Yogalicious

As well as I am doing, I cannot say the same about our Internet. It's flakier than pastry. And I am not much for pastry.

On the other hand, there is not a whole lot to update about. April is not only a crazy month travel-wise, but school-wise as well - I have 2 presentations and a paper due next Monday and a massive research paper due the next Monday, and with my parents' arrival next week and an impending trip to Siena this weekend, I'm a bit overwhelmed. Please forgive me if my posts are rather less prolific this week!

It occurred to, in thinking about all my to-dos, that during the school year all I say to myself is "just get through this week, month, assignment, etc" and I started thinking that here - but I had to stop myself. I want every minute here to last as looong as possible and I will not let looming schoolwork take away any of the fun and happiness this trip has left in store for me. Yes, I do want to do well because a lot of these assignments are actually very interesting (a presentation on chocolate? yes please!), but I don't want their enormity to stress me out to a point where I forget where I am. This is a once-in-a-lifetime experience, and I plan on continuing to treat it as such. So there, perfectionist-me!

Ok, back to FOOD. Remember the yummy fennel-spiked salami I had at the olive oil tasting in Lucca? Well, I found it at none other than Casa del Vino, my Monday sandwich spot! I almost tried a new sandwich, but I saw 'finocchiona' on the list and had to have it. With pecorino, of course. 

Yup, just as amazing as I thought it would be. 

I promise, I will get it again and describe it as I eat it to try to nail the flavor a little more. Gosh, ordering this again--now that's a challenge. NOT.

After classes, most of my day was spent battling with the Internet to try and get some of the mountain of research I have to do done [it didn't end well for the research]. Dinner was a salad and soft-boiled egg on toast, unpictured because, well, they're not exactly the most thrilling things to photograph.

Speaking of photography, I'm getting a new camera!!!!! My dad is bringing Frida's replacement when they come next week. I'm so excited! Expect lots of "I have a new camera omg" pictures.

I think the all that intense hiking on Sunday followed by a mostly-sedentary Monday really took a toll on my body, and I was really feeling it last night. Though it was late, I decided to do a little yoga before hitting the sack. I need to do this more often! Though I didn't get much sleep at all, I have a ton more energy today than usual and waking up was a lot easier! It felt sooo good, too. I know I have had a lot of good food, but yoga may be the yummiest thing ever.

After Italian and a quick trip to the market, I headed home for some much-needed oats:

Hide-and-seek eat!

And here's lunch:

Fresh arugula + cukes + pecorino and good balsamic vin + olive oil. Sooooo yummy :)

The weather has gone a bit downhill since last week's perfect spring warmth, but honestly I'm not too upset because I need every excuse to stay in and get work done before the weekend whisks me away! I would very much appreciate warmer weather though. Sitting in the kitchen with the windows wide open is such a wonderful feeling. *insert sigh of contentment here*

Yoga was actually a bit intense tonight, but that's generally a good thing. We tried head stand for the first time. I have tried it before but have yet to get all the way up. The end result looks something like this:

Was certainly not going to happen on my first shot, but I got farther than expected. It takes a lot of balance. I am slowly improving my crow, though:

It's actually really fun to try! I can stay up for at most one second, but one of my favorite things about yoga is that it doesn't matter how well you able to physically execute a pose so much as that you are trying and slowly working up to it. And this is surprisingly easier than it looks! One of the best things about this yoga class here is that it has taught me new poses I probably would have been too hesitant to try on my own--yoga is all about the individual journey, but I do think it's important to start out with a teacher because injuries can happen if the pose isn't done correctly. 

After yoga, it was Ethnic Tuesday time! Tonight the roomies and I set our culinary sights on Ruth's Kosher Vegetarian Food, a Jewish restaurant near the synagogue. The main reason for our going here was 1 thing: hummus. All 4 of us love it and miss it terribly (we can't find it sold anywhere!), and we were pretty excited about getting reacquainted with this chickpea-tahini delight.

This place was so cute! Quite small inside, with a cute little old man as the owner/waiter. We got hummus to share:

[Excuse the blur!]

Eaten with Tuscan bread. Fusion food at its finest!

I ordered tabbouleh, which is a kind of grain salad made with bulgar, parsley, onion, bell pepper, and olive oil.

It was delicious - especially mixed with hummus! I happily devoured it.

Alright, back to work - I'm giving a presentation on chocolate in my Food & Culture class next Monday! The research is actually pretty interesting. There have been a lot of cool studies done on chocolate! I wanted to take my presentation in a sociological direction & talk about chocolate as a comfort food, but I'm having surprising difficulty finding good solid stuff about it, and it is starting to feel a bit overambitious with everything else going on, so we shall see...I'll report with some fun facts that I find!

~Namaste~