A gelato a day...keep the scale away!: So it's been a month...

I take it back.

Snow and Florence Italy are two things never to be mixed.

Let’s face it, Florentines, you don’t even own shovels. No wonder my flights scheduled for Saturday, Sunday, and Tuesday--after Friday’s whopping three inches of powder--were all cancelled! What exactly did it take for me to finally make it home?

-3 flight cancellations

-4 hours waiting in line at the airport, hoping for the next ticket home

-2 days in the Florence Hilton watching Italian cartoons

-1 ridiculously over-priced sliver of chocolate cake from room service

-1 date request from the hotel’s over-friendly, concierge. Oh yes, he called my hotel room phone. Casual.

Hey Adair, where you at? Sorry we kidnapped your family!

-1 extravagant excuse as to why I could not attend said-date with hotel’s over-friendly, concierge.

-1 train ride to Rome

-2 delicious Roman dinners with Adair’s adorable family

-1 night spent “sleeping” in Rome’s freezing cold, train station with Lauren

-An excessive amount of money spent on WiFi internet

-10 hours on an airplane that actually left the country

-5 extra, never-ending days in Europe

Anyhow, I made it home in time for Christmas and spent two, gorgeous weeks reveling in the likes of American Coca-Cola, “Say Yes to the Dress” marathons, shoe-shopping missions, a cell phone with a keyboard, and many wonderful days spent with my family and friends.

Sadly, I must report that not everything about being home was a positive experience. In fact, putting on my favorite, JCrew jeans after their first time in the dryer in five months was an incredibly depressing moment of realization. (Receiving Victoria’s Secret’s catalogue of 2011 bathing suits, while home, did not help matters either.)

Thus, I set out two weeks ago intent on returning to Italy as a new, healthy girl on a mission to ditch my unhealthy obsessions (Hey there, Gelato, I’m talking to you).

I’m a pretty determined person.

I have a pretty high level of willpower.

Theoretically, these things should work in my favor, yes?

Things that do not work in my favor:

(In other words, reasons why dieting in Italy is impractical and foolish)

-Nina’s 9th birthday party

Oh what’s up, birthday cake... that is actually Boston Creme Pie. Sure, the cake was minuscule in comparison to big, fluffy American birthday cakes covered in basketfuls of sugar flowers, but I’m sure it was still good for a few thousand calories. But hey--- I did play pallone with Nina and Oscar for hours over the course of the week. Shouldn’t that help matters? "What’s pallone?" you ask... Only the greatest game in the universe. A pallone is a balloon. Therefore, I’m talking about the balloon game, people. You know-- “Keep it up” as Kyle and I would refer to it--when you cannot let the balloon touch the ground. Clearly, this game knows no borders. If anyone is up for a challenge, the record in the Pinto household was 136 bounces. Yeah, compete with that.

-My Italian host-famiglia

“Why aren’t you drinking wine?” “Why didn’t you finish that pasta?” “Here, have this slice of bread covered in oily and extremely caloric nonsense that I promise is good for you.”

Must I continue...?

-Holy Cross deciding to pay for things

For example, paying for lunch at an expensive restaurant that we, as students, could never afford. It would have been a waste of money, a sin, and just plain rude to have left anything on my plate when chocolate-apricot tort cake and ricotta/pear ravioli were involved.

-Final exams

I have no idea who would ever consider final exams, after the holidays, to be a good idea. Anyhow, my friends and I returned to Italy at the start of January for the sole purpose of studying.

No.

Really.

I do not kid, or exaggerate.

Besides, eating and sleeping, I can assure you that I have done nothing else but flip through my 6 pound stack of flashcards, attend tutoring sessions, and revisit the eleven Florentine museums that I now know by heart for the past two weeks.

Friday night? Studied.

Saturday night? Studied.

My host family must think I am a complete wack-o for miserably and unwillingly peeling myself off the living-room couch after five minutes of Italian Grey’s Anatomy. Anyhow, please accept my pathetic complaints about exams as proof that “studying abroad,” at least in the case of good, old College of the Holy Cross, is in fact studying abroad. Thank you.

At this point, I’d like to offer all of my millions of dyer blog-followers the opportunity to give me a call regarding any questions about museology, museography, opening dates, architects, masterpieces, and curators. (Look at it as a special gift from me to you.)

Uffizi. Opened in 1584. Duh.

My friends and I are good students...we’re smart and extremely hardworking kids...BUT this exam was nothing like anything any of us has ever done before. First off, our entire semester of learning, of readings, of museum visits was whittled down to a ten minute oral exam with our professor--a little, Italian woman whom we refer to as QE2 because of her extreme resemblance to Queen Elizabeth. QE has never spoken a word to me, personally, in my life and has 100 other students to test. In these ten minutes, she has the opportunity to ask me anything in the world about the subject. In Italian. As if this weren’t terrifying enough, our tutor casually informed us, the day before the test that exams in Italy are a public event. Therefore, it is nothing out-of-the-ordinary for a student to sit at the front of the classroom, being tested by the professor, as the rest of the students in the class watch, listen to her questions, the answers, and the grade. Horrifying. It goes without saying that the four of us were nervous-wrecks.

The scene of the crime.

Before.

However, we were all extremely prepared and I am proud to report that not only did we all pass the exam, but we also passed with flying colors. How cool is it to think that I took an exam yesterday, in a different language, and actually speaking Italian was the least of my worries? A’s on an exam taken in a language other than my mother-tongue? Not too shabby. I will admit I was a bit obsessive with the flashcards...Now, even after finishing the exam, random words in conversations will trigger the names of art historians and the dates of museum-openings in my head.
I. am. a. joke.