Sharing Thursday

Last Monday, while I was sitting at the Healthy Monday table handing out fruit, one of the faculty members approached me with an idea while picking up her piece of free fruit. Vittoria Tettamanti is an Italian professor, the head of the volunteer program here, and very helpful to all of our Healthy Monday efforts. She asked if she could use the left over fruit from Healthy Monday’s tabling for her new “Sharing Thursday” where students prepare and share a meal with the homeless during lunch time every Thursday. Of course I thought it was a great idea and was interested in getting involved. What better way to use our extra fruit!

So today, Thursday, February 23, I helped Vittoria set up the lunch in Piazza Savonarola, which is right in front of our school building. We served pasta with marinara for lunch along the leftover fruit, tea and biscotti. Everyone was so gracious and thankful for the delicious food. The man that helped Vittoria run the program kept saying to all of the volunteers, “Thank you for loving Florence!” I am so glad my efforts for Healthy Monday brought me more opportunities like this. It was fun serving, talking with everyone, and sharing a meal. I think I will definitely make “Sharing Thursdays” a habit every week!

Ashes

With Fat Tuesday comes Ash Wednesday. For me this means a time for cutting back so that’s exactly what I plan on doing. Usually, I give up sweets for lent - probably because they are my favorite and I way too much of them. However, the thought forgoing sweets for a quarter of the time I am in Italy rubbed me the wrong way. I don’t want to limit my foreign experiences! So I have decided cut back on sweets instead of give them up all together and save them for “cultural experiences”. What will become a “cultural experience” by Easter, I do not know. Lately with all the wonderful Italian food, I have not been feeling at my best I am in need of some cutting back. Hopefully I can achieve this while still experiencing Italian culture at its finest!

Interesting fact: As many know, when people attend church on Ash Wednesday they receive ashes on their forehead. In the States, this is usually a small cross placed on the forehead by the priest. However, in Italy they do things a little differently. The priest actually sprinkles ashes on the parishioners’ heads!

Martedi Grasso

After a long day of preparing for midterms in my classes today, Tuesday, February 21, I was in the need of some relaxation. Although it may not be relaxing for most people, running is exactly what I needed – my perfect de-stressor. I set out on a run, just me, my thoughts and my music, careful not to get lost this time. I ended up getting lost in my thoughts instead (I’d say a safer alternative) and ended up covering 5 miles!

I was home and showered just in time for a special Fat Tuesday dinner! The night before, Christina asked us if we had any requests for dinner tonight in honor of the gluttonous holiday. We gave her some suggestions and the menu ended up being vegetable soup with gnocchi for our first course (which sounds better than it actually was), salmon and salad for the main course, and homemade cenci and strawberries for dessert. The strawberries were the perfect dessert and my favorite part! I will have to get her cenci recipe to bring home with me…

Insanity

Today’s Healthy Monday was INSANE!

During fruit tabling, we offered and INSANE variety of fruit today in the Limonaia – apples, oranges, clementines, pears and bananas. Apparently people are bananas for the bananas because they were the first to go!

It was INSANE how many nice compliments I got on my newsletter this week. It’s so nice to hear that people enjoy the weekly nutrition information in their email inbox. This week’s newsletter informed students how to keep their digestive systems at their best in the midst of travel. Although slightly invasive, I thought the topic was extremely practical, applicable, and useful to everyone.

I got an INSANE amount of work done between classes! Newsletter proofing, blog post writing, class reading…check, check, check!

Today’s Move it Monday class was an INSANEly tough workout. It was actually called an “Insanity workout”. A student approached me the other week with the idea of leading the class through a DVD workout – I thought it was a great idea! The “insanity workout” DVDs are similar to P90X DVDs (often seen on infomercials). Julie Guempel led us through an intense interval workout, and It. Was. Hard. It felt so good though and I absolutely loved it! Many thanks to Julie for the great idea for Move it Monday and sharing her DVDs with us!

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To finish off the day, I enjoyed an INSANEly good dinner: fried polenta with gorgonzola, salad, sliced tomatoes, cooked artichokes, and a small scoop of stracciatella gelato for dessert. Unfortunately all the food left me feeling INSANEly full…