Goodbye, Siena!

I leave Siena in less than five hours! I can't believe it. This week has been very good though. I had classes both Monday and Tuesday. Wednesday was a really fun day. There are two main tourist attractions in Siena: the Duomo and Piazza del Campo. We decided that it was pretty pitiful that after two months we hadn't been inside the Duomo yet. So we did that on Wednesday. After that, we enjoyed lunch and some gelato. I went home after that to finish writing a paper and then I went on a run. Daniela came home and we had dinner together then had our own little Family Home Evening (it had been planned for Monday, but we had to reschedule because of my class). After opening exercises, I shared a scripture and thought and then we enjoyed our refreshments (pears from dinner) and watched Harry Potter. It was a very fun night!

Yesterday was my last day in the kitchen. I had two different sessions, one with each cook, so it was pretty nice. The morning session wasn't a class, we just prepared a going away lunch for a group of students (from Utah, actually) that are leaving today. So it was just me, Nando, and Marqious (the man who dropped the chocolate cake). These kinds of lunches are fun because there aren't students to teach or anything so I get to do a lot of cooking. (The picture above is of me, Nando, and Letizia!)

Last night Luisa and I had a class of 8 students. I mentioned to her last week that I had really loved one of the dishes we made about a month ago, so she made sure to put it on the menu just for me since it was my last night. It was a good dinner! My dish is called Malfatti Grattinati (I think). It's a very good spinach and cheese dish, topped with two different sauces. Mmmmmm. The dessert was delicious, but unfortunately is had raisins soaked in brandy. I had been in charge of preparing the ingredients for the dessert, and Luisa had pointed out the cupboard that had the brandy in it. I was hoping the it would be clearly marked, but it wasn't. None of the bottles had the word "brandy" on them. I just stood there trying to figure out the Italian names. Luisa saw me and started laughing because I looked so clueless. Then when she realized the dilemma we would be facing when I came time to eat the brandy raisins, she got worried. I asked if she could do a part without brandy raisins, but she told me to just spit them out when I tasted them. Unfortunately, I don't know what that taste would be, so I just dug around all of the raisins. When the class was over, I asked if we could take a picture together. She insisted on sitting down for the picture because I'm so much taller than her (she actually compared me to the letter "l" last night because I'm so long and tall, apparently). She gave me a hug and a kiss as I and as I was leaving I said, "Vi voglio bene!" (I love you guys!) Luisa hadn't heard, so her friend, Mariella, told her what I had said. I was almost out of the building when all of a sudden I heard someone yelling, "Anch'io! Hillary! Anch'io!" (Me too! Hillary! Me too!) She came running after me with her arms wide open to hug me. She told me to email her when I got home and tell her that everything went okay getting home. She is so funny, and I definitely learned a ton from her. Every time she'd teach me something new she'd say, "Did you get that Hillary? You have to do that when you go home. And you have to tell everyone you had a really good teacher!" She was definitely an excellent teacher and I'll miss her!

When in Rome...

I finally got the chance to go to Rome last weekend and it was amazing! It was beautiful and it was so cool to see all the places that I’ve seen so many times in movies! I thought about Gregory Peck a lot while I was in Rome. While I was walking around I thought of Roman Holiday because it’s one of my all-time favorite movies! And while I was at the Vatican I thought of The Scarlet and the Black, a World War II movie he’s in that Mom loves. And then I had a professor that looked like Gregory Peck and he told us a story about il Campo dei Fiori, so while I was there I thought of Gregory in a round-about way. My train got into the Roma Termini Station at about noon on Friday afternoon. Friday was really great because my cousin, Alan Whitacker, was also in Rome with two of his sons so we spent the day together. Their train got in after mine so I made my way to the Spanish Steps and ate the sandwiches Rita had packed for me there. I met Alan at il Campo dei Fiori (a piazza) and we made our way to the Vatican. I absolutely loved the Vatican! It was incredible! We went through most of the museums and the Sistine Chapel first. That was so, so cool. I love seeing the works of art that I studied in my humanities class last fall. My favorites were School of Athens and the Sistine Chapel. We made our way to St. Peter’s after that and it was absolutely amazing. The basilica is huge!! It’s beautiful inside. Probably my favorite part of my entire trip to Rome was seeing Pietà. It is incredible. I loved it so much. On Saturday I had extra time and I considered going back and waiting in the line again just so I could see it one more time.

