This Fire(nze) is out of Control

Oh my giddy aunt, it's snowing!! Can't quite believe it, in Provence and in March. Pros: Possible 'snow day' and no school tomorrow (everything really does grind to a halt here when there's snow on the ground) Cons: Wet feet- all of my boots and shoes have long ago lost their waterprooficity except my hillwalking boots but don't really fancy wearing them out and about. So if I do have school I will most likely have soaked socks and cold tootsies, *sigh*.

I have decided that I will just hope it will be a snow day tomorrow and instead of preparing for school, will write a blog post and try and keep this thing rolling. First, would like to briefly mention the weekend which consisted of a Friday night Algerian (i think) fashion show in a Maison Pour Tous which featured some amaaazing dresses, photos to be added sur facebook soon. After this, getting home about 11, S and I made a cake, a Shokonusskuchen (sp?) or chocolate nut cake, with rum, yum! It's now Sunday and most of it is gone, oops. So much for the regime. Anyway back to chronology, on Saturday we started off the day in a similarly regime-ruining way at Utopia with a breakast of croissants and biscuits and brownies, oh my! Followed by some short films about the current situation in Mexico which were very touching and enlightening. Then about 12 we had to rush home and change clothes, and put together a packed lunch before heading out in Cl's car to Fontaine de Vaucluse, where we climbed a hill with some of Cl's uni friends. It was a really great day, and at night we went back to one guy's house whos birthday it was and ordered pizza. That was what the Shokonusskuchen was for by the way, the birthday. And then today I've been working out how to go home in April, and for how long. I'm thinking of trying the train, which is sure to take all day but I'm bloomin' fed up of airports plus I can take as much luggage as I can carry on a train- no 15kg limit.

So that was this weekend. But I wanted to use this post to describe my holiday in Florence in early Feb. I went with S and with D, a Sicilian friend who's also an assistant, and we stayed there about 4 days. It was absolutely amazing and I took sooooo many photos which I am still in the process of uploading onto fbook. The hostel we stayed in was fine, a bit shabby but clean, although they did try and fob us off into a shared room instead of the private room we'd ordered, plus it was terminally freezing at night until they gave us a small storage heater which I hated leaving on, being a bit of a paranoid freak and thinking it was going to set fire to the place. But ca est allé as they say. During the trip I even learned a little italian, spoken not written so I can't really put it into the blog without looking like a misspelt fool. Nonetheless, rest assured that my Bonjournos and Bellissimos were fantastic *cough*. We visited all the usual tourist attractions, and even managed to take a daytrip to Siena, but what I really want to document (so that everyone can laugh at me of course) is that I had one of the most silly language barrier confusions of my life. We went to this amazing vege cafe named Brac (reccommended to us by an italian assistant whose sister works there) twice during our stay, and the first time, after our meal (a delish seitan tortellini for me) we decided to order coffee. Now, I am a relatively recent coffee convert, and can only drink the stuff with a fair amount of sugar and a lot of milk, but I've recently gone off milk and taken to using soya milk instead when I can, but it obviously isn't very widely available in cafes. But I had noticed that it was listed in the menu that coffee with soya milk was available and so, after D ordered two cafes, I ordered a 'latte de soja' vaguely remembering that that was what was written on the menu. Looking rather bemused, the waiter told me that they were out of soya milk, so i told him 'oh ok then i'll have just a latte' in french (he spoke french but not english). He still seemed a bit confused and said in italian 'latte caldo?' but i didn't understand so just nodded away...

Anyone who speaks Italian probably knows what's coming next. You might have guessed it anyway. The waiter brings D and S their expressos, and brings me a lovely glass of hot milk. At which I ask D 'why do I have hot milk? I ordered a latte?'. And she replies 'yeah that is latte.' And I cotton on that latte means milk and that therefore when I go into starbucks and ask for a soya carmalatte, they understand me because we're in a coffee shop and because in English 'latte' would usually signify coffee, but if I ask in Italy for 'latte' without saying 'cafe latte', I am asking for milk, and I will get milk. I drank it by the way, but forgot to take a photo to bookmark my shame, so here's a blog entry instead.

My embarassing experience in Florence... or something like that.