Mavs and Wine. What could be better?

As you all may already know, the Dallas Mavericks won the NBA finals last night! With the seven hour time difference, we had to find a place that would stay open all night for us to be able to watch the game... and we did. We (Meredith, Hannah Mabry, Mary Williams, and Phoebe) found a random, hole in the wall bar, set our alarms for 1 am headed on over there to cheer on our team. What a memory! A group of Miami Heat fans were there, as well as a few other American Mavs fans. And then there were the Italians. A bunch of Italian men about our age were there, some in Mavs jerseys, and none knowing a thing about basketball! Now, I know I'm not the queen of this game either, but I definitely know more than them! We had such a good time and I know that we will never forget the night the Mavs won in Florence, Italy... just too good.

Today we got our internet back.. yayy.... so I'm sitting in the comfort of our living room listening to Ben Rector, and getting ready to read for class. We are now into the wine portion of our "Culture of Food and Wine in Italy" class! Today, we learned how wine is made and then learned how to do a proper wine tasting. I am continually fascinated by this class. There is so much more to wine and food than I ever thought possible! Like with food grown here, wine made from the same grape can taste completely different from each other based on the soil in which it was grown! We tasted 3 Chianti wines in class today. Chianti is a red wine, and 2 of them were grown and made only a 50 km from the other the same year. BUT they tasted extremely different!

I feel so blessed to be here learning all about the culture of Italy and it's history through it's food. It amazes me every time I think about how old this place is! However, as much fun as all of this is, I know that I will be ready to come home to AMERICA when this is all over. I have a new appreciation for our "Land of the free and home of the brave." Cheesy and cliche I know but it's true! I love the U.S. and TEXAS and am missing my roots! And my Diet Dr. Pepper.. the only thing they have here is "Coke Light"... SO not the same thing! Good thing we'll be in Normandy on the 4th of July-- get to be patriotic while in France. i'll just have to dream about everything else for a little while longer. This place isn't all that bad after all :)

I'll leave you with pictures of the places I hold dear to my heart: America, Texas, the Longhorns, and Diet Dr. Pepper: