Italy Trip 2010

Our scheduled flight will depart Milan at 9:30 am (Milan time) and arrive in Atlanta at 3:35 pm. An AA bus will pick us up and bring us back to the Spartan Center. The students will call parents as we leave the airport with an estimated time of arrival in Athens.
Delta Flight #75.
I must tell a funny story (the only one today) that occurred earlier. We are all so exhausted from a long night that the afternoon was spent sleeping with the understanding we would all meet at 7:30pm for dinner. As expected some of the students did not wake up in time. After Mrs. Durham and I knocked on the doors of those missing we waited outside of the hotel for the students to make their way. Everyone was waiting on the last student, Emily, when all of a sudden she emerges from her room pulling her suitcase as if it was Monday morning. We had a good laugh at her expense, which we needed. She was not the only student to think it was Monday when they woke up from the nap as most of us were delirious.
Time for bed and to start the entire process again in the morning!

A night of fun came to an end at 4 am when we said our sorrowful goodbyes and loaded the bus for what we thought would be a long trip home. When we reached the airport however a man traveling to Connecticut informed us that all flights into the eastern seaboard had been canceled due to severe weather. From there Mrs. Durham and Mr. Petroski did a good job of getting us tickets the next day. The mood for the rest of the day was filled with sleeping, eating, and threats toward one another. We are looking forward to coming home on a nonstop flight, no 3 hour layovers. Many of us are looking forward to some American food and getting to see our friends and families again.

-- Andrew Morris

After our dinner party last night, we went to Georgia's host sisters house and decided not to sleep, since we had to wake up at 4AM anyways. After we said good-bye, we left Correggio for the Milan airport at 4:25, though our flight did not leave until 11. The bus ride was quiet because we all fell right asleep. We arrived at the airport without any problems......yet. Unfortunately, we were informed that all flights to New York were canceled because of the wind and rain. We were going to try to find another city to fly into, but then we were kindly informed that all flights to the United States were canceled. Oh yay!!!!! We thought that it was a joke, but soon we realized that it was not. We were told that we had to spend the night at a hotel and catch a flight in the morning. So here we are...at a hotel in the middle of nowhereland, hearing planes fly overhead and wishing that it was us in those planes. Instead, we are sleep deprived and famished, awaiting our flight at 9:30am tomorrow morning. Though the hotel is 2 kilometers from the airport, we will depart at 6:30, just to make sure we don't get in any traffic on the way. Ha. Well, see you all Tuesday!

Happily Signed,
Madison Clare, Anne Marie, and Hayden Williams $

Well, today is our last full day in Italy. We have all had a wonderful experience and will miss the new friends we have made while in Correggio and the surrounding towns. The "food day" was especially exciting with the trip to the cheese factory and making pasta with the Italian students and teachers.
Mrs. Durham and I have received numerous compliments about the exceptionally good manners exhibited by the Athens Academy students. From our standpoint the students have been flexible in trying new experiences. The schedule has been very demanding with spontaneous changes and the students have laughed and "gone with the flow". Believe it or not, I have even learned to do this as well. :)
We leave our "families" at 4 am Sunday, which is 10 pm back in Athens on Saturday, so please expect to see some very tired world travelers when we arrive back to campus. Hayden has asked for McDonalds chicken nuggets and fries to be waiting on him when he gets off the bus. Although we have all enjoyed the food while in Italy, we are looking forward to American fast food or southern home cooking.
I am sure I speak for Mrs. Durham and the students when I say thank you to Athens Academy for providing us with an experience that forced us to step out of our comfort zone and see a part of Italy that we would never see as traditional American tourists.
Arrivederci!
Coach Petroski

I'm going to continue with the Food Day description that Taylor began! For the making of the pasta, we all met at a restaurant-type place. There were tables set up for multiple groups, all complete with a pasta machine that flattened and/or cut the pasta. With so many Italians and Americans, it was pretty crowded but very fun! We made the dough ourselves with the eggs and flour and filled the pasta with different fillings, such as spinach, meat, and pumpkin. With the pasta we had made, the teachers and staff cooked and prepared our dinner. While we waited we played music and hung out with everyone. Some of the best parts of the experience are just hanging out and talking with our new Italian friends! Once dinner was ready we all sat down and were served the pasta we made. Unfortunately, no one really liked the pumpkin filled ones and ended up piling them all on one plate. We also had cheese and bread with dinner. After dinner, we played music and danced around with everyone. Later, we left to go get gelato in town! Tomorrow, we go to school in the morning, and then go to Carpi to shop in the afternoon. We also have to pack tomorrow because it's our last day :( and tomorrow night we have a big farewell dinner! It should all be fun!
Ciao,
Mary

Pasta Day!

