My First Week in Italy

Hi everyone!

I wanted to share a few pictures with you from my first week in Italy.

The culture shock is slowly wearing off and I think I'm getting in to the groove of things. At the beginning of last week the time change threw me for a loop. As luck would have it, we had a pretty easy first day. We got a tour of Colorno - which I don't think is even on the map it's so small, got our uniforms and knife set, and went shopping. (an event in itself! haha) My apt is a 15 min walk to school. The school is inside the old Ducal Palace of Colorno, once the home of Maria Louise, Napoleane's wife. It's quite grand and beautiful. (If you Google it you can see a picture of the building.)

My days are structured a lot differently thank my time in NY. In NY I cooked everyday. Here we are only cooking 1 or possibly 2 days a week. The majority of the time is spent observing guest chefs. It's kind of like watching a chef cook on the Food Network, but up close. They spend a lot of time talking about their philosophy about food and how it connects to the region. (Really really cool for me!)

Each week is devoted to 2 or 3 different regions. In addition to the chefs coming I have two wine classes a week and two history classes a week that tie to the region. Last week was Liguria and Lombardy, this week will be Piemonte and Trentino Alto Adige. We're going to be taking a field trip to a town called Alba in the Piemonte region on Friday. In the morning we're going on a truffle hunt and in the afternoon we're going to visit a winery called Gaja. The plan is to have dinner in Torino (Turin). They structure the trips so we can stay over and sightsee on Saturday.

Other than missing Larry insanely, I'm glad I'm doing this ... it's just so cool!

Miss you all!!

Maria