About half an hour from Amsterdam, Utrecht is a gorgeous town with many old churches, canals, and buildings. I realized today that Utrecht University is more than 200 years older than OU–how crazy is that? Almost every building I’ve seen is older than America.

The Utrecht area has about 600,000 inhabitants, but it feels much smaller. Because I don’t have a bike yet, I’ve been walking everywhere, and I’ve been amazed at how quickly I can get from place to place.

Today, I attended orientation at my faculty, the Faculty of Humanities. Faculties here are the same as colleges at OU, but each faculty has its own campus. Most students only attend one faculty with no general education requirements. This is definitely a good thing–can you imagine walking from Sarkeys to the National Weather Center two or three times a day? That’s about how far apart each campus is.

The main campus is called De Uithof (pronounced eyt-off), and it has green spaces like a traditional American campus. Other campuses, such as humanities, look nothing like a traditional campus. They look much more like houses in a neighborhood than campus buildings. However, no campus is very showy. There’s no Seedsower statue or flashing Gaylord dome here!

The Faculty of Humanities is very close to my apartment here, which was great when it started snowing today!

Here’s the view from my back porch when I woke up at 9 a.m. It had just started snowing.

It snowed so much! It was still snowing when we went on a walking tour of the city center. We were absolutely freezing and kept slipping on the cobblestone streets. I couldn’t help thinking that if this was happening at OU, I would have already gotten a phone call from President Boren canceling today and tomorrow’s activities! The Dutch just toughed it out, though. Lots of people still rode their bikes as the snow was falling.

After the tour, my roommates and I walked back to our apartment. Two Koreans, a Turk, and a Texan all agree: this weather is too cold! We stopped by a grocery store on the way home to warm up (and to pick up a few essentials like Oreos!).

This is the view from my back porch around 3:30 p.m. As you can see, it snowed quite a bit! It’s now 6:30 p.m., and the snow is still coming down. Every time someone comes into the apartment, they’re complaining bitterly about the snow. We’re mostly warm-blooded people: from Spain, Korea, Texas, California, Tennessee, Turkey, and Australia, and we are just not used to this!

However cold it might be, I have to say that I am already absolutely loving Utrecht. Many Dutchies have promised the weather is unseasonably cold and that we won’t see very much more snow, though they are very excited at the possibility of the rivers up north freezing so they can have a speed skating competition.

My feet are cold, but I am alright with the sudden winter weather. The city is even more beautiful with a layer of snow–as long as I can look at it from inside and not out!

My name is Nelly Zoe Nieves – I prefer to go by my middle name, Zoe. I’m 21 and a Multi-Disciplinary Studies Major at OU. I’m minoring in Japanese and my career goal is to be a translator. I want to learn Korean, and maybe go back to French sometime in the future. Japanese is my favorite language of all time – I think it sounds extremely beautiful, elegant, and polite. I’ve always loved the Japanese culture and even my mom says I must have been Japanese in another life. Throughout my blog, I hope to teach others about the Japanese lifestyle, culture, and maybe some of the language. I thought it’d only be right if I started with a post about food. Sure enough, there’ll be plenty more of these in the future!

Good old fashion Ramen with rice!

Here’s a Japanese meal that I feel encompasses the epitome of Japanese cuisine. Ramen! And rice! I hear ramen is Chinese, but that doesn’t mean it’s any less popular here in Japan. If you want a quick, usually cheap, meal, ramen is the way to go. There are several different types of ramen, with different meats and/or broths.

The ramen I’m having here is your typical ramen. My friends and I found a small, cozy, cheap ramen shop near our dorms here in Yamagata City, and we’ve loved it ever since. Though my friends eat ramen more often than I do, I still appreciate a good bowl now and again. In America, it’s rude to slurp your soup, noodles, what have you… But in Japan, you’re supposed to slurp your food to show sign of enjoyment. At first, I had to get used to the many Japanese folk slurping their noodles around me – but now I find myself doing it too. I hope I don’t forget my manners when I return to the states.

Accompanying my ramen is a small bowl of rice (which isn’t typical with ramen, but I love rice). In the little white bowl you have some pickles and a yellow vegetable we never figured out the name of. In the black bowl you have tofu topped with fish flakes. And in the striped bowl you have chrysanthemum (kiku in Japanese). I didn’t like the vegetables (even back home I dislike pickles), and tofu doesn’t taste like anything so it’s edible… however, I dislike fish (quite tough when living in Japan) and the fish flakes were extremely powerful in taste. The chrysanthemum was actually pretty good, but I did the mistake of eating it alone instead of adding it to my ramen, and it was a bit too much to handle. It’s pretty sweet however.

