What were you grateful for this week?I’m grateful for the beautiful fall weather here. Everything is so beautiful! 

What was the most difficult or challenging part of this week?Trying to find ingredients to make Mexican food; Italian grocery stores are not as culturally diverse as American ones! 

Tell us about a “wow” moment you had this week.I made dinner Saturday night for my host family and a few of their friends. 

Tell us about your week! It’s so crazy to think that I’m over halfway done with my time in Italy; it feels like I just got here! 

I didn’t anything too awful exciting this week. I was a little more successful with initiating activities with [the daughter]! One evening we did some crafts together. We made a little shark out of an old play-doh container and construction paper. Partway through making it she got a little bored and just started cutting and glueing lots of paper together while I finished the shark. But we both had a lot of fun doing it! 

I spent a lot of time this week trying to get ready for a dinner we had on Saturday. [My host mom] asked if I wanted to make Mexican food, since it’s my favorite. She also thought it would be fun to invite a friend of hers and her daughter, who both speak English, to eat with us. I thought that sounded super fun, so I wholeheartedly agreed. Then I found out just how hard it is to find food that isn’t italian. Their grocery stores are not culturally diverse. I guess that’s understandable since food is such a traditional thing here; I can understand why they’d see no need for other foods. But I’m so used to being able to go Walmart and having a section of Mexican food, and a section of Asian food, among others. And even if I can’t find what I need at Walmart, there’s multiple Mexican markets and an Asian not far from me. So finding ingredients was a challenge. 

I couldn’t find pinto beans, whatever kind of regular white rice we use in the US, tortillas, salsa, or peppers. That’s over half of the things I needed. Luckily, I was able to substitute things, so it turned out okay. Not super great, but okay. To find all the things I needed I had to go to three different grocery stores, plus Franca went to two more to buy steak for carne asada and some cumin. 

When Saturday finally came around I was so nervous that everything was going to a disaster because half the things were substitutions, and I didn’t measure anything cuz I didn’t feel like converting the recipes I was using. Thankfully nothing was too disastrous, except for the guacamole. The avocados were a little underripe so it tasted like absolute trash. It was so disgusting. It ended up being a good dinner, and a good time with [my host mom’s] friends!