Al Dente Diary 🇮🇹

July 1st & 2nd 2026

Our first day of classes went well!

We ended up riding the bus there instead of walking and met a few other people from the program who were super nice! The walk is about 20-25 ish minutes, so the bus definitely shaves off a few minutes and is a nice opportunity for some air conditioning.

My food and culture professor is also a travel writer and food and wine writer/journalist which is so cool! I talked to her briefly about my career goals and interests and followed her instagram account, she wrote an entire book about mustard. I’m definitely looking forward to learning more about that career and lifestyle 🙂

Not only did I go to class and do laundry, I also roughly* learned how to play a few card games with some other members in the program! I was not very good and did not win once. I’m from Las Vegas, how the hell do I still not know how to play poker?

We now have a groupchat going with everyone in the program and someone sent out an invite to join us in going out to a few bars to watch the World Cup… on a school night… and so many people ended up coming. Since there was such a large number of us, we had a hard time finding a restaurant/bar that was able to accommodate everyone with seating and space, so we just kept getting further and further away from our apartments. By the end of the night we had to walk for about an hour to get home, at 1 am… and half of us had the 8:45 am food and culture class the next day. If you’re wondering why the hell I would be so stupid to do such a thing, same.

Thursday morning greeted me loudly at 7:30 am with the consequences of my own actions. I was exhausted and gave myself zero time to get ready so of course I was going to be late to class… and then my roommate suggested we take those god awful scooters.

Believe it or not, I still have all my teeth and all of my bones are intact. I definitely shaved off a solid three years of my life in the six minutes it took to get to our campus on those 20 mph death traps, but I was on time!

Thursday, July 2nd, was a busy school day for me because I had my food and culture class, then my Shakespeare in Italy class back to back—and our classes are all two and a half hours so I need to be better about having breakfast before. In my F&C class we are talking about food and identity—we learned about the “Proustian moment” which is a psychological phenomenon where a sensory trigger (usually a smell or taste) transports you back to a vivid memory suddenly and involuntarily. She gave each of us an Oreo and we were assigned to write about the memories it evoked, I titled mine “Sleepovers with my Grandparents” and wrote all about how bougie it was to have a tv in our Pottery Barn furnished bedroom and how much fun I had drawing temporary tattoos on my grandpa.

Up next was my Shakespeare in Italy class!

I signed up for this Shakespeare class confidently, I bought the books and packed all my annotating essentials and I walked into the classroom super excited to talk all about literature. I met the professor, shook her hand and expressed my interest in the course, to which she responded “well, this is actually an acting class.” Guys, I was aghast. I still am. Apparently “acting is actually reacting” and I will be learning how to cry on command this semester. She had us sit with our eyes closed to focus on our breathing for like 15 minutes, then we had to take turns staring into each others souls and doing some kind of mirroring exercise where we had to continuously repeat our observations about one another back to each other. All of my expectations have completely gone out the window, nonetheless I am looking forward to a new and very interesting experience.

After my classes were finished, I walked with some other girls to the piazza for a minute to explore!

I went home shortly after to do my homework and spend a moment in the apartment by myself since my roommate had class from 4-6:30. I also grabbed dinner with this girl, Sophia, and we made some weekend plans! On Friday we have our day trip to San Zeno di Montagna with the USAC peeps and on Saturday we’re going to Venice!

I’m so excited to see all the sights and eat more amazing food—and not sleeping on a twin bed for a night is also on the list of things I’m looking forward to this weekend!