Apparently the semester is over.

As it turns out, I’ll be back in Nebraska in three days. That’s right, I avoided blogging for an entire MONTH. It felt wrong leaving the MaddieStuDiesAbroad saga to end with my favorite awful recipes, so I came back today to tie it all up.

As much as I’d love to write about everything I’ve done in the weeks since I last posted, I don’t have time to transcribe a month’s worth of journal entries. Instead, I want to share with you all (yep, all 4 of you reading this!!) the most important things I learned this semester.

  1. Never forget your passport. This may sound obvious, but we had some issues with this one (sorry, Emily). Choose one place to keep it so you can make sure you always know where to find it when you need it. Otherwise, you could end up unable to get on your flight to Paris or in jail or something. Who knows?

  2. Make a grocery list. Is this common sense? Probably. Could I have easily avoided having 4 balls of buffalo mozzarella in my fridge at one time? Yes. Did I? No.

  3. If you spend less time doing makeup, you have more time to sleep and/or eat breakfast. This was covered in the post about international beauty, but I just wanted to make sure you remember.

  4. Always have at least one (okay, maybe two) bottles of wine in your fridge. What if unexpected guests show up? What if you have a bad day? What if you have a good day? What if you desperately want a glass of wine, but it’s raining and the grocery store is half a mile away? Just keep it stocked.

  5. Keeping a journal was the best choice I made. I mean, yeah, I was required to write 2-3 pages a day for class and was graded on whether or not I completed these pages, BUT it’s so cool to be able and remind myself of the smaller details I don’t always remember (trespassing at the Acropolis at midnight on my first night in Greece, for example).

  6. McDonalds tastes the same everywhere. Except the fries. The fries are bad in Slovenia. Maybe just don’t eat McDonalds in Europe (or America, really).

  7. Avoid being glued to your phone at all times by running out of data so you literally can’t use your phone for two weeks.

  8. Drink coffee instead of taking naps. This gives you more time to do important things like homework, exploring or watching Netflix.

  9. Wear comfy shoes. Some pretentious people will judge you for your lack of fashion sense, but would you rather be looked down on or have unbearable blisters on your feet? Yeah…you’re right. Suck it up and wear cute shoes.

  10. Try to learn at least a few basic words in the language of whatever country you visit. Not learning Italian before/during this semester was a huge fail on my part, which my mother reminds me of every day.

  11. DON'T TAKE THINGS FOR GRANTED. I complained so much about a lot of dumb things –primarily one stupid airport – this semester, but ultimately I know I'll never have an opportunity like this again. I visited 34 cities in 11 countries throughout this semester and I'm preeeeetty sure I won't be able to do something like this again for a very long time (at least not on an advertising salary lol).

  12. LAsT but not LeAsT: Being away from home for four months has given me a weird amount of Nebraskan pride. Nobody has even heard of that state, so I got to make it out to be whatever I wanted it to be (mainly just talked about corn, Runza and football). I’m weirdly excited to come home.

I also learned some stuff about advertising, writing, psychology and opera, but who cares about that? Thanks to all of you who actually read this blog all semester, despite my inability to maintain a posting schedule. I’m sure it could’ve been so much better, but this is all you get. Ciao, ciao everyone!

MasterChef? More like MaddsterChef

11 weeks in and I still can’t keep up with this blog. This post probably was not worth the wait.

Those of you who are friends with me on Snapchat may notice the sporadic installments of “Chef Maddie” posts, in which I share whatever mediocre meal I’ve prepared that day. Groceries are surprisingly cheap in Florence and my apartment has a great kitchen, so I’ve really enjoyed practicing cooking instead of going out to eat all the time. I mean, I still go out to brunch or get dinner delivered at least once a week, but at least I’m making an effort to cook.

Since one (!!!) person asked me about one of the dishes I posted on my snap story, I realized it’d be wrong of me not to share my culinary expertise with all of you. 

Chef Mads hard at work, preparing a biscotti crust for her greek yogurt mousse that she learned how to make in cooking class. That recipe will not be shared on this blog today or ever.

Chef Mads hard at work, preparing a biscotti crust for her greek yogurt mousse that she learned how to make in cooking class. That recipe will not be shared on this blog today or ever.

Here are just a few of my favorite recipes to prepare in Italy:

Pasta with Whatever-Vegetables-Are-In-The-Fridge Sauce. A staple in my diet.

Ingredients:

  • Noodles (any kind works, I prefer penne)
  • Whatever vegetables you can find in your fridge
  • Parmesan
  • Water
  • Olive Oil
  • Salt/Pepper/Garlic Powder/Literally any seasonings you enjoy

  1. Fill a pot 2/3 with water. Add a little salt and olive oil. Turn the stove on and watch at least one full episode of “Friends” in the time it takes the water to boil.

  2. Once the water is on the stove and “Friends” is playing, chop your vegetables. I generally use zucchini, onions and tomatoes (ok fine that’s a fruit), but you can literally use anything. It doesn’t matter.

  3. (Water still will not be boiling). Pour approx. 1 Tbsp of olive oil into a medium-sized skillet. Warm the oil on medium heat.

  4. Add vegetables to the pan before the oil starts bubbling and spitting at you. Or after, if it’s already too late. If you use what I suggested, I recommend giving the zucchini about a minute in the pan on their own before adding the onions. Throw in tomatoes last since they don’t need much cooking.

  5. Dump a ton of seasonings on the vegetables.

  6. Oh no! The water is boiling over! Add the pasta.

  7. 8 minutes later, burn your tongue trying to taste a noodle to see if it’s cooked properly. It is.

  8. Drain pasta, mix in the vegetables, top with parmesan and enjoy!

Almost Tasty Microwave Brownie. Something I came up with when I really craved chocolate. This didn’t really satisfy the craving.

Ingredients:

  • 4 spoonfuls Nesquik (why would I have actual cocoa powder in my kitchen?)
  • 2 spoonfuls flour
  • 1 spoonful sugar
  • Sprinkle of salt
  • Splash of milk
  • