Pass the Cheese Please!

Here we are.  August 2011.  The semester following my time abroad.

As I am moving back into my fraternity house, I felt that it was only appropriate for me to write discussing the differences between living with my brothers, and living with three women.

For me, this past semester featured a living arrangement that was quite different than that of last fall.  Last fall I lived in my fraternity, Alpha Gamma Rho (social-professional agricultural fraternity).  This semester, as you know very well, I was living with three women.  As a result, I learned a lot and was forced to do many things.  Here is a summary.

1.  Toilet seat.  On the first day there I learned that I must always, ALWAYS, ALWAYS, put the toilet seat back down when I am finished in the bathroom.  I am proud to say that I have only forgotten to do this twice.  In the frat, you simply put the toilet seat in the desired position before you do your business.  I believe that the frat toilet seat protocol is a much simpler system.

2.  When around women all of the time, the do not think that “that’s what she said” jokes are funny, as clearly, a “she” did say the statement.  Had to quit saying that after a week.

3.  Women can be funny and play jokes back on you too

4.  Don’t pee in the shower.  Or at least don’t bring up that discussion at dinner.

5.  Girls will buy anything at little markets.  Personally, I have never seen a bunch of my brothers go to a market in downtown Ithaca soley to purchase underwear that has cows on it.

6.  Dinner Call.  In my frat, when dinner is ready , we simply yell up the stairs “DINNER!!!!”  Apparently this is unnecessary in our apartment.  I just did not want anyone to miss a good meal.

7.  No one gives you a high five for a good belch at dinner.

8.  Excusing yourself after burping is required.

9.  The question “what do you want to make for dinner?” Literally means “what do you want to make for dinner?”  Those nights I usually made grilled cheese.

10.  Why am I making my bed?  Apparently an unmade bed makes a room messy.  My room is by the bathroom so there is lots of traffic by it, so apparently it just looks better with the bed made.

This was a great semester for me, and I hope you got some entertainment out of this post.  I may have had to change some simple things, but the girls usually took good care of me too.

I am excited for the fall semester to start back up here at Cornell.  Whenever I see a reference to Italy on TV or hear one in conversation, I think to myself how awesome it was that I was there, and how badly I want to return.  It will not be nearly as relaxing as my semester in Parma, Italy.

Bouna Fortunata!

Parole: Caseificio (cheesehouse), fattoria per la produzione di latte (dairy farm), mungiturare (to milk)

Happy Mid-May!  I have been very busy since spring break with our work experiences and other things that we have been doing.  The weather has been warm to almost too hot, and has been nearly always sunny.  Today is no exception, being in the mid-80s and sunny as can be.  Here is a recap of some of the things I have been up to.

Caseificio

For the first week of the work experience portion of our program, I worked at a small Caseificio called Punto Latte. Punto Latte makes 6 wheels of Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese a day.  Being small, we were able to stop and talk a lot about the cheese making, so we could fully understand the entire process.  We were also able to help make the cheese.  The milk used at the caseificio is from their own farm and one other farm.  Also on site there is a pig farm and a cheese/meat/salami shop.  At the caseficio, I learned a lot about the art of making Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese.  Daily, there are so many small adjustments to be made to the amount of rennet (caglio) and siero innestra (whey from the previous day’s cheese; used for maintaining bacterial profile and increasing acidity of the milk) that is added to the caldron.  I did not realize just how much the acidity of the siero innestra and the milk would affect how much ingredients were put in and the quality of the cheese.  Also, the size of the curd has a lot of effect on the cheese.  Too small, and the cheese will be too dry, too large, and it will ferment during aging.  The milk fat affects how long the cheese can be aged and the milk protein (specifically casein) affects the overall cheese yield.  In general, it takes 16 kg of milk to make 1 kg of Parmigiano-Reggiano.  After the initial action, the cheese is more or less molded into the wheel shape, put in a salt bath for 20 days, and aged for 12 to 30 months.  The average is 24 months, and at 12 months it is checked by a quality control institute and branded with the Parmigiano-Reggiano consorzio marking.  If it is not up to standards, the rind is ground off, and it is sold as a regular, “national grade” parmigiano type cheese.

Because of the other operations at the caseficio, we also watched pig halves be cut up into pieces to be sold in the shop, saw their pig operation, and saw some prepping for making salamis.  We also toured the dairy farm where the milk comes from to make the cheese.  The owner of the farm has very good dairy genetics as a result of meeting Dr. Robert Everett when he came to Modena a long time ago.

Paganina Dairy Farm

My second work experience was at a large dairy farm called Paganina.  This farm milks nearly 1000 cows, and had another 1000 in young stock.  I had never worked on a farm this large before; I have only toured them.  The farm’s milk went to their own caseificio to make Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese.  For facilities, all barns were cover-all type buildings, and in the building with the parlor, there were locker rooms, a commercial kitchen for everyone to use, and an office.