We went to a pub, called “ I vizi del pellicano” where we learned how to make pasta . We arrived at the pub around 4:20ish to find everybody in the kitchen making pasta. I was quickly jumped into making potato balls for the capelletti which is a pasta filled with potatoes. The process of making this was very tedious. We start off with putting the pasta dough through this thing that flattens the dough out. Then we cut the dough which was done by Emily. I then made the balls and Emily’s host sister sealed the pasta in this unique technique only known to us “pasta makers”. At another table they were doing the same things except they were filling the pasta squares with spinach or meat. As the pasta was cooking in the oven we decided to have an 70’s theme party. We danced, laughed, and were enjoying so much of each others company that before we knew it was cena (dinner) time!! We had, I believed to be five helpings of the different pasta that we all made. We finished with parmigiano and bread and some chocolate. Once we were done eating we danced some more until it was time to go home. It was the most exciting day of my cooking career. I had a lot of fun and I now know how to make pasta…with out burning it. Tomorrow, we get to go to school and spend our last day in Italy with our family. I am very sad that the last day is arriving, but I am glad that I got this great experience. I have learned so much about Italy and its history and I hope to come back soon!

Arrivederci!
Mira M. Schweppe-Figueira

Today is all about food! Most of those who will read this probably know that I eat a lot due to my notorious lunches my parents make me for school each day. With that being said, I was pretty excited about today. We woke up around 7 to prepare for the day and met up at the school at 7:50. From there, we took a bus to a nearby cheese factory that is well known for making Parmigiano Regianno. We took a small tour around the facility and got to see how the cheese is made. We were taken to a room where there were about 15 or 16 pots filled with this cream-like liquid. The workers would occasionally stir and temper the pot to remove the fat film that would accumulate at the top. We watched this process for about 20 to 30 minutes. After that step, the workers would then start taking blanket-sized cheese cloths and laying them in the pots. I can not speak for everyone but I was pretty confused by what they were doing at first, but then the workers would use these cloths (a long with a large paddle) to lift this massive chunk of cheese (40 kilos which is about 88 pounds) from the bottom. It was almost like magic because everyone was waiting for this liquid to solidify but little did we know that the cheese was collecting at the bottom the whole time. The block of cheese was hard to see because it was emersed in the liquid. Once the cheese blocks were collected and taken out of the pots, they were then transported into a room and pressed so that the excess liquid could be drained. Our tour was then lead to the cheese storage room where there were thousands of cheese blocks stacked. I think Georgia calculated that there was about 24 million dollars worth of cheese that was being stored. After we stared at the cheese in amazement for a solid hour, one of the workers took one of the cheese rounds and cut it open for us to try. It was the best cheese that I have ever had, so good that I bought a kilo from the store to take home. The tour ended there and we were taken back to the school where we were then picked up by our families to have lunch. Later today at 4, we get to go make pasta. I can't wait!

