Day 22

Wow, 22 days I've been here already. This trip is flying by. I was talking to some people about it today. There are a lot of girls here that spend a ton of time skyping their boyfriends and saying how much they miss them. There is a lot about home I miss and I know that I will be happy when I get home, but I have to live in the moment above all. Who knows if I'll ever be able to come back so I will savor every moment of this. There are of course certain people that I miss too, but I will see them again soon enough. Its not as if I don't keep in touch with people. Today I have World Cuisine, Middle East day 2. Of course I had to do another paper on the Middle East that was due today but I didn't realize we were doing another day so I had to quickly throw together a paper last night and once again not get enough sleep. Its a good thing we get all we can drink free cappucinnos. We started class quickly for once today, it was just get our recipes and go. It was going to be a simple menu today and everyone scrambled for the best recipes, unfortunately the best I could come by was a salad that was so simple. I took my time making it, trying to make it pretty, I took the required ingredients and used them all but kind of put a twist on some of them to make the recipe a bit better. Still by the time I finished it was a very boring salad. Luckily one of the other recipes was a spicy fava bean dip that we just incorporated into my dish and it was really good. The rest of the menu was great too, but its funny how much we stray from the recipes, Chef blames us for that, but he does it too. What was great about today was that I started putting together an archive of all of his crazy gelato recipes. We are still making gelatos based on the cuisine we are currently studying so today we did several middle east ones like the "Bedowin gelato" with dates boiled in red wine until reduced and then mixed with water and pureed and then we added sugar, cream, and milk. It was awesome. Lunch was great, we ate, cleaned up and then it was off to the apartment for me. I really wanted to sleep, but I forced myself to do homework which I am happy I did now. I ended up going back to the restaurant at 5 pm to start working, then of course we had an Italian language class at 6 until 8, which I still think is only semi-helpful. Still I am trying my best to learn what I can. After class I ate quickly and started helping out in the kitchen. I like working back there, doing anything I can, even the little things I know help a lot. I ended up staying till 11 to help with all the cleanup which I know the appreciate a lot. Still even after a long day I wasn't tired yet so I thought it would be a goodnight to share a bottle of wine with friends. Hopefully I won't regret it in the morning.