so much

the air smells sweet like summer grass and flowers. the sun is gently warm, enveloping. june is my favorite month. it's basically been nothing but blue sky since we gt here.

me and a fellow cook biked to parma yesterday. we knew which general direction to go in, but had to wend our way through farm roads, small towns, and (unfortunately) a few roads that were not really safe to bike on. we made it though, and as we entered parma, a nice bike lane greeted us, and we were able to ride triumphantly into the center of town. the whole ride took a little more than an hour.

they had one of the finest markets i've ever seen. the farm stand selling fresh cheese was like a gift to me from the heavens. i'm not sure i've ever tasted mozzarella di buffala so good. in fact, the way we've been eating here, such a steady stream of fresh and delicious food, sometimes i dont even know what to do with myself. i'll feel the need to roll on the floor giggling with delight or squeeze my friends as tight as i can, and i dont know what tiny sliver of sanity prevents me from doing so. between the food our chef-instructor cooks, our own dishes at school, going out to eat, and the guest cook we saw last week (who cooked like 8 courses for us that day, absolutely fantastic, i promise i'll say more about this later), it's just unreal. And, imagine what 16 cooks in one house can do with fresh produce like this! we feed each other in our spare time, and we eat really, really well. thanks to the parma farmer's market, last night we ate fresh roasted porcini (i've never had fresh porcini before and it was AMAZING), black truffle risotto (with real black truffles, also a first for me), mozzarella di buffala, fresh summer tomato salad with fresh basil, grilled zucchini, tons of wine (always, yeesh), salumi, fresh bread, grilled pork, beautiful pasta. and think about the way we snack at 2 in the morning...

the bike ride home was fun. after leaving parma, we got hopelessly lost. the sun was setting, and getting home did not feel like a certainty. just as desperation and dejection were starting to set in, we saw a solitary motorcycle man, standing in the middle of a farm road, 100 feet away. who knows why he was standing there, but it was very lucky for us that he was. we biked towards him and asked for help. thanks to his directions, we ended up finding one of the most beautiful little roads i've ever biked on. we were next to a tiny river the whole time, winding through farms, the sun was setting. and we saw otters in the river, three of them!

it's hard to keep track of everything that has happened, and it's hard to believe we've only been here a week. i just wrote this whole post without even mentioning our last few days in the kitchen. so much to say. but it will have to come another time.

one final thing, a block away from our apartment is a very fine gelato place, where you can get 4 flavors for 6 euro. a group of us may or may not have eaten that for dinner on friday night. and it may or may not have been really, really good. you see how we live? woah.