Tip #3

Join a gym. seriously. this is no laughing matter. first of all you're in italy which is home to fantastic delicious food in general. second of all, you're in school learning about food - it's hard not to want to or have to try everything to experience it at least once and to appreciate it. as one girl put it today, gastronomy is about learning every aspect of food, not an anthropology major studying with a focus on food, but we're understanding and seeing it through every lens - scientifically, historically, economically, sociologically...there's no way to avoid eating lots while you're here. especially since they give you the option to eat lunch at the ALMA restaurant every school day (a prestigious Italian culinary school housed in the same palatial building as us). We had the pleasure of eating there today, and have a week to test it out. I think the food is the product of what the students were cooking that day. today was a buffet of salad, sauteed vegetables, mixed chopped asparagus, crispy fried artichokes, ricotta stuffed and rolled into fresh bright yellow pasta, mashed potato-like squash, roasted pork with crispy skin, dark green wilted spinach, linguini with lobster bites in a creamy tomato sauce, risotto with peas, an assortment of fresh fruit and various breads of sorts, and i'm sure i'm forgetting some dishes. for 1,000 euro you could eat lunch here for the year, which i think works out to be about 10 euro for lunch every day - doesn't sound so bad for the amount of food and the quality of deliciousness. however...the gym costs 56 euro a month....and rumor has it that one girl last year gained 12 kilo/30 lbs in the first two months that she was here and by the 5th month everyone had gained so much weight they all joined the gym. (!!!!!!) so for 1,000 that i could spend towards my tuition or traveling plus the gym membership, plus maybe for the poor sake of the scale, and of course my sanity, i think i might have to forgo the tastiness. i don't know. serious dilemma. we're supposed to be learning and appreciating and experiencing good food - how can i give that up?

during the presentation today too, paulo said that students gain

on average 5-10 kilo (japanese not so much...damn irish genes). that is not acceptable since i barely fit into my jeans from drinking pbr's for a year in portsmouth. i tell myself that i will go running along the river....it's ironic that the students gain weight here, i mean, it makes sense, everyone expects it, but the fact that we're supposed to be learning about good food and nutrition and changing the way the world perceives and uses food seems to be the opposite. and david is here from taiwan because he sees how children there are getting fat due to their un-nutritional diets and when asked 50% of them say they like to have mcdonald's for dinner. he is here on this program because he wants to go back and change the way they eat, but what will they think if he goes back fat?!