Mi Compleanno

I am officially 23 years old today! After 4 years, it is nice to be a prime number again. When I realized I was going to be in Italy for my birthday, I had all sorts of ideas of what I should do. I thought about going to Rome or Venice. But traveling stresses me out and makes me feel sick. So I decided that I wanted to relax, watch TV, and EAT. I also decided that 1 day was hardly enough to celebrate a birthday (notwithstanding that my little sister Lydia and I are having a joint birthday party this summer.)

Thursday Night, Birthday Bash Day 1

After 4 days straight of 4.5 hour language classes, which are rather boring, and working on my research paper, I was ready to celebrate by eating pizza and watching Dance Moms.

I got a margerita pizza from a Napoli pizzeria near my apartment. The man who owned it was super nice. He was patient and smiled a lot. The pizza was pretty good, but I haven’t gotten used to the Italian style of pizza. When I ate the pizza, it was super fresh. I watched them make it. And yet, the cheese wasn’t hot. Frankly, the cheese added very little to the pizza. But the bread was soooo good.

One of the things I learned from this pizzeria is that there is a “Pizza Americana” in Italy. What is on it? Potatoes and Vienna sausage. Hmm…

I couldn’t have pizza without dessert, so I tried this ice cream-log-thing I saw in the grocery store.

Every major grocery store I have been to here not only has this, but has their own brand’s version of it. All it is is vanilla gelato with chocolate shavings layered in. That’s it. It is pretty simple, but DELICIOUS. I ate 2 all by myself over this weekend.

Friday, Birthday Bash Day 2

One thing I really wanted for my birthday was some sort of pastry. I wanted cake, but the places here that sell regular vanilla cake are kind of far from my apartment. So, I decided to check out bakeries near my apartment which was fun both because I got to get desserts, but also because I got to walk around places I hadn’t been to yet.

There are 2 canals making a “V” in southern Milan and my apartment is close to one of them. It is so weird because on one side of the canal are these new buildings with awesome shops and the other side looks abandoned and old. To get to the canal, I walked next to a high-speed road, which was a new experience for me. I usually think of the side of a high-speed road as being super unsafe. However, this road had a wide raised sidewalk all along it.

I ended up stopping by 3 bakeries and a grocery store to find my goodies. In fact, I was able to order entirely in Italian, which made me happy because people are almost cranky with me here when they learn I am not fluent in Italian.

Here is what I ended up getting:

This is a brioche con cioccolata from a place that specializes in filled brioches. It was a lot like a croissant, but sweeter. The brioche was my favorite thing I got.

I like to call this a tart. I got it from this snazzy bakery that specialized in chocolate. The middle is like a ganache and was sweet, not bitter.

I got this from the same bakery I got the tart. It was not good. The chocolate was delicious, but the bread it was in was not my favorite.

There are macarons everywhere in Italy. Makes sense, they invented them. Most are outside my price range, but these were at the local grocery store. It only cost 4 euros for 6. The raspberry macaron was particularly yummy.

For dinner Friday night, I decided I wanted a burger (I know, I’m such an American). Unfortunately, the burger I got was rare, which wasn’t wrong but not my favorite. I ended up putting it on the stove to cook it more. I also got a whole lot of fried foods. You know…cause I’m American.

Monday, Birthday Bash Day 3

So obviously today is my actual birthday. I knew I needed to do something special. What I decided to do was to go downtown and see JoJo Rabbit in theaters. It was only available in Italian, but I didn’t mind. I mostly understood what was going on. There were these two friends in the audience with me and I used their laughter to gauge the tone of the dialogue. I really liked it and look forward to seeing it in English when it is available for rent on Amazon.

I didn’t walk around too much after I saw the movie, but I did get to see some nice parts of downtown Milan, including the famous Duomo.

The Duomo is incredible in person. You just kind of stand there in awe of it. I wish we had more things in the United States that looked like that.

The theater was part of a really nice tourist area that was beautiful and full of American shops and designer brands.

I had language class today, but only for 3 hours. It was our worst one yet because it was all about describing people’s appearances. The whole thing would have been fine if we stopped at hair color and height, but instead we learned the name for every nose shape, ear shape, etc. We had to look at a picture and decide if the person was muscular, fat, or average weight. We learned a special word to describe “the eyes of Asian people,” which, frankly, I didn’t even bother to write down, because I thought it was offensive. Perhaps the exercises were appropriate in Italy, but they would not fly in the United States.

After class, I rushed to the grocery store (which I had forgotten closes an hour after my class is over and it takes me 40 minutes to walk to my apartment from school) and got myself my final birthday treat:

This is something Lydia and I have on special occasions at home. It is ice cream with a lot of white chocolate shards in it. It is amazing. I ate the whole thing while watching Dance Moms and messaging my family. All in all a pretty good end to pretty good Birthday bash.

So, yeah…now I am 23. I’m fortunately still at the age where it is fun to get older. I love mi compleanno and am excited to celebrate even MORE when I am home this summer.

I have some extra pictures from this week, so here they are. They didn’t really fit with the format of this post, but I thought I’d share them anyway:

I’ve become UberEats’ biggest fan (you can order in English without people getting mad. It’s awesome!) I was waiting outside one time and it was super foggy. I think it looks pretty.

One of the places I’ve ordered from on UberEats is McDonalds. This is a Smarties McFlurry. Smarties here are candy covered chocolates, similar to M&Ms, but with thicker candy shells. For whatever reason, McDonalds did not mix the McFlurry before giving it to me. It was weird. But, fortunately, I have two hands and was fully capable of mixing it myself. It was good as McFlurries always are.

McDonalds in Italy sells macarons. The minute I saw them on the menu, I knew I needed to get them. The flavors I got were raspberry and “salted butter.” Neither were very good. I know, shocking. McDonalds doesn’t have stellar macarons? Who would have thought??? The filling of the raspberry macaron still had seeds in it and the salted butter flavor was just not one I could get behind. The one thing I can say for them is they were cheap.

More waiting for UberEats. I always like to stand out on the sidewalk because the UberEats delivery men have struggled to find my apartment. My apartment is part of a large apartment building, which include 65 A, B, and C. I am in 65 C, which is on the opposite end of the gate for 65 A and B. More often then not, the UberEats delivery person will go to 65 A/B and then get confused when I am not there. So, if I stand out on the sidewalk, I can see them when they show up and make things easier.

In my apartment, I have a washing machine but not a dryer. So, when I wash my clothes I have to hang everything up to dry, as seen here. It isn’t too bad, except the stuff I add to the wash to make my clothes smell good can be a bit overpowering when all of my clothes are hung up close together.

Stay tuned next week to hear about my first day of classes on Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday, my final in my language class Saturday, and my Oscar predictions!