After the Vatican we were hungry so we made our way to the Pantheon because Alan had read about a restaurant near there that we wanted to try. It was very good, but the best part of the evening was dessert. On our way to the restaurant Ethan, one of Alan’s sons, noticed a store with a huge wall of candy, so naturally he was drawn to it. We went inside and found that it was gelateria. Not just any gelateria. There were TONS of flavors and they all looked delicious. Every flavor you could imagine! They had at least 15 different variations of chocolate! There were at least 100 flavors (probably about 110 including all of the soy ice creams) and I really wanted to try every one of them! It took us forever to decide. I got kiwi, banana split, and chocolate coconut. It was incredible. It was pretty late at that point and Alan wanted to go to the Trevi Fountain. It was really cool at night. After seeing the fountain I made my way to my hostel which was pretty close and they went to their hotel which was in the opposite direction.

The hostel was alright. I met some really nice people there and I actually talked with some of them for a long time. I didn’t sleep very well because it was sweltering in that room and the window was open to try to cool it down a little bit, but all that did was let in the noise from the street. I ended up waking up pretty early and leaving. I bought some little pastries and ate them at the bottom of the Spanish Steps. I then made my way to the Colosseum. It was awesome and I loved it! It was a very hot day so that wasn’t very fun but I got to see tons of cool things so it was alright. From the Colosseum I went to the Forum and explored that for a couple hours. When I saw the Pantheon the night before, it was closed, so I went back so I could see inside. After that I took a bus to la Bocca della Verita (the Mouth of Truth). They go there in Roman Holiday so I just had to see it. That was cool, but it didn’t take very long. In fact, nothing took nearly as long as I had anticipated. I had planned to be in Rome until Monday. At that point it was about 1:00 in the afternoon and I had been to everything on my list of places to go in Rome. I was all alone and I didn’t quite know what to do with myself. It was kind of nice to be on my own because I could go at my own pace (which happened to be very fast that day), but at that point I decided I didn’t like being along. I decided that there was no need for me to stay overnight on Sunday since I’d already finished everything I’d wanted to do. The next day, Sunday, all that was on the agenda was to go to church and then to the temple site. I was really excited to do that. Now Rome is an amazing city and there is tons to do, but I was alone and extremely tired and I just wanted to be back in Siena. I kind of alluded to that fact at I talked to my mom and she suggested that I just go home then. It made sense, so I did it. First I went back to Della Palma for one last gelato. I got apricot, kinder bueno (a candybar with milk chocolate and white chocolate), and strawberry. I asked for the flavor grape-strawberry and I was so excited about it but it was loud and the guy only heard the strawberry part. I wasn’t in a mood to be critical so I just let it go. It was delicious. I stopped by the Trevi Fountain, threw a coin in, and then went to the station. There was a train leaving for Siena in 10 minutes. It was perfect. I got on and made it back to Siena before the sun set.

Chocolate Disaster

Last night I had the best pasta I have ever had in my entire life! It was so good!! We had home-made pasta (I don't know how I'm going to go back to eating store-bought noodles) with a creamy asparagus, shrimp, leek sauce. It was incredible! I would never have thought to put shrimp and asparagus together, but it was amazing! I could have eaten it all night long. I probably would have if I didn't have a stomach ache. Our dessert was going to be incredible. Everyone was so excited about it. Luisa kept telling me how delicious it would be. We made a crust that had ginger in it, and then melted chocolate and mixed, among other things, orange zest with it. Then we cooked pears and Luisa arranged them in this beautiful fan pattern on the top. One of the students is here in Italy with his wife to celebrate his birthday. Luisa got so excited because she found a little candle in the dining room and we were going to surprise them and go sing to the guy.

