Benvenuti!

Ciao, lovers.

It's been a while. 9 years actually, since I started my first blog. It also was my longest active blog, spanning with posts from 8th grade until my first semester in college. Thankfully the server has been shut down, keeping my adolescent ravings shut up in a deep, dark cyber-closet.

Then came the blog about my slew of summer internships in NYC. Then an art blog. & now I'm here, with "Basta con la pasta!" I envision it as a somewhat-helpful, pretty-personal blog of a young American in Italy. By helpful, I mean writing about the sorts of things that I wanted to know about living abroad but could never find in a book or on the *blogosphere.

*Nota bene: The only blogs I've found about Americans in Italy are written by middle aged couples who come every summer & go on tourist excursions with ridiculous names like "La Dolce Vita" with other middle aged couples OR ladies that have an Italian-fetish OR Italian-Americans with insane cultural pride. If you happen to come across something radically different than the aforementioned categories, please send the link my way!

"Basta con la pasta" means "Enough with the pasta." The phrase was coined by my friend Dani two years ago, in response to the endless carb-pushing of her Italian host-mother (Italians love to feed you, & will give you seconds & thirds unless you are very very explicit. Oddly enough I've begun to do this with my friends, always asking if they want more to eat. Chi va con lo zoppo impara a zoppicare "He who walks with the limper learns to limp." Italian behavior is infectious).

So enough with the pasta, "Under the Tuscan Sun," three month Anglo-study-abroad-programs, & preconceived notions of Italy. These are the true confessions of an American in Florence.