It is Sunday, and I haven’t posted since last Sunday. To my friends who are checking in, I’m sorry. I have been so busy that I haven’t had time to write. Good for me. Bad for you. So let’s take a walk back in time to last Monday evening to my first cooking class here in Florence. I arrived at Apicius (sounds like - A pee shus) for my orientation 45 minutes before class as requested. Five minutes later, I had completed my orientation which included a tour of the facilities and the “gym”. Apicius offers both amateur and professional courses, and I have enrolled in one month of amateur classes. The professional school is a semester long at least and classes are Monday-Friday, which is way too much of a commitment for me. The amateur cooking classrooms are decidedly less professional than the others at Apicius, but functional and fitting the level of the classes. I donned my apron that proudly displays the school logo and introduced myself to my fellow classmates.
Victoria is the instructor. She is kind and funny with a pinch of frustrated. Despite the pathetic cooking metaphor, it is true. Victoria’s area of interest is macrobiotic (healthy) cooking, although you wouldn’t know it from the menus or her significant smoking habit. But she is Italian and smoking is a national pastime.
The Lees were helping Victoria measure ingredients for today’s menu when I arrived at 2:57. I’m already behind, and class hasn’t even started. I believe they are from Korea, but they have been surprisingly cryptic about their home and their first names. I have found out through the underground information railroad that her name is Helen, but he is still a mystery. They don’t seem to have basic cooking skills, but it may be a cultural difference in cooking styles. Anyway, they seem nice enough, but not particularly friendly. I won’t be enjoying an apertivo with the Lees anytime soon.
I pretend to look busy when three women walk in with the casual demeanor of people who know what they are doing. Addy is sweet and charming in a sophisticated way, though she says she can be terrible. I haven’t seen it, but I have seen her strength, and I wouldn’t want to be on her bad side. She is an elegant beauty even in her youth with intelligence and a caring heart. Addy is the kind of woman who will tell you the truth even when it’s difficult, but still support you if you ignore her advice. I like her very much. She finished her undergrad and got a job in a law firm, planning to apply to law school that year. However, she soon realized (as all of us do) that the law is not her cup of tea. I don’t know that anyone would become a lawyer if they worked in a firm before school. Maybe the American Bar Association should ban all internships. Just think how many good people they lose every year to the discovery that practicing law kind of sucks. (My apologies to any attorneys reading this blog. [Bob] I really like most attorneys, and I’m impressed with their professional drive. I even thought I wanted to be one until I worked at firm for a few months.) Addy then decided to leave her family and boyfriend in San Francisco temporarily to spend a couple months in Florence, learning the language, cooking, and appreciating wine. She took an international time out to define her next step without the influence of the people she loves, and that’s inspiring.
Lara is American with Italian citizenship, which opens Italian employment to her without the hurdles that most of us would have to endure. Hoping to stay in Florence for 6 months to forever, she has been looking for work. She has a warm and welcoming smile with a quick wit and infectious laugh. Her striking Italian features mix with American freshness and optimism with beautiful results. She is open, honest, and barrels of fun. Lara is from the Washington DC area, but went to undergrad in Charlotte, South Carolina, where she met Scott, the man she loves, but left to come to Florence. It is a complicated and personal story so I’ll just say that she is incredibly brave to demand a better life for herself. She is the best Italian speaker of the bunch and a total foodie. Her relationship with food is fun to watch and I’m glad I found someone who knows that food can be better than sex. Sometimes. When the food is really good and the sex is really bad. She has a blog and takes pictures of everything we put in our mouths. It’s pretty adorable.
Sheila is a fireball with black hair and amber eyes. She has some Persian blood and her dark features and light skin give her an exotic beauty. But Sheila is American through and through and the play between the two is fascinating to me. I would say that she was a little rock and roll and a little country, but she would probably hate that, and think I was as old as a dinosaur. She is from San Diego, but went to undergrad in Nashville at a Baptist school. I can’t imagine someone less suited to a Baptist school environment, but they offered her major, music management (or something like that), so off she went. It is one thing to have strength of character, but to understand it and believe in it at her age is amazing. She worked for a couple of years in Nashville as the tour manager for a pretty major country artist and even hung out with John McCain during the 2008 campaign. She can’t be more than 24, but has accomplished a great deal. However, talent management is a 24/7 job, and her firm was a little unorganized. She worked all the time with little support, and as almost all women find, the injustices of talent management were great. She has decided to move to London to find a job with an agency there, with a one month stop in Florence to cook. I have a feeling it will all work out for her. She will make sure of it.
So these ladies are my new friends in Florence. They are young and optimistic, but we hold a common bond. We are all a little lost. The road we expected to take has fallen apart to varying degrees. Of course, I am the most lost (figuratively and literally) of all of us. We are all searching for our new highway to happiness. (I apologize for that last sentence, but I couldn’t resist. If I had an editor, I’m sure it would have been removed.) I feel blessed to have met such great women and I know they will make my trip way more fun. Hell, they already took me to the Lion Fountain for karaoke night and everyone was under 25, except for me of course. And no, I did not sing.
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