While we were there, we worked mostly with the vet and herd management staff, and we milked in the parlor.  Their parlor is a double-40 parallel.  This means that 80 cows are in the parlor at a time, and each group of 40 was in there for about 20 minutes.  Therefore, in less than an hour, I milked the equivalent of my entire milking herd at my farm at home.   There were usually 4-5 people milking.

Each cow has an ankle RFID bracelet/pedometer, which is a part of their “Total Dairy Management” program.  The cow is recognized by the system as she enters the parlor, and her activity level, milk, and milk conductivity are automatically entered into the system.  As she leaves the parlor, she is stopped on a set of scales, and she is weighed.  At this station, the computer also decides if she can return with the rest of the herd, or if she needs to go to the vet check pens.  If she has had a spike in activity level, needs to be checked for pregnancy, or a milker entered a problem code into the keypad in the parlor, a gate swings and she is separated.  I think this total integration is very cool.  It is neat to look at graphs of all of this data, and it helps in diagnosing problems.  One cow lost 100 kg (220 pounds) in one day.  She was sent by the system to the vet check pen.  She had a bad foot, which explains everything.

We got a lot of practical experiences working with the vets.  We got to practice a lot of rectal exams (or as they call it, “rectal exploration”) to understand the reproductive state of the animal.  We would feel for follicles, swelling, abnormalities, and pregnancies.  If she was in heat, manure was put on her rump to mark it (tradition on the farm) and then later she would be bred.  We learned how to prepare semen for AI, and since Liz is AI certified, she was able to breed some cows (with the help of a step-stool, of course).  One of the vets, Toto, liked the idea.  He is not any taller than Liz, and when I was there, he bred his first cow at this particular farm, and used the help of a stool as well.  While I worked with the vets, I gave a lot of shots and was able to help with a lot of therapies.  We also checked every breeding age heifer every day for heat.  If she was showing signs of heat, we did a rectal exam to confirm.

I learned a lot at this farm, especially because we spent a lot of hours there and worked with the vet staff.  It was my first time doing a lot of the things that we did with the vets, because my farm is so small that we don’t have nearly as many animals that need to be worked on.  I also learned a lot about how to improve personnel management on the farm.  It was nice to have an experience which was very hands on.  Both at the farm and the caseficio we were able to significantly improve our comprehension of Italian, as we were listening to it all the time.

Odds & Ends

Last week we did the next step for our “residence permit”.  Monday was our appointment at the immigration office.  We thought that we would be done with this whole process after this appointment, however, we are not.  We went to the immigration office, waited an hour, got called up basically to make sure that we were at the office, waited another hour, got called up for photo IDs and fingerprinting, and then waited some more, and then were called up to get our fingerprints taken again, along with our palm prints taken.  We were told last fall by the Visa Office in NYC that all we needed to do was turn in paperwork to the police office.  This whole thing is a bureaucracy madhouse in which we have had to do more paperwork, pay nearly 70 Euros, and waste a lot of time and fuel.  Our next appointment is in July, which is after we leave, as they know.  This whole “residence permit” seems pointless and has wasted many of our limited days here in Italy.

In a couple days I will post some more, so this post isn’t overwhelmingly long.  I hope the rain at home stops soon!

A dopo!

Parole: Londra (London), torre (tower), fiume (river)

Spring Break 2011 will be a time that I will remember for the rest of my life.  I visited many countries and met up with other friends studying abroad around Northern Europe.  At one point during my journey, I realized that I was in 4 countries and 3 time zones within 3 days.  How awesome is that?  My destinations included London, Uppsala & Stockholm, Sweden, Helsinki, Finland,  and Tallinn, Estonia. By far, my favorite city was Tallinn.  I would say that London was a close second place.

So let’s get down to business.  I will be posting over the next few days so that I don’t overwhelm you!  On a sidenote, the work experience part of our program will be starting Monday, so two of us will be staying at Federico’s farm and working at a nearby caseificio and two of us will be staying in the apartment to work on a large fattoria per la produzione di latte.

Arrivederci Parma.   Hello London.

On Sunday, April 18^th I was the only one left in the apartment.  So, I went to Federico’s farm for the evening and came back on Monday.  I had a lot of fun.  While I was there, I helped him and his father work on many little, random projects around his farm and house, both of which are in the process of being renovated.  I was the only American there, so obviously, English was not the dominate language.  I feel like I learned a lot of Italian and improved my speaking abilities significantly by being alone with a family of Italians.  I hope that I get this opportunity again.  Even Federico’s three-year old son was teaching me Italian.  At dinner, he would say a word (usually complicated ones like Italian names for dinosaurs) and then I would have to repeat it.  After I would repeat the word (or at least try to) we would all laugh at me (I can’t pronounce words correctly in my own language, let alone in Italian!).  In return, I did the same thing to him with English words.  I was nice and said simple words like “water” and “plate”, as opposed to things like “ippopotamo” (hippopotamus…in Italian it is a lot harder to say than you think!)