Japanese Beef!

During the first week of arriving in Japan, a nice Japanese student took us out to “tabehoudai.” Tabehoudai is basically an all you can eat. It’s pretty expensive (we went to one that was $28 each) so I’d only recommend it as a special occasion. During tabehoudai, you’re given a menu of all the items you can order and have for the amount you’ve paid. The tabehoudai we went to specialized in meat. They brought out two grills (there was quite a few of us) for us to cook our meat on and gave us menus. We ordered different kinds of meat and then we’d cook it ourselves on the grills. A lot of the meat was extremely tasty – especially a certain type of beef that was ordered. We also ordered mini sausages, which were delicious, takoyaki (octopus balls), which I couldn’t bear to eat, ramen (which was gigantic and too much to eat given all the other food), french fries (which were extremely hard to grill, but tasted delicious ungrilled so it was okay), and vegetables to grill with your meat.

The tabehoudai was a lot of fun and a nice way to meet new international students. We all tried a little bit of everything, but we could only eat so much before we were far too full. Perhaps, before we leave back to our home countries, we’ll have another tabehoudai and order everything we couldn’t have the first time.

Look at all those deserts!

Pictured here are the deserts sold at a restaurant I’ve yet to go to. I’m afraid of going because not only will I gain 100 pounds in less than 5 minutes, but I’m sure I will go bankrupt. Japanese deserts are incredibly fancy, and therefore incredibly pricy. They’re worth as much as a meal is, if not more in some cases. However, they look worth it. I’ve yet to try an actual Japanese desert, but it’s my goal to have at least one every other weekend. They’re usually gigantic in size, and filled with all sorts of delicious, deserty goodness.

So far I’ve seen them separated into two categories. There’s the “All Desert” desert, which is all sorts of sweets. Usually chocolate, whipped cream, some sort of cake or cookie-like component, and sometimes ice cream. And then there’s the “Fruit” desert… which would probably be my favorite. I love fruit more than most foods, and in Japan fruit is both hard to come by, and expensive. The fruit desert is made up of fruit (of course), and usually chocolate or something sweet – like a glaze, whip cream, or so on.

My goal is to head back to this place someday and order myself something off their delicious desert menu!

Fried soba noodles.

Yakisoba! So far one of my most favorite Japanese foods. Yakisoba is fried soba noodles. Soba noodles are wheat noodles, thin, and usually served cold. While I haven’t tried soba noodles in their original form, I have fallen in love with yakisoba. There is a little yakisoba place my friends and I found on accident located in the train station. This is my plate in the picture – it’s usually served with a sunny side up egg (which I don’t like, hence the lack of). My version is the smallest, because I couldn’t survive a large.

At the table they place yakisoba sauce, which is tangy and sweet, and some sort of seasoning that was labeled “black and white pepper.” It had a lemony taste and I put a little too much on my noodles because of how good it tasted.

If you ever get a chance to have yakisoba, please do! It’s extremely delicious and worth a try. The yakisoba place in the train station is now one of my go-to restaurants.

Taro Potato stew

During one of our field trips, we were able to visit a 300 year old house where we were all served delicious imoni. In Yamagata, during the fall the people celebrate “imonikai.” Imonikai is a potato party – family and friends gather by river banks to eat taro potato beef stew. Though we didn’t get to enjoy ours by a river bank, we did get to enjoy it with tons of lovely people and friends.

Pictured to the left, at the bottom left hand corner is the actual stew. The giant gray-ish lumps are the potatoes (which were extremely delicious and my favorite part of the stew). There are vegetables, and hidden from sight are strips of beef. Above the stew are some onigiri. Onigiri are rice balls wrapped in seaweed. They’re usually seasoned with several different types of flavoring (depends on who makes it). I don’t like the seaweed, so I usually eat around it – but it gives the rice flavoring. They’re nice to have as a breakfast food or snack in between meals. Behind the onigiri, shaped like tiny, fat ‘m’s are slices of tofu. Next to the onigiri in the white bowl are slices of daikon. Daikon is a white radish, and tastes very fresh – I really enjoyed them. Next to the daikon is something I forgot – but remember no one touching haha.

The imonikai was extremely successful and we were all thankful to the staff of Japanese woman who toiled in the kitchen preparing it all for us 50 some students. If I ever come back to Yamagata, it will be during the fall, so I can enjoy imonikai by the river side.

Pancake bear!

