She seems to have acquired enough travel savvy and confidence that the recent events in Greece will not faze her or deter her from her plans.
From what I can tell from a few brief lines on Jenny’s Facebook page, so far everything has gone as planned. Santorini is “gorgeous” and time at the beach is on the schedule for today. I’m so thankful my little girl has had such a fantastic and horizon-expanding trip. Even if she should meet with a few unexpected surprises on her way home, she’ll be able to add them to her list of events that have helped her evolve into an experienced global traveler.
– Patty Vanikiotis, proofreader
Not Your Typical London Sights
Feb 13th
This month’s issue of Global Traveler has a wonderful article on London, with plenty of great suggestions on what to see and where to stay and dine. I shared the piece with daughter Jenny, as she and her fellow students would be spending a month in the area during their study abroad experience. Our family had actually stayed in London for several days a number of years ago when Jenny’s big sister was studying in England, so she had already had the opportunity to experience some of that delightful city’s offerings. We visited St. Paul’s, the British Museum and the National Gallery, shopped at Harrods and took in a play in the West End. There was not enough time to see everything we wished, so Jenny has been looking forward to getting back to London.
 In just the last two weeks on daytrips in to the city, she has toured the Tower of London (and has decided the jewels alone would make it worth being Queen of England), spent some time in the museums, visited Harrods (again!) and thoroughly enjoyed a production of Sister Act: The Musical at the Palladium Theatre. That is not all she’s taken in, though. No, as a nursing student, Jenny has also visited some lesser-known attractions in London that have been, at the very least, eye-opening.
First stop was the Hunterian Museum, located at the Royal College of Surgeons. John Hunter, an 18th-century surgeon, collected and preserved thousands of specimens of plants and animals (and assorted human body parts) in order to better understand anatomy and improve medical treatment and surgical techniques. His original collection was purchased by the government in 1799, given to the Royal College and grew exponentially over the decades. Even though a large portion of the collection was lost during the bombing of London during World War II, Jenny was amazed at the number and variety of items on display.
They then proceeded to the Old Operating Theatre, dating back to the 1820s and the oldest in all of Europe. It’s actually located in the attic space of a church which adjoined St. Thomas’s Hospital — convenient, I guess, whether the surgery was successful or not. Actually, a large skylight just above the operating table provided good light, and the gallery gave apothecaries and physicians-in-training the opportunity to observe and learn. This was, of course, in the days before anaesthesia was available (except for opium and alcohol, that is), so speed was important. Jenny’s group saw a demonstration of how an amputation might be done, including the knives and other instruments used. Her one-word assessment: “Gross!” Usually, these modern nurses-to-be would also visit the Florence Nightingale Museum, also located at St. Thomas’s, but it is closed right now for updating.
Just this past Wednesday the group took in a little more medical history when they visited St. Mary’s Hospital and the lab where Alexander Fleming discovered penicillin in 1928. Fleming had been working with staph bacteria before he’d left on a two-week holiday. On his return, he was clearing away Petri dishes that had become contaminated with mold and happened to notice that the bacteria in those dishes seemed to have been killed by the mold. Jenny found this quite instructive and deduced a few nuggets to live by: Taking a break from work can be good for you in unexpected ways, and perfection in housekeeping could be detrimental, also in unexpected ways. (I would say that when she was a teenager in our house, she had already embraced that last philosophy!)
It just goes to show that there are always fascinating places to see and new things to learn that are often off the beaten track from the usual tourist destinations in the cities we visit. Follow your own interests and inclinations, grab a map or Google a bit and create your own personalized tour.
– Patty Vanikiotis, proofreader