Monday, I headed to the Parma airport for my cheap RyanAir flight to London.  I had so many thoughts running through my head.  The most common ones where Keys? Wallet? Phone? Passport? Tickets? Electircal tape? (hey, you never know).  I must have looked funny patting myself down every few minutes to make sure that I still had all of the essentials. The London airport that I flew into is a 40 minute train ride outside of London, so I got to my hostel around 6:30 that evening.  I took a walk around the city.  It was really peaceful because the tourists were all back at their hotels or at dinner for the evening.  This meant that I was able to observe a lot of native Londoners.  It appears to be a very physically active city.  The bikers and joggers wore reflective gear, which is not something you see in Italy.  The bikers also were wearing helmets, and their bikes had headlights, also a rareity in Italy.  Something I did not figure out is why 96.475% (just an estimate) of all runners that I saw were wearing backpacks.  They were not even backpacks with waterbladders in them.  Most of them were just regular backpacks!  Anyway, Parliament and Big Ben were pretty all lit up in the evening.  I also noticed that the water level on the River Thames seemed to be pretty low.  One former boat is now a bar/resturant, and it was sitting on pieces of wood holding it up off from the shore!  There was also some sort of rig that had a platform and some small cranes, and it was near the riverbank, and it was about 15 feet above the water level, and there was no water underneath it on once side.

Wandering around, it was difficult to cross the road.  Why?  It is so hard to figure out which way to look when crossing the road.  The whole “left hand” driving thing is still so trange to me.  For the tourists, most of the intersections had signs on them that said “look left” or “look right”, just to lessen the chance of us getting hit because we didn’t check for cars while J-Walking (read that as cross walks weren’t always used anyway).

The next morning I got up early and headed to Buckingham Palace, some memorials, and some parks.  Because the time was one hour later than what I was used to, it was no problem for me to get up early, grab a quick breakfast, and be on my merry way.

It is amazing how peaceful a city is at 8:30 in the morning.  There was less than 20 people around Buckingham Palace.  I walked some more and explored Hyde Park (500+ acres, has beautiful gardens, a pond, a resturant), Green Park, and Saint James Park.  While I was in Hyde Park, about 200 guards on horses went by.  Following the calvary was a trailer that said “HORSE AMBULENCE” and a street cleaner.  They clearly have a system.  There were also a few people riding their horses around on dirt paths in Hyde Park.

By 11:30, there were literally hundreds and hundreds of people outside of Buckingham.  In the afternoon I went to the London Aquarium. Ironically, there is a sushi bar located on top of it.  Then, I met up with Katie Grandle, a Cornell student spending the year studying at Durham University, and we went on the London Eye.  The London Eye had a great view.  For those of you who don’t know, it is a giant ferris wheel with 32 “pods” that hold around 30 people.  Now, it only has 31 pods.  Number 13 was removed because the Britis are very superstitious people.

A majority of the day Wednesday I spent on one of the famous “The Origional Tour” open top bus tours.  I learned a lot about London, and found some sights that I really wanted to see.  Best of all, my ticket was good for 24 hours, so I could use it to get on and off the bus to go around the city.  I also did some more wondering around the actual City of London, and walked around St. Paul’s Cathederal, walked over the Thames on the millineium bridge, and walked around Shakespeare’s Globe Theater.  A final destination Wednesday was the Royal Mews, where the Golden Carraiage is loacted.  The carriage weighs 4 tons and there is 1 man for every two horses in the team of horses that pull it.

If I ever get the chance to return to London, I have a few more places that I would like to visit.  I would like to visit the Tower of London, Westminster Abbey, and the Britian at War museum.  Westminster Abbey was closed when I wanted to tour it because of a Holy Week service.  I did walk around the outside of it a few times. It was also being prepared for the Royal Wedding.

Fun Facts about London

• “Big Ben” refers to the 13.2 ton bell that rings every hour, not the tower itself.
• The actual city of London is only about 1 square mile.  It is the business center.  It contains the oldest and the newest structures in London.  They are working on digging up ancient Roman ruins there.  It is amazing how the Romans were all the way up there, and actually founded London.
• The city of London was completely destroyed in 1666 with the great fire that started at the Kings Bakery on Pudding Lane.  If the memorial tower to the fire is set on its side, the tip will land at the source of the fire.
• The great fire destroyed the entire city but only killed 4 people.  The plague killed hundreds of thousands of people.  The fire is believed to end the plague, because it killed the rats and the pathogen-carrying fleas that were on them.
• St. Paul’s Cathedral was destroyed in the London Fire.  The builder of the new Cathedral, Christopher Wren, also designed a pub just down the street from the Cathedral.  Which was built first?  Yep, the pub.  The tour guide said he is the “best boss ever” because is workers could take a break, “drink a pint, and go back to work!”
• The narrowest pub in London is “Ye Olde Cock Tavern”, at 9.5 feet wide.
• “Alfred’s Pub” had a bell in it for when a vote was about to happen in Parliament, so the councilmen could get back in time to make a decision.
• The Brits are very superstitious, as I mentioned about the number 13 pod on the London Eye.  They say the country is in danger if the “Lions drink”, referring to the lion statues on the edge of the Thames.  The Thames is a tidal river, and while I was there, they lions almost got rid of their thirst, because the water level fluctuated greater than 10 feet daily.  The floating restaurant I mentioned earlier was actually floating during the day, and the rig I talked about only had a few feet in between the water level and the platform during the day.  Further, Ravens are kept in the Tower of London.  If they disappear, the monarch is in danger.  Many of these Ravens died during WWII.  As a result, they had to repopulate the tower with Ravens, just so that the Brits wouldn’t freak out.
• Winston Churchill was a wise, brilliant, and a funny man.  A guide on the Original Tour told us some quotes.  Someone once said to him “if you were my husband, I would poison you.” He responded with “If you were my wife, I would drink it!” Another evening, Churchill was drunk at a bar, and a woman said “you’re drunk.” Mr. Churchill responded with “and in the morning, I won’t be.  In the morning, you will still be ugly.” Like I said, he was a very smart man.