Last but not least is a little cute pancake bear that I got to eat at a festival we held at my host university. The pancake was topped with whip cream, bananas, pineapples, and chocolate syrup. It was so cute it pained me to eat him… but it was so delicious, it pained me to not! Japan has tons and tons more food that I’ve yet to even see, much less try. I hope that by the end of this trip I’m a lot less picky and a lot more open. I’ve tried everything I’ve been offered – and though I might not have liked some, I’ve learned new dishes I definitely love. Though not pictures, I’ve come to love ebi tempura (fried shrimp) and gyoza (another Chinese food, dumplings stuffed with vegetable and meat). It’s hard to come by unhealthy food here in Japan… There are rarely any “fast food” places to eat here in Yamagata, and the ones that are around are extremely far away and far in between. And even there the food seems healthier than ours. Meals are served everywhere you go, all of which are made up of rice, healthy vegetables, and/or soup. Though I miss a lot of food from back home, I’m enjoying the healthy options I have here!

Next time, I hope to post about some beautiful places I’ve been to so far. Until then, keep traveling!

-”Go to the gym. Take vitamins. Make yourself go to a café or grocery store, just go somewhere where there is light. You will feel depressed but you can fight it!” This is the advice I have given to survive Russia’s most dreariest month: November. In November it is cold, and will snow but the snow will not stick so rather than the picturesque image of Petersburg covered in snow, you instead find yourself wading through dirty puddles. Also they day shortens to the extent that it will be dark when I leave for class (around 10am) and dark when I come back (around 5 am). While the days have shorten to that extent yet, whenever I wake up around 7 it looks as if it is midnight. I’m not too worried though, I have already made a playlist to combat the inevitable depression (complete with the Beatles “Here comes the Sun” and Matt & Kim’s “Daylight”). The real challenge will be getting myself to get out of my warm (very, very, very warm) room and be social and explore.

-St. Petersburg is home to it’s fair share of Beatles fans. There is a an art gallery/care/bar in St. Pete’s called Pushkinskaya 10. At Puskinskaya you will find a giant yellow submarine painted on an wall on which fans have written messages to the Beatles, along with their favorite lyrics. There was even a party at a nearby bar celebrating John Lennon’s birthday where a bunch of bands played Beatles songs. Despite the fact that none of the Beatles most well known hits were played the crowd was so excited and joyful during the concert that it didn’t matter whether or not you knew the lyrics, the energy just rubbed off on you.

- Vyborg
This past weekend a few Russian friends invited a group of friends and myself to Vyborg, a Russian town not far from the Finnish border where there is an old Swedish castle. The train ride there was relatively uneventful, aside from the vendors walking down the aisles selling everything from beer to snowglobes and other trinkets. When we arrived it was cold and drizzly, and thus went to a café/convenience store to wait out the weather and eat. After stopping for lunch (sandwiches, homemade pickles, salo (pig fat), bread), and making many, many toasts we noticed the rain had lessened and decided to make our way through the town. We visited the Swedish Castle, and stopped at a café before catching the next train home. On the train ride back, our Russian friends made their best efforts to teach us some Russian songs. After many attempts and some success, they asked us to return to favor, which ended with two of my friends singing “Back in the USSR” by The Beatles, to the amusement of the few other people on the train.

While the fact that I have lived in Petersburg for almost two months and have not frequented all of the cities landmarks and sites I am finding that being with people is just as valuable and worth while as going to a museum.

The giostra is not just one afternoon, however. Ceremonies and celebrations spread throughout the month, and particularly the week before the joust. Each quartiere has a headquarters location, where parties are held each night and a community dinner at the end of the week. Nearly everyone in town wears his or her scarf that represents his quartiere. The rivalries between quartieres can be pretty intense, and arguments and fights are not uncommon.

At the joust event they also have trumpeters and flag-throwers (one of the best teams in the world, apparently). They practice throughout the week, and on Thursday afternoon Andy and I walked over to the Duomo and stumbled upon an event where the they were performing for the Miss Italia group.

The city is so crowded and so rowdy on joust day, but so much fun!

Long story short, on the bus there was no sign or announcement indicating which stop was which, we got off at the stop at 10:36, our expected arrival time, and ended up five stops away. Which also happened to be over five kilometers away.

