BEST Welcome Home Gift EVER.

My year in Italy at UNISG. Every picture, every blog post are included. every lower case letter and spelling mitsake are also included. My sister, somehow, formatted my blog amazingly into this hard cover book. All my efforts to capture each moment, to record memories, and to tell the stories we experienced seem secondary to the hard work and time my sister put into this. Tears and words could not express how much it meant to me; the thoughtfulness of it all as my family not only told me how much they enjoyed reading my blog over the year and how upset they were when there wasn't a new posting to start their day, but to know that they liked it as much as I loved living there. They realized how much it  meant to me that now I have all those memories in my hand to relive again with just a flip of the page. I just cannot love it or my family enough. Enough that I carried it out with me for the first couple days and people would ask me why I brought my yearbook to the bar. Then I would show it to them and gush about my sister and they too became obsessed. 

As I flipped through the book, memories jumped out of the pages with more stories to tell:

I'm published!! 

Created by Jessica Ryan. Produced by John Ryan. Written by Shauna Ryan.

UNISG memories.

Summers in Zso-ugly.

when mum and dad came to visit, trip to piemonte. (upside down)

enthusiastic!! pickerlicker!

i thought this picture deserves its own post, jess thought then it should deserve it's own page.

upside down, UNISG memories.

ciao ciao bene. i love you.

jess's favourite post.

amazed.

A Multinational Thanksgiving in Colorno, Italy

196 photos. 100 italians. 37 fist pumps. 30 alma kids. 26 unisg students. 21 drinks spilled. 16 different countries. 9 Nh-ers. 7 hours of dancing on tables. 6 creepers. 5 tutors. 4 tables full of food. 3 turkeys. 3 bottles of Prosecco. 2 professors. 2 "bomb-diggity" dj's. 1 secret ingredient. 1 crowd surfer. 1 allergic reaction. 1 american holiday. 1 tiny town pub in italy. unlimited tear-inducing laughs.


For all the Americans who felt homesick, I think this holiday in Italy really lived up to some serious expectations and surpassed any judgements foreigners have about what Thanksgiving is all about. Usually, you eat so much that you can only slouch on the couch and daze at the football on the TV. However, this year, after gorging on delicious recreations of everyone's family's favourites, the turkey-fest was filled with dancing on wooden picnic tables to infamous pop music on repeat. What a way to burn off all those calories! I had a blast. 


I'm not sure if I can include any photographs in this post or if they are too incriminating. There are fantastic videos on youtube though, if you can find them...

paper plates and plastic utensils.

Salone del Gusto

As we walked into the great halls of Salone del Gusto, the world's largest food fair, I was beyond overwhelmed. There were hundreds of booths and stalls offering information and samples of their products. It isn't only about tasting food, it is about learning about the products, but of course, in a food fair, there are people who grab samples without looking at the name, where it's from or barely recognizing what it tastes like before they stuff another sample into their mouth. Some of the booths have abundance of samples, some require a payment or donation, some have really nice packaging and marketing campaigns that they hardly seem small scale or artisinal, some are really enthusiastic to talk about their products, some use unique techniques like half dressed women in aprons to attract patrons, while others lure you in to buy their products so that they can fund their way home. It was fantastic to taste these products from all over the world with people who wanted to share, until there was the pressure to buy. Then it lost the point of the fair.

Just one of many Italian cheeses.

Calabrian Chili Peppers. Beautiful.

Tuscan Beans. Made friends with them and their minestrone bean cart. Delicious. 

Women weaving Tomatoes.

 The largest of the rooms was occupied and sorted by different regions of Italy. Cheese, Emilia-Romagna cured meats, Tuscan olive oil, Basilicata cured meats, Piemontese cheese, Sardinian cheese, Trentino wine, balsamic vinegars, artinsal beers, Val d'Aosta cheese, grappa, Friuli wine, chocolates, preservatives, bread, Puglia olives, Lazio cured meat, Sicilian cannolis, cheese, Campagnia olive oil, bread, Tuscan wine, artisinal beer, Calabrian spices, cheese, cured meat, cheese (notice a common Italian theme?) let alone a ton of Slow Food Presidium products - red celery, turnips, onion, peppers, lentils, beans, biscuits, fish, fruits, and cheeses and cured meats of course. 