Thanks for sticking with me.  Part two will be posted soon!

You don’t.

Parole: sciopero (strike), pendolare (literally means to pendulate; refers to commuting to and from a place), subito (immediately)

Strike One:

Yesterday was Thursday.  This means that we had to travel from the Vet Faculty to Campus to go to our Italian class.  This process takes 2 buses and about 40 minutes.  We went to the bus stop at the faculty  to catch the 11:47AM bus.  We waited.  And waited.  And waited.  We waited so long that we decided to wait for the 12:17PM bus while we were at it!  By 12:30, we were tired of waiting, so we ended up walking 10 minutes to the next bus stop, where we caught a bus after 10 more minutes.

As it turns out, the bus drivers in Parma went on strike on Thursday.  We talked with our Italian profesor for a few minutes after class, and she asked if we pendolari a piedi (commute to campus on foot) or a bici(on bikes). I told her we commute a autobus. She said that we needed to go subito, because in apparently, there was a strike, and in 10 minutes the buses would stop running their routes again!

Strike Two:

Today we were supposed to go to Venice.  Guess who was on strike today?  The entire Italian train system (with the exception of a few trains that have to run by law).  To get to Venice from Parma, we have to change trains in Bologna.  We went to the station, and found out that the train to Bologna is running, however, there was no way to know if the train from Bolongna to Venice would be in service.  So, we sat in the park, relaxed, and enjoyed the sunshine, instead of risking spending the night in the Bolongna train station.

Strike Three, your out!

Hopefully, we do not reach this point, however, there may be more public transit strikes while we are here.  They are a fairly regular occurance, happening 2-3 times a year.  Tomorrow morning we are going to head to Venice, stay overnight, and come home on Sunday morning.

A package for me!

Finally, I just wanted to say THANK YOU to my family for sending me a package of Easter goodies, girl scout cookies, Jiff Peanut Butter, and the latest edition of the New York Farm Bureau newspaper, Grassroots. Now I am all caught up on NY agriculture.

Ciao!

Parole: gratis (free), grazie mille, (thanks a million!)

Welcome to Italy:  The land of unique cheeses, specialty pastries, delicious wines, and awesome people.  This week has been full of examples showing how giving Italians seem to be.

This week, we stopped by at the bakery located two buildings down the street from us.  Monday we bought a couple loaves of bread.  They were a typical Italian bread, being soft in the middle, hard on the outside.  The woman working at the bakery threw in a couple pieces of focaccia and torta frita for us for free.  A couple of days later, the same person was working, and we bought two more of those loaves of bread, as well as two regular loaves of wheat bread. (We cut the bread in half horizontally and added tomato sauce, cheese, and prosciutto, making a pizza (it was delicious).  Again, she through in some free goodies.  Sure, we stopped by in the late afternoon, so it is probably near closing and she just wants to get the bread off of the shelves, but it is that giving mentality.  We bought some more bread today to go with the 1.5 liters of homemade olive oil that Federico gave us.  (In addition to opening his home to us, driving us places, introducing us to people, and spending a lot of time with us.  He also said that his wife wants to plan a trip with us.)  We also made friends with the woman works at the pastry shop by the station, where we bought some goodies to take to Federico’s last Sunday.  We make sure we wave to her when we walk by every day.  It is nice to have some local companions in the area.

