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Monthly Archives: February 2012
Umbra student writes blog about studying abroad in Italy
Umbra Study abroad student Maria Papapietro (here through CIS) is keeping a blog on GoAbroad.net with her reflections on her experience here in Perugia. Themes include her goals for this semester abroad, what she’s doing with her classes, and how much she misses dryers. Have a look at her blog on study abroad in Italy.
If you find/have any other blog about life in Perugia send it in: we’ll post is as a featured blog post.
Video from Perugia’s Underground
This is a screenshot -- check out the full video after the jump!
Our good friend and Tuttoggi.it correspondent Nicola Palumbo went on the underground tour of Perugia this past Sunday and filmed his experience for Tuttoggi. We saw it this morning and were blown away: there’s great video from under the Duomo (officially Cattedrale San Lorenzo), the Etruscan Well, from the aqueduct leading to the Fontana Maggiore, and from a World War II-era air raid shelter — for this last one, there are also artifacts there were found inside.
Check out the full video after the jump! Continue reading
Food Studies Program visits Italy’s culinary heartland
Pellegrino Artusi,who in 1890 wrote Italy’s first modern cookbook, had grown up in Emilia-Romagna (a region in the north known for its hearty food) but lived out his adult life in Tuscany’s capital, Florence. Despite lots of culinary contributions from the south and far north, this area of Italy is considered the country’s food heartland. As part of their extensive list of extra-curricular activities, students taking the core course of the Food Studies Program had the opportunity to visit three small producers in the region.
The first stop was the Salumificio La Perla, in the windy hills above Parma. Students met Carlo Lanfranchi, a self-described farmer’s son and heart of the small, family-run factory where over ten thousand fresh Italian hams are turned into delicious prosciutto each year. Students saw the various stages of salting and Carlo explained the special text with a small horse-bone probe before the group went upstairs for a hearty lunch of cheese-and-herb filled ravioli and (of course) prosciutto. Continue reading
Umbra Pizza Night!
Another Umbra Institute pizza night, another success! After a tough loss in the semester’s basketball game against ONAOSI, an Italian school, players and fans both tromped through the cold and snow to Il Paiolo, a pizzeria in the center of Perugia.
There were no hard feelings about the baseketball game, though, and some of the Italian players that study at Umbra even came to join in.
There, as you can see, they had steaming-hot Margherita pizzas in the cozy comfort of a well-lit Etruscan cave, a welcome respite from the blustery weather outside. Buon appetito!
Tour of Perugia’s Rarely Seen Underground
Text translated from original flyer (attached):
Below the soil of Perugia, there exists a city even more ancient than the one that can be admired from the surface: a hidden world where speleology and archaeology become intertwined with history and where one can discover the many cultural treasures that are so often ignored.
The Speleological Group of Perugia will show you the secret crannies lying underneath the city, doing guided tours of the various sites, some of which will be opened just for this occasion. The visits will be led by art historians, speleologists, and archaeologists, who will illustrate the happenings and the secrets of this medieval city.
For contact information, click the read more link!
Skiing in Centro!
Some enterprising young Perugians decided to take advantage of the snow that we got all weekend and go for a ski! Lucky them: local schools have been closed since last Thursday, which allows plenty of time for antics like skiing down Via Alessi in Centro! Some of you may remember this as the street you take to get down to Il Paiolo, where Umbra pizza nights are held.
And some young Assisi residents decided that skiing in front of the Basilica of St. Francis would be a good idea, too!
Aperitivo Workshop
What exactly is wormwood, and what does it have to do with drinking little glasses of bitter liquids before dinner? Last week Umbra Institute students in the Food Studies Program learned just that (and a lot more) with Food Studies profs Zachary Nowak and Simon Young. The workshop, hosted by the chic Caffè di Roma (on Piazza Matteotti, Perugia’s former marketplace). The workshop–one of a series of seven for the Food Studies Program–focused on putting the aperitivo in its cultural context: a fun, after-work but pre-dinner moment for friends to get together for a drink and a bit of finger food without spending too much.
The next workshop is Olive Oil, March 5th.
New Arrivals and Orientation Video!
We remade our old Arrivals and Orientation video to reflect some improvements that we’ve made! This video is accurate for students doing any of our non-Direct Enroll programs for the spring, fall, or summer. Direct Enroll students get here slightly earlier and are generally moved straight into their apartments.
Take a look and tell us what you think! Umbra Alums, do you have any suggestions, additions, or memories from your first few days in Perugia?