Dried Goat Jerky.

Beautiful Chocolates.

Spicy Cheese.

Red Aubergine.

Cannoli the size of his foot. and he ate it all. 

We wandered through, wide-eyed. We were unsure of the etiquette - could we just taste and sample our hearts out without having to buy anything? We couldn't walk more than 2 steps without having more overloaded plates of samples in front of us. A new pant-size amount of cheese samples and a rice-based beer later, we made it into the international hall - my favourite part. Here were booths with most, but not exclusively, international presidia products from all over the world. Honeys, Spanish cured meats, Latvian bread, Bulgarian beans, Scottish haggis, French foie gras, Norwegian dried cod, German cured meats and cheese, Polish sausages and knishes, American craft beers, Mexican mescal, French ground-cured-multi-aged cheeses, Tibetan Yak wool and cheese, Chilean peppers, Peruvian potatoes, Latvian tree sap beverages, a Korean restaurant, Swiss cheeses that were shaved like truffles, Spanish seaweed, Austrian pit cabbage, Afghanistan raisins, rums from around the world, UK beers, Welsh salt, German beers, Macedonian dried figs and pickled cabbage, Central American coffees, Dutch oysters, lobsters, and cheese, Czech beers, and of course Irish raw milk cheese and a stall from Board Bia. 

Tibetan Yak Cheese. Way Fattier Than Cow's. too cold for an internship.

Scrumptious Latvian Bread, with leaves...

The Mexican Stand.

American Craft Beer. Way to represent, America. Hello, NH!

Japanese Oysters.

Dutch Oysters.

Spicy Mexican Insects. we tried to go back for more...

I could probably go on and on and on but it would be impossible to taste everything. It wasn't just about the tasting the different products, it was about talking to the producers and asking them questions. Some of them were asleep at the stalls, some look bored, but most of them were enthusiastic to talk about their products. They had a lot of pride. They had a lot invested in their products - to most of them, this was their livelihood. They had all traveled a long way to be here, they should show off what they have to offer.

Waldo and Juan from Chile. 

The international pavilion was by far my favourite.

"You tasted it. Isn’t that enough? Of what do you ever get more than a taste? That’s all we’re given in life, that’s all we’re given of life. A taste. There is no more." The Dying Animal, Philip Roth

On the last day of my trip around NW Italy with John & Sheelagh in September, we had lunch in Lecco. After a week of my parents insisting that I translate and communicate in Italian for them, knowing fully aware that I can speak as much Italian as they can and most, if not all of the Italians we interacted with spoke perfectly comprehensible levels of English, my dad asked me one last time to help with the bill. Luckily enough for me though, sitting on the counter by the register were bottles of Ferran Adria's new beer. Luckily enough for me, my dad was standing right next to me paying the bill. 

The famous chef of Spain's El Bulli and Barcelona's Estrella Damm collaborated to create Estrella Damm Inedit. I had heard about it but had never seen it for sale so I guarded the 12euro bottle until it was the right time to enjoy it. It has been sitting in the fridge since September as I had promised to share it with beer-loving Jules. Perfectly chilled, he poured it into wine glasses, obliviously obliging to the instructions. It could easily have been an subconscious act as the bottle itself looks like a wine bottle: sleek, black glass with a long neck topped with a beer bottle cap. Typical for artisinal beers. 

It wasn't bitter at all, but danced to melodic fruity tones. The amber colour matched the orange notes just as the frothy foam matched Ferran Adria's legendary technique. Easily drinkable, it made me long for hot summer nights, rather than the hint of winter that fall was harvesting upon us. 

"Shauna, let's make a promise that in ten years time we will be sitting together, drinking Irish Coffees, and remembering this conversation." - Jules.

"and we will be happy."