The giving character of our ag systems class has made sure that we are not going hungry.  Tuesday, the instructors provided us with something called Columba, a special sweet bread in the shape of the dove, only available this time of year, before Easter.  They also provided us with a wine.  Thursday, they brought in homemade salami, a homemade Malvasia Dolce wine, (a dessert wine, very sweet, almost like grape juice), Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese, torta frita, and focaccia.  I suppose you could say that we are beginning to “figure out the system” in that class.  Every day we talk about differences in our societies and they ask us about foods that we have tried here in Italy.  Often they will mention to us a food that we have not even heard of, and will be very surprised when they find out that we have not tried it yet.  As a result, they bring them in for us.  (And we are not just saying that we have not tried the food so they will bring it in, we legitimately have not tried some of the foods they have mentioned).  Further, as the salami and the wine came from Prof. Ferri’s farm, I asked him where his farm is.  He said that it was a few kilometers away, and that we could stop in on our way to our field trip on Wednesday.  Further, Professor Bonazzi said that if we wanted to, sometime we could visit his brother-in-law’s place, as he  makes real balsamic vinegar.  Again, it is so awesome how the Italians have really opened up to us, making us feel welcome, and making sure that we have the best experiences here that we can have by helping us to see and taste some of the best things in Italy.  We are very thankful for how much the people around us have done for us.

An additional event we attended this week was a seminar on Milk Quality.  Yes, it was all in Italian, and yes we understood some of it.  I couldn’t quite concentrate on the speaker enough to know exactly what he was talking about; however, they had PowerPoint slides which helped.  With the slides, I could read along and figure out the general idea of what they were talking about.  Yesterday when we met with Federico, we went over some of the highlights of the conference, discussing how much casein, fat, and somatic cells affect Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese yield and quality.  The seminar also talked about different types of casein and how they affected cheese yield and quality.  It was fun to figure out what they were trying to present, so we asked Federico for a schedule of classes we could sit in on in Italian at the vet faculty.

Today we are headed to Mantova to do some exploring.  Also, our internet is not working at all at the flat anymore.  We are so dependent on it, as it is our only connection to the outside world, and we look up so many things all the time.

A Dopo!

Parole: gravità (gravity), cotello (knife)

With four hungry people living in one apartment, the dishes pile up quickly.  Daily there are at least 12 spoons with Nutella or peanut butter-like remnants in the sink.  We all willingly take turns at washing dishes and making meals.  There is no set system, it just works out.

Yesterday I did the pre-dinner dishes, and tonight I entertained the post-dinner crowed of Ikea specialties.  Yesterday we were home a majority of the day, because Wednesdays are free in our schedule, thus explaining the pre-dinner party in the sink.  Throughout the semester, we will be using Wednesdays for field trips and farm tours, which is very exciting considering the number of regular field trips we take at Cornell.  Allora, I while I was doing dishes tonight, I realized that a lot of the lessons that I learned in my regents level physics class (if Mr. Basset is reading this, I LOVE PHYSICS!, also known as “Amo la fisica!”  I will be sure to yell it in the streets of Parma) can be applied to this daily chore.  Here are some examples:

1.  No two objects can occupy the same space: This law even exists between water and sponges, when enough force is applied.  When washing a cup, I generally follow the standard rinse, dump, sponge, rinse again procedure.  I would say that “dump” would be the most important step.  If the there is some water still in the cup when one goes to sponge the inside of the glass, you will know that you are learning a physics lesson.  This is because when the sponge is put in the glass, water will proceed to shoot out of the opening of the cup, splashing you.

2.  Gravity-It’s the law: The faucet in our kitchen sink is located high above the bottom of the sink.  This means you can get more dishes in it before you need to wash them.  However, it also means that acceleration due to gravity will cause the water to accelerate towards the center of the earth and will come into contact with the bottom of the sink so fast, that it will splash.  This coupled with a relatively shallow sink, will also result in a wet dishwasher. However, gravity is also a plus in this situation.  The dish drying rack is located directly above the sink, inside a cabinet.  It is a brilliant idea.  The dishes are out of sight in a cabinet while they are drying.  The water will drip directly into the sink as they dry.  This, coupled with the correct ambient temperature and relative humidity will result in dry dishes in a relatively quick manner.

I am sure that more laws of physics will become more evident as the semester continues.  Over spring break I am hoping to explore the phenomenon we call “lift” as we conquer Europe.

This week was our first week of classes.  I wasn’t sure if I could handle sitting through a two hour plus lecture, as there are times when I can barely sit through a 50 minute class at Cornell.  However, I am impressed.  The professors have been very engaging, and have share a lot of interesting information with us.  Our first class, “Italian Food:  History, Culture, and Taste” made me hungry while we listened about the rise and fall of the Roman Empire, their encounters with so-called “barbarians”, and how food and agriculture influenced everything that they did.  In our EU and Italian agriculture/economics systems classes, we have learned a lot about how policy in the EU has both stimulated and repressed food production over the past 60 years in order to support producers.  I have found it easy to stay attentive in all of the classes because of their interesting material and engaging instructors.  Everything is just so different over here, especially when it comes to policy, so I think that is why it is so interesting.  I am excited to see what the next week of classes will bring.

Tomorrow is Friday, and due to a slight adjustment in scheduling, we don’t have classes.  We will be meeting with Federico to take care of some more Italian bureaucratic issues in order to legally reside in the country for more than 90 days, and translate some tourist information about Verona for a possible weekend getaway.