There's a student at the school named Marquious. He's from Brazil and when he speaks it's a big jumble of Portuguese and Italian. When I first got here I thought he was a worker in the kitchen. He seems so familiar with it and with everyone here and he never really mingles with the other students, he often eats with us in the kitchen. I recently found out that he is, in fact, a student. Sometimes he kind of gets in the way because he's been here so much that he just does his own thing and he sometimes causes Luisa grief. He also tends to leave knives in the soapy water. I cut myself on one once. So last night when it was time for dessert Luisa, Marquious, and I went to the dining room to sing to Stephen. Luisa and I went in first and she turned off the lights. Marqiuos was carrying the cake. As he entered the room we were ready to sing, when all of a sudden there was a SPLAT! Somehow the plate slipped right out of his hands! Pear went everywhere and the chocolate masterpiece landed face down on the floor. Everyone was speechless. Marquious looked like a little boy that had done something wrong and was afraid of his mom finding out. Luisa was so sad. Everyone tried to make her and Marqious feel better, but we were all sad we weren't going to get to eat it. It looked SO good. We ran to the kitchen to get paper towels to clean up and when we got back to the dining room Marqious was gone. He had fled the premises. It was so sad and Luisa felt terrible about Marquious running away, she wasn't mad, but had probably given that impression at first. Luckily we had some really good strawberry baverese (a type of cream) in the freezer that was left over last week. Luisa served some of the up with powdered sugar and it was delicious. We actually ended up carving some pieces out of the bottom of the cake that hadn't touched the floor because all of us really wanted to eat some. It was delicious! But poor Marquious. It was actually really funny...to everyone but Marquious and Luisa. I kind of ran into a corner at first so Luisa wouldn't see me laughing. The picture above is Luisa with the remains of our chocolate/pear masterpiece after we'd tried to salvage the part that hadn't touched the floor. Luisa is so funny, she looks kind funny because she was in the middle of saying "Yoo Hoo!" as I was taking the picture.

A Rainy Ride Home

The first time we ever attended the branch was a fast Sunday and ever since then it has been my goal to bear my testimony in Italian. Sunday was my last time attending the branch in Siena and it was also a fast Sunday, so I did it! It was cool to have one of the missionaries stand up there with me and translate what I said into English. The branch was mainly comprised of tourists and other visitors on Sunday. I think there were only about 5 actual members of the branch there. During church, though, it started raining really hard. The rain reached its climax during sacrament meeting, and Daniela and I got really discouraged because we had to ride our bikes home immediately after. By the time it got over, the rain had died down a tiny bit, but the ground was still really wet and our bikes were soaked. One of the missionaries offered us plastic bags to put over our backpacks so the water splashing up from our tires wouldn’t get them too wet. Instead, he came out with garbage bags for us to wear over our clothes and backpacks. We fashioned makeshift ponchos out of them and then embarked on the wet journey. It wasn’t too bad. I was wearing a white skirt though and it kept brushing against my tire, so the hem was filthy by the time we got back to Rita’s. It was definitely an adventure. I had my camera in my backpack and some of the branch members insisted on taking pictures so that we would always remember it.

Fish, Eggs, and Eri

Friday night was kind of a disaster in the kitchen. It was another private lesson with that really nice Argentine couple (the one that can’t eat cream), and they had made special requests for the menu. They said they wanted to learn how to make pane del rosmarino (bread with rosemary) and pesce frittata. Now, some clarification needs to be made. There are two words in Italian that are kind of similar. Frittata and Frittura. They are very different things. A frittata is like an omelet, cooked with some oil (of course), various vegetables, basil, and other herbs. A frittura is a fried dish. They meant to ask for frittura. But instead of requesting fried fish, they requested a fish omelet. Luisa thought this was kind of strange because it’s not an Italian custom to have fish in your eggs. She tried her hardest to be fancy and inventive with it. It was definitely creative.
First we made the bread. We made the pane del rosmarino, focaccia, and ciabata (a long, hard roll). I’m not entirely sure why Luisa had them make three different types of bread, but I love bread so I didn’t complain. Then we started the egg creations. They said they didn’t want any pasta or any dessert, so in order to make the first course more substantial, Luisa had them prepare three different egg dishes. Luisa was shocked that I had never made a frittata before. She asked me how I ever expected to find a husband without knowing how to make one. From that point on, everything we did was going to help me find a husband. Luisa and Miriam kept telling me which dishes to make in order to secure one.