Summers and falls in Italy are full of “sagre” or festivals. Often they focus on a certain food or drink, but offer full meals of great food and a fun sense of community. My cousin Luca and his family live in Ponte Alla Chiassa, a small town about 10 minutes north of Arezzo. This weekend Ponte Alla Chiassa hosted a sagra, and Luca invited us to attend it with his family and his girlfriend Martina. One of the specialties of this sagra was a pig’s nose.
When you attend a sagra, you stand in line, order and pay for your food, and go sit down at a table with your ticket. The tables are long, bench style tables under tents. It is crowded, and the service takes a while, but that is part of the beauty of the sagra. It is about community and talking with those around you, having a great time.

Here is a picture that shows an example the table area. This was later on, so not as crowded as the peak eating time.

Andy and Luca ordered pizza with prosciutto, I ate maccheroni, Martina ate trippa, Chiara and Francesco ate antipasti and steaks… There is a large variety of food, and you can’t* (for the most part) go wrong!

Here is my maccheroni. As you can see, it is not what we think of when we hear macaroni in the US. It consists of long flat noodles topped with meat sauce. (Note: there are other forms of maccheroni in Italy too, but this is the type I have eaten at two sagre.) It is tasty with good flavor, and filling. I made Andy eat about half of mine. (And his pizza was delicious too!)

I was also told I act like a northern Italian because I eat my salad before my pasta. In Tuscany the order usually goes: antipasto, pasta, salad, meat (and then dessert if there is some. or fruit for dessert.) I got used to this during my last trip, but haven’t broken my American eating-salad-first habit yet.

Martina ordered trippa. In Florence, it references the cow’s stomach, often pressed into a sandwich. But in this case trippa is cow intestines. It was a peasant’s meal in the past, while the noblemen got to eat the actual meat/muscle off the cow. Andy and I both ate a bite of trippa. It tasted good, but the texture was a bit chewy for my taste. I am glad I tried it though!

Luca’s parents, Babbo Carlo and Mamma Ambra, bought us four desserts to share and sample. They were all delicious! Clockwise from the top was blackberry, jelled fruit with some cream, chocolate and apple. Andy and I were asked our favorite, but it was an impossible decision. The pastries were all so good!

In addition to food, the sagra also hosted music and little carnival games. We played this and Martina won a little cow toy.

A lot of Italians are intrigued by cowboys, the Wild West, Indians, etc. I already knew this, but it was revealed even more when I saw them dancing after dinner. You know how Americans take classes and learn how to do foreign dances such as the tango and salsa? Well, they were dancing intricate square and line dances to country-ish music and songs from the movie “The Last of the Mohicans.” (Note: when we were at a restaurant/bar last Thursday night we also danced to Cotton Eyed Joe and Oh Susanna, so it doesn’t seem to be a completely rare occurrence.) It’s so funny and cool.

We went over to Chiara and Francesco’s house and hung out with some of their friends, Luca and Martina. We got to drink homemade limoncello produced by Chiara’s parents. It was delicious! We had a wonderful time and are so grateful to call these people our friends and family.

Andy, Devon, Luca, Martina

Francesco, Chiara, Devon, Andy

1. Always needing exact change. Well this is not something I need to get used to, so much as something I am resisting. I honestly try to give the cashier as close to exact change as possible, but sometimes I can’t. This usually isn’t a huge problem, unless I go the café at my university. So, despite the fact I rely on the trolleybus to get around, I have yet to purchase a bus pass, meaning most of my change goes to the trolleybus (and any remaining change goes the banana vending machine. That’s right, a banana vending machine, that I frequent quite often). As a result, buy the time I make my way to the front of the line to purchase my usual yogurt and piroshok, I am left without small change. Every time I hand the cashier a hundred ruble bill for a 70 rube purchase, she looks at me as if I just killed her puppy.

2. Mayonnaise on salad. It just ain’t right.

3. Mullets. Russia has produced incredible literature, architecture, music and theater. Not even the land of Pushkin is immune to this trend.

4. Mosquitos and wind. I probably should have expected both considering St. Petersburg is located on a march. While I love Oklahoma, I wasn’t expecting the umbrella-breaking wind to follow me to Russia.

5. Getting weird looks when speaking English in public. I am well aware of the Ugly American stereotype of loud, obnoxious, slovenly Americans, but I didn’t expect to get glares or odd looks when I said a few words to a friend in English.

On the other hand, there are hings I have definitely gotten used to:

1. Drinking tea all the time. I get the English own the trademark on being incessant tea drinkers, but I think the Russians could give them a run for their money.

