Life Skills

Things I am learning to do in Rome

• Travel Plan: I could give up on my education right now and become a travel planner for Ryan Air and Hostel World.
• Dodge Traffic: This is a necessary skill for living/staying alive in Rome
• Ignore People: When Italians shout at you or when people try to sell you roses or toy cars, ignoring them is the best way out.
• Get More Wear out of Clothing: There are 3 washing machines for the entire apartment complex. If it doesn't have stains, a little Febreze is all you need.
• Push Your Way Through Tourists: I feel like I've lived here long enough to scoff at tourists and roll my eyes at the giant crowd waiting outside the Vatican Museum as I shove past them every morning on my way to school. Silly tourists, don't they know the line is much shorter in the afternoon? What tourists!
• Use Public Transportation: The metro is pretty easy once you get the hang of it and the buses are bad either. It's watching the people make out on public transit that's difficult. That and not falling.
  
• Cook: Some of you may be shocked by this. Out of necessity, I am indeed delving into my inner kitchen skills I know my mom must have passed on to me somehow. However, the goal of my meals at this point is not so much gourmet taste as is edible/not poisonous.
• *see recipe for my favorite and most frequent dish below
• Grocery shop: This goes along with cooking. I never realized how difficult grocery shopping was until I tried to do it every week and each week end up with a random assortment of food that doesn't go well together. I usually buy staples such as eggs, cheese, bread, and lunch meat then from there I just grab whatever looks good at the moment like raisins or kinder kandy or pineapple juice.
• Use the American stereotype to my advantage: If I don't pay the correct rate for something or otherwise get an advantage I should not, I just play dumb and say "Non lo so!" Maybe not the most respectable thing, but it occasionally works.
  
• Make Renaissance Art Fun: Madonna and Child is only interesting and pretty to look at for the first 140 versions, so after that, attention should be paid to how weird the baby Jesus looks and why there are floating baby heads around Mary. This or similar strategies may save you from losing all appreciation for the works of Botticelli and Michaelangelo.
  

In addition to all of this, I suppose I am learning cultural knowledge, some stuff in class, and general life lessons. The cooking thing will probably come in most handy.

*Recipe for Everything in the Kitchen Sink Pasta

1. Take necessary dishes (pot, spoon) out of sink. Washing optional.
2. Boil the pasta and accidentally add too much salt. Correct this accident by purposely adding even more salt, thus making this not an accident.
3. When pasta is perfectly al dente, throw frozen veggies into the boiling pot and overcook all contents of pot until they are mooshy enough to gum.
4. Drain pasta in the sink (clearing out of other dishes in sink is optional). Allow veggies to fall through colander. Save what you can.
5. To add protein to the dish, put an entire hard boiled egg on top of the pasta. Substitutes for egg include mixed nuts or lunch meat.
6. Instead of making the difficult decision of which sauce to use on the pasta, choose all them. Mix olive oil, balsamic vinegar, and tomato sauce to the concoction.
7. Sprinkle on some oregano and black pepper
8. When you realize you have made too much (too much, in fact, for all the food to fit into one dish) offer some to your roommates, who will politely decline.
9. If there is any salt left, add some more.
10. Enjoy the 15 taste sensation!