We cooked the first two in oven. They were definitely the most interesting. The first had egg, onion, peas, and calamari. The second had egg, onion, asparagus, and shrimp. The third frittata was called frittata alla trippa. Trippa means tripe. Don’t worry, it didn’t have tripe in it. The egg was cooked on the stove and then rolled up and cut into long, thin, spirally strips. Those were then put into a tomato sauce that we made, giving the appearance of tripe, apparently. We had almost finished cooking all of the eggs and the couple mentioned that they thought a frittata was a little different. As they described what they had expected, the miscommunication was discovered. Luisa was so mad because a frittura would have been so much better! We did have grilled fish for the second course, so that kind of made up for it. But not entirely. It was an odd meal. We had three types of bread, three types of egg, fish, and a cake that Luisa and I threw together because the couple hadn’t requested any dessert. The bread was all delicious. The eggs were definitely interesting. The shrimp/asparagus one had a sort of brownish-green color. To make it even better, they had been cooked in heart-shaped oven tins. So we had two heart-shaped omelets, one with shrimp and the other with squid, and one that looked like tripe. The worst part was that the lady, Miriam, can’t eat eggs either! Her doctor told her she can’t have that much cholesterol. She waited till Luisa was out of the room to put her portion back on the plate. She offered me her tripe eggs, but I said no thank you. The fish, on the other hand, was delicious! I loved it.

Even though it’s a lot of work, it’s really fun doing private sessions like that. Usually the chefs and I eat in the kitchen and the students have a separate dining room. But this couple always insists that we eat with them. It’s fun. The cake that we made, was also good. Minus the eggs, the meal was actually quite good. Each type of bread we made was good. The pane del rosmarino had raisins in it and it was delicious! We put sweet onions on top of the foccacia this time and I loved it. We had made so much bread that I got to take lots home with me, so I was excited!

I have made a Japanese friend here named Eri. She is so nice. She is a student at the school learning Italian and she comes to the cooking classes twice a week. She’s so cute and after the first class she asked if she could have my email address so we can keep in touch. She always invites me to parties and stuff, but I can never go because it’s too late and I have to ride my bike home. Yesterday, however, we went out for some gelato in the afternoon. It was fun. She’s just full of surprises, though. Daniela and I had been talking about how well Asian people age and I was wondering how old she is. She looks like she’s my age, but I’m terrible at guessing age so I figured she was about 22 or 23. I asked her the other day and found out she’s 33! Then I felt really stupid when she asked me how old I am and I had to tell her I’m 19. She just said, “Oh…almost the same age…” and smiled.

Last week I asked her how she was and what she had done over the weekend. She told me it had been fun and then casually mentioned that she had gotten married!!! I freaked out. She had never said anything at all about being engaged! She showed me her ring and some pictures she had of their wedding, which took place in Florence. Her new husband is also Japanese and lives in London. She’s very nonchalant about the whole thing, it’s crazy. Anyway, it was just a really big shock going from my engaged roommate, Daniela, who sits on her bed at night saying “I love him! I love him! I love him!” and staring at pictures of her fiancé, to Eri who failed to mention to me that she was even engaged! When we were planning our gelato outing I asked if she could go last Tuesday, she said she couldn’t, but she never told me it was because she was getting married the day before!

Venezia!

Venice was wonderful!! I love it! It's definitely one of my favorite places so far!!! We woke up really early on Saturday morning in order to be at the station by 6 am. We got to Venice at about 2, so it was a pretty long day of travelling and we were tired. The first item on our agenda was to go to the island of Murano: a five minute boat ride from the city center. Murano is where they make murano glass, for which Venice is famous. We had talked about how fun it would be to get lost in Venice because everything is just so pretty—our wish was granted. We got lost right away and had to back track to the train station and start over with a map. On the way to the boat we passed a restaurant and one of the waiters started walking alongside me and whispered in my ear, “Free. Free food. I have free food for you. I have a free drink.” We learned in my prep class that you’re supposed to treat them like a telephone pole by walking past them and not acknowledging what they say. I kept on walking, but once I got around the corner, naturally, I started laughing.

