Photo taken while walking back from the gym, when I got the idea for the photo-a-day project.

Today I made Liz's delicious recipe for banana bread, which came out mindblowingly.

Last night I had a dream about the chick pea soup I ate at the Trattoria di Mario a Firenze. It made me realize that eating in the U.S. just isn't the same as eating in Italy. When I first got back, I had very little appetite but thankfully I went to a quite authentic Italian restaurant which was incredible. However, when I told my host dad over skype, very enthused, that I had just "almost eaten an Italian-style meal," he responded, "Ok. Did you have appetizer, first course, second course, side dishes, wine, coffee, dessert and fruit?" "No," I said. "Alright, then. You did not eat Italian style. You know very well what it means to eat Italian-style!" In the dream there was this explosion of flavor, which is what it's like to eat in Italy. It's not just that their food is better-prepared with higher-quality ingredients and time-tested family recipes (all of which is true)-- it's that the food actually seems to be quite a different substance.

Incidentally, there was a bug that just landed on my computer and freaked me out, which reminded me of this one time early on in studying abroad, I was lying in bed reading around 11pm and I heard a thump. An enormous grasshopper was bumping up against my wall! I ran downstairs and my host dad came up to kill it.

It's just one of the little things I remember...