Style

Not to get overly ambitious, but I'm going to combine three days into this post!

Monday:

Teaching heavy day for me. Taught my first philosophy discussion section of the summer Monday  morning. I brought Jack to class with me and when I introduced him, the whole group raised a chorus of "Ciao, Jack!" We both liked that. We had lunch at the university cafeteria and then hustled off to teach the advanced Italian class, and the lesson on Milanese culture ended up going fantastically well, including the moment in which a student described a US equivalent of aperitivo as happy hour and translated it literally as "ora felice," sending the whole class into a fit of giggles. We had aperitivo that evening, and I took my group down to the canals for the little meal, which Jack dubbed "snacky din din," perhaps the most accurate description I've ever heard. We got Jack's daily gelato afterwards, but I apparently failed to photograph a single thing the entire day, so there is no enduring evidence of his coupling of stracciatella with mixed berry, which he seemed to enjoy greatly.

Tuesday:

We started the next day with philosophy lecture, and Professor Erspamer was very excited to meet Jack! When I introduced them, Prof said "I sensed you were here since I didn't hear much from Katie this weekend..." Silly man! We had lunch at a place called Pizza e Mozzarella, then went to the AC Milan store downtown so that Jack could gear up to cheer for Davis's preferred soccer team. Very cute that they now match styles for ACM! We had a program activity that evening at a corporate branding company, and they gave each of our students their annual calendar. When they got to us, they had one left, and Prof told them not to worry since "they're getting married in November so they can share!" The founder and CEO of the company then said that he'd be happy to help brand our wedding... So prepare for our wedding communications to get suuuuuuuper fancy sometime soon! We got a light dinner and gelato and called it a night after that.

Wednesday:

A truly chaotic day. The public transit employees went on strike, so the metro only ran before 8:30am and from 3-6pm. We got to the university at 7:50am and had a little breakfast before philosophy lecture from 10am to noon. Following lunch in the cafeteria, our whole program went on our annual fashion tour of Milan, guided by a very stylish woman named Anna Paola, who showed up wearing a Balenciaga shirt - she was certainly dressing the part! We went to a few different places, including a children's design company and a very expensive place on Corso Como. Each time it was time to go to the next place, Prof turned to me and said "where are we going next? do you know how to get there?" So I'm really running the show over here this summer... We did a lot of walking and then finally made it to dinner, just in time to save me from having a meltdown from exhaustion and trying to make sure everyone was where they were supposed to be, when they were supposed to be there. We had a good group at our dinner table, which calmed me down and made me happier. Jack got to talk math and engineering with a couple of students, and they're very impressed that I'm engaged to such a brilliant guy :) Dinner was traditional Milanese fare, risotto and veal, which we (of course) followed up with gelato and Jack's first authentic Italian cannoli. He dipped the cannolo into the gelato, which is decidedly less authentic.