We took the traghetto (ferry) out to Murano. I liked it a lot. It looked like Venice and had the same feel but it wasn’t nearly as crowded. And it was amazing because every single store was selling murano glass and they were filled with brightly and beautifully colored glass. It was so pretty! We walked around and shopped for a few hours and then headed back to Venice. We found Ponte Rialto (a really cool bridge with stores on it) and got some dinner then went in search of some good gelato. We definitely found it. This gelato was perhaps the best thing I’ve ever tasted in my entire life. It stands unparalleled among all of my past gelato experiences. I got a scoop of banana and a scoop of hazelnut with chocolate in it. The hazelnut chocolate was really good but the banana gelato tasted exactly like a real banana! It was so good! I still can’t get over how amazing it was. At that point we headed back to the train station so we could catch a bus to our hostel.
The next day, Sunday, wasn’t quite as magical. It was still amazing because we were in Venice, but there were just a few setbacks. I didn’t sleep very well at all. Daniela and I had to share a bed and she was snoring really loud because she’s had a cold. Whenever her snores would reach a crescendo I’d shake her shoulder or pull on her pillow and then hurry and pretend to be asleep in case she woke up. Usually that worked and the movement would mute her snores for a while until they started up again. We got up early and left the hostel by 6:30. There was a big boat race in Venice that day and there were hundreds of rowing teams from all over Europe there. It was really cool. It started at Piazza San Marco so we went to see the start of it. For some reason I was having problems with allergies so Daniela gave me some of her medicine. We bought it in Lucca a couple weeks ago because Daniela’s been having allergy problems. It wasn’t supposed to make you tired, but there was either an antihistamine in it or some other strange Italian ingredient because it kind of made me feel weird and a bit drowsy all day. It was really cold that day, too. All week it had been really hot so I hadn’t packed a jacket. I was wearing a skirt and short sleeves. The hostel we stayed at had given us a free T-shirt for staying there (I was so excited about it because I love free T-shirts!), but all they had left were extra large ones. It was really cold and that was all I had so I walked around Venice all day wearing an over-sized T-shirt. It was actually the same color as my skirt so I looked like a navy blue blob. I considered buying a sweatshirt and I even tried a couple on but there weren’t any with long enough sleeves and I didn’t want to get one unless I really liked it. We walked around for a few hours and we were both really tired and neither of us felt very good. We really wanted to go inside the Basilica di San Marco because it’s absolutely beautiful but on Sundays it doesn’t open until 2. We were going to wait until then, see the basilica, then head to the train station because we had to catch our trains at 5. At about 12:30 there was a line outside the basilica and we got really excited because we thought maybe they’d opened it early. It ended up that the line was for the horse museum. As cool as that would have been…we decided against it. We still had about an hour and a half before the basilica opened and I felt really sick. I almost fell asleep as we were sitting on the steps of the basilica. We decided that we would go see if we could catch any earlier trains. Daniela was heading to Milan to her old mission area because she had Monday and Tuesday off of work. I had to be at work in the morning so I went to Siena. Daniela was able to find a train that left about 2 hours earlier, but there weren’t any earlier trains for me. We found a bench and waited for Daniela’s train. I slept out for about 15 minutes and she woke me up when it was time for her to go. I still had about 2 hours to wait so I wandered around the station for a while and then went out and explored the little streets outside the station for a while. I bought a pear and an apple that would serve as my dinner until I got back to Rita’s because she said she’d have a fruit salad for me when I got home.

Finally, at 5:00 my train came and I had to say good-bye to Venice. I really loved it, even though the last day hadn’t been that great. It’s an incredible city and I’m definitely going back. I got to Bologna and had to switch trains. I got on the train, but we didn’t leave at 7:45 like we were supposed to. In fact, we sat on the tracks for an hour. You would think that I would have learned my lesson after my last experience with rail travel on Sunday. I had two other train connections to catch after the Bologna train so I had definitely missed them. I started getting nervous because trains don’t run very frequently on Sundays and it was getting late. Everyone on the train was really frustrated. I was getting really scared because I didn’t know if there’d be another train for me to catch and I didn’t have any way of knowing until I got to Florence. Right before the train finally left some random man and woman came and sat by me. I felt like I should talk to him, so eventually I got over my shyness and did. I didn’t understand what he said when I asked him where he was from, but the lady was from Romania. For some reason this guy was really hard to understand, he didn’t even talk that fast, but he kind of mumbled or something. He asked where I was going and so I told him I was going to Siena and I showed him the trains I was supposed to take but had missed. The boy across the aisle from us overheard and started talking to us. He was headed in the same direction as me and was going to have the same problem. He told me to wait a second and he made a phone call. He talked to someone for a long time and he found out what I needed to do to get back to Siena. I had one option and if I missed any part of it I would be stuck until the next morning. I had to get off at a different stop in Florence and wait for about an hour, take a train to Empoli, and take a bus from there to Siena. The boy, Simone, was so nice. He got off with me in Florence, showed me where my train would leave from, and helped me find out what time the bus left from Empoli. As we were walking he said, “Okay, you are in Florence, in the very center of the city. So if you have fear, do not worry because there will be tons of cops.” (Something to that effect, sometimes his English was a bit confusing). It ended up that he needed to take the same train as me because he was going to Pisa, where he goes to school. Neither of us had eaten and it was about 10:30 pm so we went to McDonald’s. He could tell I was nervous so he even spoke to me in English for a while before we switched back to Italian. We talked about food, school, Italy, trains, and President Obama. We got on our train and he needed to study because he had a big test in the morning. I tried to read but I was feeling really antsy and I was afraid I’d miss my stop and get stranded somewhere. I tried to act calm, but Simone kept saying “Tranquilla. Stai tranquilla!” (Calm down). Apparently I wasn’t that good at hiding my anxiety. In Empoli I got off and he kept going to Pisa. Before I got off the train, he pointed to a man out the window that I could ask about my bus. I caught the bus and finally made it back to Siena at about 1:30 am. Rita had waited up for me, so she came and got me. It was a very long day. The people on the train were so nice and they totally saved me, especially Simone. Everyone in Italy is so nice like that, they’ll always help you and it’s so amazing!