Ciao!

PS-The weather as been fantastic this week!  Sunny and 50s (F)

Happy 71st Birthday Chuck Norris!

Nuevo parole di Italiano: fattoria (farm), caseificio (cheese house),

The official first week of classes for Universita’ degli studi di Parma has begun.  So what did we do this week?  We had some experiences on the Parma buses, learned some Italian, visited a farm, enrolled in the University, and paid some rent.

We have now figured out the bus system here in the city.  As you know, our last trip on the buses lasted a little bit longer than we expected it to.  We now have a bus pass for a month, and then in April we can buy a three month bus pass if we want to.  They only sell the “three month” passes every three months.

After our bus adventure, Federico decided the next day that he would pick us up at our apartment.  We went to the vet faculty and did some more translating of the blog and learned some more grammar from Federico.

Wednesday, Federico picked us up in the vet faculty’s van.  This van is like a box.  The sides and the back are literally straight up and down.  From our apartment we went to a dairy farm owned by the Scalabrini family, about 25 kilometers outside of the city.  It is a “antica fattoria e caseifico”, meaning it is an old farm and a cheese house.  The site includes its 300 cow dairy operation, its cheese production facility, and a store.  This combination is something found often in Italy.  As they are producing genuine parmigiano-reggiano cheese, they cannot feed fermented forages or TMR as per their co-op’s requirements.  They feed hay and grain.  They are not looking for quantity, but quality.  Further, the evenings milk sets in shallow vats in the cheese plant overnight in order to separate the solids, and when the mornings milk arrives, the partially-skimmed milk is added, and the cheese making process begins.  This means that timing is crucial.  As such, the farm uses a double 14 parlor in order to milk their 300 cows fast to feed the cheese plant.  This is a common practice in Italy.   Unlike in the States where parlors often run around the clock, they only milk for 4 hours a day to get the milk to their cheese plant on time.   At the end of the tour, Federico bought us 2 kilograms of Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese, and the farm owner gave us what is an equivalent to about 2 containers of fresh Ricotta cheese.  (Grazie mille per Federico e la famigla Scalabrini!)  We mixed the ricotta with some tomato sauce and threw it in with some big noodles for dinner.  It was very delicious.

Today Federico picked us up again and took is to the central offices of the University in a small car, called a Fiat Panda.

The offices are located in the center of the city in a building that we have heard is upwards of 400 years old.  According to [http://old.unipr.it/ects.php?info=Guidaateneo&tipo=a0506&ID=4&lang=en], the earliest diploma found from the University was from 962 AD.  In the central offices, we went to the Erasmus department, which is the European name for an exchange program.  Here, we paid our rent (350€, which is roughly $482), got enrolled in the University, and learned about the bus system as I mentioned earlier.  However, to be fully enrolled, we need to bring passport-type photos to the Erasmus office, so we can get our ID cards and our exam booklet.  Luckily, we can just go to a photo booth (like the fun ones in malls) at the train station to get instant passport photos ourselves, relatively cheaply.  Once that is finished, we will be completely enrolled.

After enrollment, we took the bus “campus”.  What they call campus is where the main academic buildings and departments are, including the basics:  The ag school, engineering, math, sciences, and linguistics, among others.  We headed to the linguistics department for our first day of an elementary Italian course.  It was a bit overwhelming, but the translating that we did, our background in Spanish, and the lessons with Federico gave us enough background to understand what was going on—for the most part.  In the class there were students from Poland, Portugal, the UK, and Iran.  They knew much more Italian than we did.

Following class, we went back to the central offices for a meeting for Erasmus students about a teaching placement opportunity.  The University partners with local primary and middle schools and lets exchange students help teachers teach their native language.  This means that we would be able to go to an elementary or middle school and help teach English-an AWESOME opportunity.  We also can get credit for this if we put in enough hours.  Our ability to do this will depend on our class schedule, which we will find out about next week.

One more day of classes, and then we are off to Milan for a day trip on Saturday (at least that is the plan so far).

Arrivederci!

Italian Words: piovere (to rain), ombrello (umbrella), Dove siamo? (Where are we?)

Have you ever felt like you made the right decision, but you were being carried the wrong direction?  Welcome to the Italian bus system.

This morning we walked to the train station, which also acts as a bus hub.  Almost all bus lines stop there.  There are two places that a bus can stop.  They can stop right in front of the station, or just around the corner, near the temporary train station (the main station is being renovated).  We needed to catch a #6 bus to the vet campus, and we knew that only the #6 at quarter of and quarter past the hour would actually go on its extended route to the vet school.  So we saw the bus pull up at 9:15, and we climbed aboard.

One hour later we were wondering where the stop for the vet school was.  We seemed to be way out in the countryside, outside of Parma.  Then the bus stopped for about 10 minutes at the end of its route way out there, and then returned to the train station.  Huh.  Must be a different #6.

