All posts tagged: UNISG

Bye Bye, Bra

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Both the Dean and the Spiritual President (definitely his official title) were out of town, so the guy on the right here (Michele Fino, a UNISG Food Law professor) made a joke about having to bring out the B team for the graduation. The guy on the left (Slow Food International Secretary General Paolo DiCroce) was not amused. I did it! I have a Master’s degree (in Food Culture and Communication with a focus in Representation, Meaning and Media) with a title almost as long as my undergraduate degree (International and Global Studies with focuses in Political Science, Latin America, and Spanish)! After wrapping up my internship commitments here in New York at Saveur and Food Tank, launching a personal website, starting a new stream of stories for Contemporary Food Lab, turning in my thesis (a blend of personal experience and theory), I embarked upon a much needed week (or two, let’s see) of resting priority-resetting (as well as immune system-resetting). This meant good, nourishing food (chestnut and pumpkin soup!), not waking up at 5:30 AM, spending leisurely afternoons and evening drinking …

The Last Supper: UNISG Lunch Edition

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Some of my classmates surveying a spread of tomatoes, pasta salads, lemon cake and lentils.  Class is over. No more 3 hour lectures stuck in uncomfortable chairs, no more attendance checks, no more bus rides to Pollenzo. By comparison to my last day at Middlebury, yesterday afternoon felt quite unremarkable. We each brought a dish that we could tell a story about, we sat down together around a large table, there was some wine, we cleaned up, and that was it. No fireworks. No nothing. I think it was partly because the visiting professor offered up some of his very apt observations about our class, namely that we were a fragmented bunch each looking ahead to going our own way. I can certainly say that I feel and have felt that way for a while–being in and around a group of 24 students was overwhelming for me at times, so I snuck in some alone time wherever I could. And now we’re headed off for a few months of internship. Some to work in kitchens, …

A One Year Check-In

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A wonderful selection of enlightening texts on meat and German food history at a deli in Berlin that unfortunately I do not remember the name of! There’s hope for me yet, guys. If Taylor of Good Food Jobs says there is, then there is. Please read this article. It will explain a lot about where I am and what I’ve been doing in this town with a lot of 80 year old people and veal sausage. You (really, I mean I) could look at what I’ve done or not done in the last year since graduating with a degree in International and Global Studies and raise an eyebrow (or two). After deciding that a life in the State Department just wasn’t for me (this revelation came a few years ago, but still I found transitions to democracies in countries like Argentina and Chile strangely fascinating), I landed an Outreach & Communications internship at Good Food Awards–appropriately enough through Good Food Jobs. Side note: I am all over that website. It is such a wonderful resource for getting a …

Some Snaps from School

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My “required reading.” Sorry, Poli Sci PDFs of my past, this is looking astronomically more appealing. On this lazy, rainy Sunday, I thought I would provide some visuals regarding my life inside the castle/educational institution that is UNISG. On my desk back home in Saratoga, there is an ENORMOUS stack of cookbooks (such as Sprouted Kitchen) that I bought for the photos rather than the recipes as well as nearly every issue of Lucky Peach ever published. During lunch break the other day, I went into the library, which it turns out holds about 90% of my Amazon Kindle and real world book purchases in the last few years. Here’s an aerial shot of part of the periodical section. “What’s for lunch?” I heard you say via the black hole that is the internet. This non-informative yet charming “Menu” board makes you think twice about what you actually got yourself into by signing up to go to a one-of-a-kind school in a tiny part of a semi-tiny town in northwest Italy. So, here’s the cafeteria, which of course …

My last first day of school

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My snazzy new school ID, courtesy of one of the four sets of passport photos I had taken in Argentina for various bureaucratic processes and then accumulated. Today was the big day! And the sun was out. How glorious and polite of you, Mr. Sun. A good sign. We all cruised into school (which, remember, is a castle) for a 10 AM meetup/ introductions galore. But before any of the fun stuff began, we had to sign a lot of papers so that we could get health insurance! How very Italy! Shortly thereafter, several mentions of how to check your scores from exams were made. I was like, “Exams? Really? We haven’t even met any professors yet? Ok…” The next hour or so was spent on self-introductions. The who, what, where, when and why, if you will. Mysterious people who had not manifested themselves on our Master’s Facebook group were today revealed in real life. Guess who went first because she was sitting closest to the front? That would be me. It was so interesting to hear what …

“So, why are you here?”

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This post is a (much) longer version of my response to this quite common icebreaker question. 6 months ago, almost to the day, I graduated from Middlebury College. For four years, I studied dictators and transitions to democracy in a teeny tiny New England town. I ran away to the Southern Hemisphere for a year and then came back for one more. Given that the full name of my major is probably the longest one ever invented, I just say I majored in Latin American Politics (the full details: International and Global Studies with a disciplinary focus in Political Science, regional focus in Latin America and language specialization in Spanish.) Phew, ok. So that happened. Two weeks after graduation, I was in Florence with my family on vacation, learning lots about Renaissance art and eating pasta and such as tourists tend to do. Given that I seem to get dressed the quickest out of all the members of my family, I was waiting outside by the pool at our hotel just kind of doing some mindless iPad wandering. And then, I thought (I …