Fun in the Kitchen!

Last night in the kitchen was really, really fun! It was different because there were only two students. I think they paid extra to have private instruction. So it was just me, Luisa, and this couple from Argentina. Luisa was really excited as we were getting ready because she thought we'd get done early, which is always nice.The couple already spoke Italian really well, plus their Spanish helped, so I didn't need to translate into English for them and we just spoke in Italian most of the time.

Things didn't go as smoothly as we had hoped, though. There was a miscommunication and no one told Luisa that the lady, Miriam, can't eat cream. The menu was already written up and we had everything ready. Unfortunately the appetizer had a cream base, the pasta had a cream sauce, and the dessert was panna cotta (cooked cream). It was awful, pretty much everything had cream in it! Luisa had to do lots of improvisation and she did marvelously. She's brilliant! We put more eggs into the appetizer to substitute for the cream. It was an asparagus and cheese gelatin-type thing served with grissini (they're kind of like the Italian equivalent of french fries...sort of). For the pasta Luisa threw together a tomato, olive, onion, garlic, mint sauce. It was very good and served over fresh-made fettuccini. The second course was veal cooked with finely chopped carrot, onion, celery, and garlic. And red wine...it cooks out, don't worry. The dessert was the toughest. Luisa asked if she could substitute caramel for cream but they told us that they don't eat sweets. So Luisa had to come up with something compltelely different. She had them make a crust, this really good vanilla filling, and then she topped it with fresh berries. The couple had also requested focaccia bread. I was really excited about that because I love focaccia and had never seen it made before.

It's kind of nice having only two students as opposed to the usual 15-20. There isn't as much to make so it's more laid back in that respect. But the down side is that it takes a lot longer. When we have big groups everyone is working on something at the same time so the food gets done simultaneously. With Miriam and Carlo, though, they made everything themselves, one thing at a time. So it took a really long time. Plus Luisa had had to completely change a lot of the menu. She was really irked. She was always smiling and sweet to them but then she'd mutter things in Italian under her breath about how we were going to be there till midnight, etc. Usually there are at least three of us to help with instruction and cleaning, but last night it was just Luisa and me. So we were really busy the entire time. Usually the students start eating their appetizers at about 7:30. Last night it was 8:30 by the time we finally started getting the plates ready.

Luisa and I were so tired and as we were cutting the focaccia bread she told me I couldn't eat any. When I asked her why she looked really serious and said, "C'e caffe'!" (there's coffee) We both started laughing really hard. She thought she was so funny. She got all read in the face because she was laughing so hard. Then she said, "No, no c'e vino!" (no, no there's wine!) She thought that was even funnier. On Tuesday night, for the first time, we had cooked with coffee. As we were getting everything set up I saw coffee in the recipe but I didn't say anything because this dessert was kind of complicated and I didn't want to have her doing something completely separate for me even though it looked really good. It had white chocolate. It wasn't until half way through the meal that Letizia, one of the teachers that helps in the kitchen. remembered that I don't drink coffee. Luisa couldn't believe it. She knows I don't drink wine because they have it every night and I don't take any. So now she delights in making fun of me for it. It's so funny. After the focaccia bread, everything had coffee and wine in it. And she thought it was so funny every time. But it's okay, she redeemed herself by giving me an extra piece of the dessert and putting an extra raspberry on it because she knows they're my favorite.