As it turns out, when the bus returns to the station the second time, it pulls up to the second bus stop, the one that is around the corner by the temporary train station.  From there, it does the extended route to the vet school.  So we got on the next #6 we saw at the other stop, and 10 minutes later we were at the vet school, after roughly an hour and a half of travel.  It was a good thing that we are only doing informal Italian lessons this week with Federico, otherwise we may have made a very bad impression.  We called Federico and he understood our situation, and there were no problems.

We began our linguistic adventures by translating our own biographies that are on the blog.  Apparently Federico is an avid reader.  He printed off the entire blog and little by little we are working on translating it.  Later this week we will get into some agricultural words.

più tardi

Italian Words: proto (ready, quick, hello), alimento (food) andiamo (lets go!)

The Flat

First Impressions:  Awesome.  A bed was so nice after 35 hours of travel.  It has 3 bedrooms, a kitchen, bathroom, and a living room/dining room.  Liz and Lindsey are sharing a room, Aubrey took the room with the double bed, and I was left with an echoey room with a very small twin bed.  The flat literally includes everything:  Extra light bulbs, towels, partial bottles toiletries, toaster, (tiny) washing machine, toilet paper, sheets, and TV.  It has artificial flagstone floors and is heated with hot water through cast iron registers.  In the morning we walk around until we find the warm spots to warm our feet (from the heating pipes).  When the doorbell rings, we have to pick up what looks like a phone receiver without buttons (weird) and we can talk to the people at the gate outside our building.  Then we press a spring loaded light switch to “buzz” them in.  We were even able to get WiFi provided by the City of Parma.  It is usually slow and very hard to connect to.  We can only have one Skype call at a time, and only one person can upload pictures to Facebook.  But hey, its free. (I have been told “you shouldn’t look a gift horse in the mouth”…apparently it’s a saying).  At the University and in a local mall there is also free WiFi which should be faster than what we have here.  We bought a few groceries the other day, and last night we had our first real dinner together.  Today we finally figured out a good place to buy groceries just to the north of us, around a 10 minute walk away.  This place is in the shopping mall and has a variety of stuff.  It is called Ipercoop.  Basically a Wal-mart…good stuff…BUT we still can not find peanut butter.

The City

Parma is a very walkable and bikeable city.  Unlike Ithaca, and many places in upstate NY, it is flat.  Is so nice to walk on flat ground.  Parma, like most Italian cities, reminds me of Seattle in terms of having a coffee bar (also known as a bar or a caffetteria) on every block instead of a Starbucks.  (By the way, they do have Starbucks at the London Airport).  There is also a pizzeria or two on every block.  Yesterday we ate pizza for lunch.  1€ for a slice of pizza margherita and 1,80€ for a Coke. (note the use of a comma instead of a decimal point).  Our flat is located a couple kilometers away from the city center to the south, and a kilometer or so away from a shopping center to the north.  Usually a pleasant walk to Piazza Giribaldi, where there are lots of little shops, lots of banks, trattorias, a Champion Athletic store, and many gelatorias.  We made it our goal try as many of the gelatorias in Parma as possible.  We wondered around and found our favorite one, Grom, from when we were in Parma last year.  We have yet to find our favorite trattoria, down a sketchy alleyway past a stone arch, which we went to last year also.

The University

Federico took us to the Faculty of Veterinary Medicine today.  We took a tour of their offices, labs, library, and barns.  It is a very small campus.  There are about 50 students per class year at the faculty.  Our classes will be taught in English in the sense that the professors will be speaking to us in English.  All of our handouts and powerpoints will be in Italian. Next week, we will spend the mornings with Federico working on technical language, basically to learn agricultural terms and practice our Italian.  In the flat, we try as much as we can to speak to each other in Italian.

The People

We were informed prior to arriving in Italy that the Italians were nice people.  It is so true, so far.  We just have to make sure that we don’t get scammed being the naive Americans that we are.  At the train station, people were always willing to point us in the right direction or offer help.  Somehow they knew we were American.  (Again, probably because of Aubrey’s huge blue duffle).  Even the ticketers at the train station were helpful and seemed to enjoy there job a whole lot more than an American ticketer, and way more than a toll booth worker.  When we went back to the ticket booth after we missed our train, the man looked at us, and then had a surprised look and then glanced back at his clock, and looked back at us, and asked “what happened?!?!”

Also, all Italians that we have met have said to us “I apologize for my terrible English.”  Why apologize?  We are the visitors needing to learn the native language.  Apparently the older generation knows Italian and French, as it used to be the standard second language.  Now it is English.  When we went to an apartment with our tutor and a bunch of his friends, they made an effort to speak only in English.  Sure it was not perfect, but we could understand each other very well.  Many of them spoke well in Spanish, which the four of us are also familiar with.  It amazes me how well we were able to communicate using the bits and pieces of three different languages.  When someone would start a sentence, we could tell just from their body language (especially Italian hand motions) what they meant to say or were trying to say.  To me, this seems to be some sort of phenomena.

