Ferrara

And so we’ve reached Ferrara. Everything is different here. The weather is colder, as are the people, but there is a lot more English spoken. We are in the city, walking distance from the centre, in a brand new apartment building specifically for students. I live on the 4th floor of tower 1, looking out over the main enterance to the building. On the ground floor there is a mall, much like the ones you’d find in the US, with a large grocery store, several clothing and shoe stores, and many little cafes and places to eat. My favorite place is the tea bar, where any tea you order comes in a full tea set: a clear glass pot with loose-leaf tea, clear glass cup and saucer, tiny silver spoon, red clay plate with flaky little tea pastries. If you get the floral tea, there are jasmine and lavender flowers floating around in your teapot. Our schedule here is completely different as well: we have Italian only on Mondays, for 3 hours straight. Our cooking labs are at an actual culinary and bartending school in the city, but they are also only three nights a week. The majority of our schedule is filled with my favorite thing- fieldtrips. On Tuesday we split into two groups to go to an agroturismo and a restaurant called Pirate (I went to the agroturismo- more on that later). Wednesday a reception and press conference was held for us at the school that is hosting us, and we got to meet the headmaster of the school, the commissioner of Ferrara, and several of the top teachers in the program, who we’ll get to take a class or two with later. Then followed a reception with a buffet of all the specialties Ferrara is most proud of: Coppia Ferrarese (funky chromosome-shaped bread), Salame di Sugo (ridiculously salty), cappellacci (pumpkin ravioli- amazing), pasticcio alla Ferrarese (noodle pie- better than it sounds), and more wines than I could (or should) taste. After that, we rode the bus back to our apartment to change, and took a walking tour of the city: we walked through the castle (every city has it’s own castle- this one has a real moat with big fishes), tip-toed through the cathedral, bought gelato, and almost got locked into a cemetery for the night. Our guide and general mother here, Agnese (pr. Awn-yay-say), is young and new at her job, but speaks very good English, and is lots of fun to talk to and walk around with- the large majority of our group decided to split off to explore or shop on their own once we got into town, so those of us that were left had a personalized tour and got to see everything we wanted (including the best gelato place in the city).
Today we’re off to tour a rice farm, and then a canning factory- I’ve always wanted to tour a canning factory! No, really, I’m being serious. Factories are cool. And so is rice.