My TOEFL day

Saturday, July 23^rd, was a big day for me. It was my TOEFL exam day. After studying for around five weeks, not sleeping properly for about a week and experiencing a few tachycardias due to (too) large amounts of coffee I finally got it over it. The exam was exactly what was expecting – never-ending reading and listening parts, which I did quite well, a stressful speaking part, which I, as expected, didn't really ace, and a writing part, in which I was showing off with long grammatically perfect sentences and a rich vocabulary. As I knew that the speaking part could be tricky, I was practising answering the questions a few days before the test which looked like this: talking to the computer recording my answer (I almost always ran out of time), listening to the answer and thinking I could have done better and what an annoying voice I have. When speaking part came up at the exam, I was feeling confident, telling myself I have an OK voice, an OK accent and I am by every mean more than able to get the maximum points for each task. However, when I heard the first question (Your friend doesn't know what to study. What would you suggest him?) and the beep, which indicates it's time for your 45 seconds of glory, my heart started racing and after 35 seconds I totally blacked-out. Despite having started answering in quite a satisfying mode, I didn't finish my answer and I just babbled something that seemed like the best I was able to do in that very moment. What I felt afterwards was a combination of disappointment, anger, sadness and fear. As there were five more people in my classroom taking the exam (speaking at the same time), I could hear their answers, which were all better than mine. At least it seemed to me that way. The other five speaking tasks went a bit better, but I'm still kind of disappointed about the first-task fail. Ah well, at least I did better all other tasks, so now I'm (im)patiently waiting for the results, which will be posted on August 8^th.

After the 4-hour exam I felt quite worn-out, so my plan of having a little shopping spree didn't exactly come to life in its full potential. After an hour and a half of aimlessly loitering around Florence to make myself feel better I eventually got sick of all American tourists that occupied the centre and went to the train station. There I learnt my lesson of why it is sometimes good to buy your train ticket in advance. As Italy is a very popular summer travel destination hundreds, thousands of tourists are visiting charming Italian cities these days. Florence of course is no exception and when I arrived at the station I had to wait for almost half an hour to get the ticket as too many people wanted to buy the ticket at the same time, so the ticket system got either snail slow or over-occupied and eventually some of the “fast-ticket” machines stopped working displaying only an Out of order. notice on an alarmingly bright-red background. Finally, having the ticket in my hand I boarded the train and started thinking how nice it would be to get home to an empty apartment, take a shower, have something to eat and just go to bed. Also this plan didn't come true. Kristiāna and Léo, who are currently leading a volunteer-work camp in the village of Cavarzano, were in Prato for the day and were waiting for me at home. Despite having a headache and feeling sick from all the stress and sleep deprivation I couldn't refuse their invitation to Cavarzano for the night as the community of Cavarzano organised a kind of a party with pizza and a concert of a group called Black Out. How could I ever say no to pizza and Black Out?! I quickly grabbed what I needed the most and we were on our way. After meeting and spending some time with other volunteers of the work camp, there was finally time for pizza (which was a bit too thin for my taste, but still exceptionally good) and the Black Out concert. We were dancing till almost 1 a.m. and I have to say it was one of the best nights in the last few weeks. After all the exam stress it felt so great to just let go, forget about the exam, the speaking-part fail, the results, all the university applications I have to do and all the nasty bureaucracy that's still waiting for me. I'm taking it easy the next weeks – travelling “spiced up” with university-applications bureaucracy. I call it the post-TOEFL pampering. 

Ristorante da Marietta

Firstly, let me apologize for a kind of an unsatisfactory level of English in this post. I am not used to speaking (or writing) in English anymore as I have spent the last three weeks (Only three weeks! Who knows what will happen after eight months …) at children camps working with Italians and, therefore, speaking more or less only Italian. So, please bare with me and my poor English today.

I guess by now it's obvious that I love food not only in the pure sense of feeding yourself in order to survive, but also in the aspect of preparing it. Baking has been my passion for more than a few years now and working at children camps for the last three weeks I got an awesome opportunity to improve not only my baking skills, but also my cooking skills. My Italian cooking skills. The last three weeks have been, therefore, like an intense cooking and language course. I have spent quite a large amount of time in the kitchen absorbing the secrets of Italian cuisine like a big undryable sponge. In front of the kitchen in Cave it's now written Ristorante da Marietta. I have to boast a bit - now, I am not only able to make an awesome pappa al pomodoro, but I have also mastered my crostata-making skills. Unfortunately (or as expected), working in the kitchen for three weeks also resulted in gaining a few pounds (or at least it seems to me I’m like a big dumpling now), so the next few weeks will have to be a bit diet-oriented.

However, to me, working in children camps has been one of the most beautiful experiences ever. The first week we had a group of 10- and 11-year-old children from Milano. They were a lovely group except one girl, one of the accompanists, made me sometimes a bit angry as she didn't eat any fruit or vegetables. Can you imagine how difficult it can be cooking Italian food without tomatoes?! The second week we had another lovely group of 8- to 10-year-olds. It’s amazing how quickly and easily children get fond of you despite your poor language skills. No, working with children did not make me want to have children, if that’s what you’re thinking now, it just made me realize how, in comparison to children, judging and selective adults can be sometimes. Maybe judging and selective aren’t the best adjectives to describe this break-through of mine, but it’s the best I can think of at the moment. Anyway, the last, third week we had a group of teenagers that made me quite angry on the first day they arrived. The thing is that when they arrived, we were making lunch for 112 people. If I say there was a lot to do, a lot doesn't really cover the amount of work as we prepared some food already the day before, but there was still cheese, mortadella, prosciutto, etc. to slice (and I actually got a blister from slicing a few kilos of meat) and other food to prepare, not mentioning he number of plates we had to wash as there's no dishwasher in Cave. The other day when we were making sandwiches to the Milano group, I sliced so much bread I wasn't able to move my right-hand thumb for a few days (the Tuscan bread has a very hard crust which makes it, well, yeah, very delicious, but also a bit difficult to cut). Still, I also have to add that working in camps hadn't been such a great experience if it hadn’t also been for the team I have worked with. Thanks to Kristiāna, Marta and Léo, my flatmates, plus Serena & co (the Legambiente people)., who all bared with my German-like discipline in the kitchen, I really had a blast despite feeling sick the last few days due to tiredness. 

Anyway, what's waiting for me now (besides answer to I don't know how many, but many many couchsurfing requests), is a 500-page book I'm reading for the TOEFL exam that's waiting for me in less than two weeks. I'm freaking out a bit about it as I haven't really had a lot of time to study, but I guess it should be fine. My English isn't so bad after all, is it?

M.