That’s all for now.  I think we are going to head to Bologna tomorrow to do some more exploring.

Buenosera.

New Words: stazione ferroviaria (train station), biglietto (ticket), me aiuto! (help me!)

I apologize in advance for the long post.  I have so much to share about getting from New York state to Parma, Italy.

We are here we are here!  It is crazy that we are a half a world away from home.  For Liz and Lindsey, it took 25 hours to get to Parma.  For Aubrey and I, it took about 35.  Getting to Parma, was definitely a journey in itself.

The four of us were supposed to meet in Philadelphia for our direct flight to Rome.  Aubrey and I flew out of Syracuse, Liz out of Albany, and Lindsey out of Manchester.  As Mr. Steinbeck suggested even the “The best laid schemes of mice and men. Go often askew”.

The flight 3833 from Syracuse to Philly was delayed 3 hours, putting Aubrey and I past our 2.5 hour layover, causing us to miss our direct flight to Rome.  Our new flights sent us to London, and then to Rome.

When we landed in Philly, Lindsey called me.  They were on the plane that we were supposed to be on, waiting in line at the deicer.  So close!  Can we just jump off the plane onto the tarmac, run over to the deicing station, and climb aboard?  Not so much.  How would we catch up with them in Italy?  They do not have world phones, but at least Aubrey has one, so we can call our contacts in Parma when we get there.  We wished them the best of luck, I sent them some phone numbers and said see you in Parma.  I felt I like I was on the amazing race. On the bright side, there were 11 other people traveling to Rome from Syracuse, so we had a checks system to make certain that we were in the right place in the airport.

We flew to London.  Check that off our list of places to go.  Stayed for 3 hours, and flew Alitailia to Rome.  For some reason, Aubrey’s world phone was not working in England.  Maybe it was not supposed to work in England.  We will try again in Rome.  We landed in Roma after our three and a half hour flight from London, got our baggage, and caught the Leonardo Express to Roma Termini.  Roma Termini is very confusing for a first timer.  The Leonardo Express from the airport arrives at the station a little ways away from the rest of the platforms.  We had to drag out luggage around the station.  We tried Aubrey’s phone again.  Still nothing.  We bought prepaid Tim Wireless SIM cards and phones at the station.  Very cheap 25€ phones, that feel like they will break so easily.  I pressed the down arrow on Aubrey’s phone and a piece of plastic flew off of it.  However, it should do the job.  The SIM card would not be activated for another 12 hours, so we still could not call anybody.  We tried pay phones, but it always told us “partial rest not available” on the screen of the payphone.  We were not able to figure it out, so we did were not in contact with anyone.

At the train station, we booked our train with 74€ tickets on the Frecciarossa train (a bullet train), directly to Parma.  We followed the signs, waited at the door under the track.  We heard the train roll in, but the doors to the tracks didn’t open.  That is how it works in NY Penn station.  Apparently not here.  Next thing we know, the train takes off, and it is no longer listed on the departures board.  We missed our train.  We waited, however security told us to leave, so we went back upstairs, dragging our luggage still, and tried to figure out what to do.  We stressed out a little when we realized we really could not contact anyone, and that we missed our train.

So we got our tickets changed for an additional 2.40€, as we had to take a different Frecciarossa to Bolonga, and then a local (R or regional) train to Parma, putting us there a 2:00AM.  We found our train immediately.  Apparently all the train tracks end upstairs, so we were able to walk around them, and get directly onto our train, instead of going underneath the tracks and using the stairs to cross.  Basically we missed our first train because of poor signage.

The train had desks, outlets, and best of all for 0.01€, unlimited access to the world wide web for 24 hours.  We plugged in our phones and my computer, and I began to write an email to all of our contacts in Parma, as well as a few at Cornell that may be able to help us.  Our problem was that we would be arriving in Parma at 2:00AM, did not know how to get to our apartment, did not know where Liz and Lindsey were, had no phones that would work in the country, and could not figure out the payphones.  The email was like an SOS cry for help.

About 3 hours into the 4 hour train ride, I recieved an email from Federico Righi, our contact in Parma.  He is like our advisor here.  He told us he got our email, and that his collegue Gulio would pick us up at the Parma train station, and take us to our apartment where Liz and Lindsey were.  What a huge sigh of relief!  The weight was lifted off our backs.  We finally had a plan.

We arrived at the train station, in Parma, and Guilo spotted us right away.  It must have been Aubrey’s huge blue suitcase.  Or that we were American.  More likely the former.  We packed ourselves and our stuff into his car, he took us to the flat, we buzzed in, and Liz and Lindsey woke up and opened the door for us after about 20 minutes of buzzing.  I have never been so happy so see someone as I was then.  After 35 hours of travel, we finally made it to our apartment, and were able to sleep in a real bed. (Aubrey took the big bed, so I was stuck with a twin).

I have so much more to share, but this post is way too long as it is.

Arrivederci!