SO MUCH WORK!!!!

I'll try to put up a real post with pictures this weekend, but I have been so incredibly swamped lately that I haven't even had time to THINK about a blog entry. I knew that these four weeks of class would be a lot of work, but I'm not sure anyone in our class expected it to be quite so much work. Most days I've been leaving the library around midnight or one, after being there since class ended around three. Once I can get through next Monday, I'm hoping things will ease up, as I will have given both my presentations by then (one on San Giorgio Maggiore in Venice, and one on the Flavor Chemistry of Wine) and my 12 page paper draft on Wine Flavor Chemistry will also be turned in. I really hope that this is the majority of the work for the semester like they seem to think it will be because at this point I'm dying to get to Italy just so I can catch my breath.

The past two weekends probably didn't help my work load because I had all day recruitment rounds for my sorority, Kappa Kappa Gamma. Luckily, Bid Day was on Sunday, so we have a new pledge class (exciting!) and I am officially on associate status for this term so I can focus on classwork and the trip now.

Every Wednesday night we have an Italian meal together-- this week I'm in the cooking group and we are making caprese salad, baked ziti, focaccia, asparagus zucchini crudi, and struffoli. I'll do my best to take pictures as we make it and post those in my next entry.

16 Days til I leave for Italy!!!!!!!

First (Real) Day of Class

Well, that 7 inches of snow was enough to shut down the south for 4 whole days. Even though it doesn't seem like that much snow, the biggest problem was the ice from the melting snow. Each day it warmed up just enough to melt more snow, the water covered the side walks, and Furman's sidewalks became one huge ice slick. Also, we have no plows or salt trucks down here to help clear the roads.......

Anyway, here we are on Friday and finally we had our first day of class. We lost basically an entire week of class time, but the professors are just making do with the time they have and it will work out fine.
Today in the regional agriculture class we sure got off to a good start- we sampled 6 different kinds of olive oils, a variety of brined olives, and we started making our own wine.




To taste olive oils, the procedure is pretty similar to that of wine tasting. You are supposed to cup the sample to heat it up and capture the aroma, inhale to smell it, and then take a sip of the olive oil-- enough to cover your whole tongue. Olive oils are usually divided into 4 main flavor categories-- mild and delicate, fruity and fragrant, olive-y and peppery, and leafy and grassy. We used a granny smith apple to cleanse our palates in between samples.




We also tried a variety of olives....and I'm just not a huge olive fan. By the end though, they were starting to grow in me, so my plan is to keep trying them until I like them. I've been told that if you can try a new food 7 times within a reasonable time frame, you can acquire a taste for it.

We also started making our own wine (chianti). Dr. Hestermann ordered a kit from Amazon. Basically it's a bag of concentrated grape juice and a separate pouch of champagne yeast. We poured it into a prepared 6 gallon bucket, added water, added the yeast, and now have to wait a week for the wine to ferment.



After a week, the wine will be decanted into another container where it will further develop for about 4 more weeks. If we're lucky, it will be ready before we go, but more than likely, the wine will be ready once we come back from Italy. The entire kit makes 32 bottles of wine (or 6 gallons)....not bad for a $45 starter! That's a LOT of wine!



We tried the juice once it had been diluted but before we added the yeast and it just tasted like syrupy-sweet grape juice. I'll be very interested to see how the final product turns out!

One month til departure!

And now the one month count down begins! The school year has officially started. I got back to Furman on Saturday afternoon, luckily before the bad weather started. Late Sunday night it was announced that Monday's class would be cancelled due to the predicted snow. What a way to start the semester! Around midnight the snow started falling and much to my midwestern surprise (we all know that in the south, predicting snow is usually a ploy to get everyone to run to wal-mart and buy all the bread and milk off the shelves..... and then usually there is only a light dusting of snow that melts very quickly) we had 6-7 inches of snow when I woke up Monday morning. It was really pretty and it's easier to get excited about snow here than it is at home simply because a) I know it will be gone soon b) the sky doesn't stay gray and c) there are so many kids who have never seen snow before that are so giddy about it.
Here are a few pictures from the snow day....




aaaaand best of all, class was also cancelled for tomorrow....yet again, I can sleep in and avoid class first thing in the morning. Always a good thing by me!