2. Always carrying an umbrella. Always.

Now that the one month marker has come, I feel like I’m finally making the transition from tourist to resident. I feel comfortable here, and can use the transportation and navigate the city without feeling out of place. Everything has happened in the past weeks is just a scattered mess in my head I’m going to explain it all through a hail of bullet points:

* Crime and Punishment walking tour

Whenever anyone asks why I am studying Russian, I usually mention the Cold War and Fyodor Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov. It is unlikely that I would have read the Brothers K if it wasn’t for a high school reading assignment. Furthermore, the only reason I chose that book was because a classmate of mine (who’s taste in books I trusted) chose to read it (had I known the book was over a thousand pages at that time I might have gone with a different book). After reading the Brothers K, I wanted to read Crime and Punishment. Easier said then done. I bought the book my senior year of high school, started in my freshman year and when I came to Russia was about half way through it. The only explanation I have for my snail-like pace is a preference for non-fiction books which often distracted me from Dostoevsky’s wordy masterpiece. Upon coming to Russia, however, I figured I should probably finish Crime and Punishment, considering the book takes place in St. Petersburg. The walking tour I went on included Raskolnikov’s (the main character) apartment, the scene of the murder.

* Pavlosk and Pieterhof

To be honest, I am not one for palaces, I like walking inside them, but my interest in them is minimal at best. Yes, they are pretty, and historical but I can’t get excited about super old silverware and landscaping.

Pavlosk: Imperial Palace, was a gift from Empress Catherine to her son, Paul I and his wife Maria Feodorovna in celebration of the birth of their son, Alexander (say what you will about aristocrats, but they are not stingy when it comes to gift giving).

Peterhof: I actually really enjoyed Peterhof which is really famous for their fountains. Known as the Russian version of Versailles. Peterhof has a lot of incredibly ornate fountains, some are even interactive that will spray you unexpectedly (thus another reason why you should always have an umbrella).

I should have known the ride was going to be an interesting one when we had to walk out to Termini’s new terminal, 1 East. Far, far away. Dragging our heavy suitcases the whole way. Before departure, a man came on board with a bucket of cold water, juice and beer. We already had a bottle of Gatorade and a bottle of water, and thought there was no need to buy more. We would regret this decision immensely.

Our train lacked air conditioning, and I was surely sweating off all the gelato pounds I had gained in my few days in Rome. Halfway through our journey, with about an hour and a half left until Arezzo, we were making sure to ration our water. We had brought some bread and prosciutto onto the train to make sandwiches for lunch, but knew we could not eat because the saltiness of the prosciutto would only make us more thirsty. I decided that if we made it through this train ride without fainting, we definitely deserved a spot on the television show “I Shouldn’t Be Alive.” There was a reason this trip only cost us 12 euro each. I was sweating, exhausted, and not entirely sure I would make it.

But, alas, we did. We got into Arezzo, walked over to the main part of the station, and met up with Lucio, OUA’s local student coordinator . He recognized us because I had “Oklahoma colored luggage.” These bags have been in my family for years, and even since attending OU I have never made the connection that they were crimson-colored. I was glad they were Crimson though so that he recognized us! We grabbed our stuff, walked over to our apartment and starting moving in. Even after 5 long flights of stairs with heavy luggage, and no air conditioning in our apartment either, I was ecstatic to be off that train.

Tuscany in general is beautiful, but I love Arezzo. I was so happy to be back, and so so glad that this time my husband could join me. Thankfully, he loves it too! I am blessed to have relatives here that love to show us around the area and take us to sagra (festivals, more on that later!). We are living close to Piazza Guido Monaco, which is a nice location because it is inside the city walls and close to the train station, only about a 10 minute walk from the OUA classrooms and not too far from anything. Arezzo is a nice city, but small and walkable. It makes it really easy to manage without a bike or car.

The beautiful Tuscan countryside, viewed from Il Prato

Il Prato, the park in Arezzo

Golden Sky

We were glad that gelato is one of the main food groups in Italy. The three best gelateria around Arezzo are Cremì which is located on the Corso, Il Gelato on Via Madonna del Prato and Gran Caramel which is about a 20 minute walk out of the city from our apartment, but so so worth it!

Another main food group here is caffé, or espresso. The little, mini, really strong coffee. Sometimes I drink it three times a day.. Italians generally have some caffé with breakfast, sometimes in the afternoon, and then after dinner as a digestive. (Other digestives include grappa, amaro and limoncello.) They actually really do help make you feel better after eating a huge pasta meal!

When I was in Arezzo in summer 2010, I made friends with some of the local Aretines, and they have been just as welcoming to the new OU students this semester! They are a fun group to hang out with and practice our Italian, while teaching them American slang like “y’all.” Plus over the past few years, OU students have converted them to being Sooner fans!

Boomer Sooner with Iacopo!