a taste of Italy

As a group activity my director, Greg Walker, was kind enough to organize for us a wine tasting. Needless to say I was over joyed with excitement! We were able to sample and analyze four wines; white, rose, red, and sweet.

Our teacher for the wine tasting gave us three categories that we should separate our wines into: visual, aroma, and taste. For visual we should determine if it is clear, crystalline, foggy... for aroma we state any smell that comes to mind such as oranges, rosemary, earth. Lastly for taste we determine if we can sense the four main tastes: bitterness, acidity, sugar, and salt.

I want to save some of the things that I learned for when I come home and share a glass with my avid followers but I shall leave you with this overall assessment, I love wine!

Another taste of Italy that I was able to enjoy was that of Christmas coating the city! Lights, wreaths, candles are starting to adorn all the shops and street ways of the town. On the night of the Emmaculate Conception, December 8th, there was a large ceremony in the Spanish Square where Pope Benedict the 16th came to say a prayer and to commemorate the placement of the wreath on the statue of Mary in the center of the square.

Seeing the Pope again as he drove by in his Pope Mobile coming from the Spanish Square

The wreath on top of the Statue of Mary

I was blessed enough to have one of my friends, Alex Mathison, come visit me in Rome from his program in Madrid. I showed him most of the sites of Rome from the Spanish steps to the famous gelato place next to the Vatican called Old Bridge (supposedly that is where the Pope goes for his gelato)!

This week is my last week in Rome and in Europe! I will be spending most of my time observing the Vatican Museum as well as hitting the books from my apartment- hope you are all getting excited to see me as I am overfilled with excitement to see you!

Ciao for now