Ciao,
Taylor

Today started off by waking up at 6:15 to leave the house by 7 in order to get to the train station in Carpi. There we boarded a train to Modena where we got on another train which took us to outer Florence where we boarded yet another train to take us to central Florence. Once there we walked to the Duomo. This served as our meeting place because we were immediately given 2 hours just to shop, eat lunch, or visit the Duomo on our own. After this we walked a couple blocks to the Galleria dell'Academia which is the home of the famous David by Michaelangelo. The David was spectacular. The detail in the veins of the hands and arms was amazing and the statue itself was a lot bigger than I had anticipated. After about an hour there we left to go to Pnte Vecchio which is another street with hundreds of little shops. We were given another 2 hours here to do whatever we wanted. I know Hayden used this time to go to the nearby McDonald's to ensure that he would last at least one more day without starving. On our way back to the train station we visited a few more historic sites and finally boarded our train to Bologna which was 15 minutes late getting to Florence. This delay caused us to miss our train from Bologna to Modena, but we just got new tickets and boarded a different train to Modena. Once in Modena, we almost got on the wrong train (train 4(0)) thanks to _________ but Mrs. Durham succeeded in getting us all off the train by screaming at us to get off the train as if there was a bomb-toting terrorist on board. We all made it off successfully and got on the correct train a couple platforms over. None of this could have been possible without the help of our guide, Sarah, from Victoria Language and Culture. She was amazing. We finally made it back home which is where I am now after eating another delicious meal of enormous portions of endless food. Tomorrow we go to the Parmesan cheese factory which should be interesting and then just hang out with our host families. So far it has been an awesome trip and an unforgettable experience. We can't wait for what the last few days will be like.
Until then,
Ciao

Christian Lapp

In Italian, "pesissimo" means "I like it a lot." This pretty much sums up my experience so far in Italy, where we have toured Rome for a week and now are staying with our respective host families. This has been the best part of the trip for me because I have been hanging out with my host sister, Cristina, and her friends for most of the time. I'm learning more Italian and I am helping Cristina and her friends with their English, which I have found to be harder than I thought it was going to be because I have been asked to explain slang terms like "sketchy."
A typical school day in my Italian family starts with me getting up earlier than Cristina and her mom (6:30) to take a shower and eat breakfast. We leave to catch the bus at 7:30, and usually end up standing and holding onto something because the bus is so full. The first day that we went to school turned out to be the last day of Monteore, which is a once-a-year celebration that they do. That day was very fun because we had one class (English) and then were let out of class to go hang out and take part in the festivities. There seemed to be different clubs meeting and doing what their clubs did- there was a dance class practicing a routine which they later showed us in the courtyard (it was very impressive), a cooking class that was cooking different things, and there was even a room set up where you could mix your own (nonalchoholic) drinks. I met most of Cristina's friends here, and immediatly bonded with a girl named Lara when she was trying to make me a drink and it exploded!
Another misadventure that I had with MIra and CJ took place in the Vatican. We were allowed to go and get lunch and wander in groups of at least 3, and Mira, CJ and I went to the post office so that Mira and I could send postcards using the Vatican stamp and CJ could buy a rosary for his mom, I think. So as we were doing those things, Mira and I looked up to find CJ so we could go eat and saw that he had left us. We ran out of the post office and went looking for him. We found him wandering around looking for us, and it turned out that he hadn't seen us in the post office so he thought that we had ditched him, we thought that he had ditched us, and so we ate in the ten minutes we had left and ran to join the group.
This is just a snapshot of the fun and crazy times I have had and will hopefully continue to have while in Italy. It's snowing now, and Cristina and I will probably go for a walk in it later. So, ciao for now!
-Emily Cox

Let me start off by saying that Italian spell check says everything I type is wrong, so please forgive any errors in this entry. So Sunday we were supposed to go visit a town nearby with our host families. Can you see where this is going? Anywhozzile, I, being myself of course, had absolutely no knowledge that this event was going to take place. So I slept. For 11 hours. Until 2:30 in the afternoon. Does it constitute an excuse if I said that they told me to sleep in? Dad, can you forget that you read this? So I stumble downstairs at 3:00 say hello, eat a bannana, totally oblivious to the fact that my host family had almost had a heart attack. The afternoon continued without incident though, with me being none the wiser, and I ended up watching the last half of the Juventus (soccer) game and, I believe, the Inter vs Roma game. There was some NHL mixed in there as well. Hockey is just that cool. For dinner we had french fry pizza. Possibly the tastiest gut bomb ever invented. After that some Americans and Italians met up at Christians host family's house for some Karoake amusement. I also got to meet their pet bear. A couple hours of hilarity ensued. Anna, Christians host sister, dominated us all. We learned just how funny That's what she said is. Can you tell that my memory is like a pictureless slide show? So yea, that's Sunday in a nutshell. Now you know that I've just been battin a thousand. Ciào!

- Dom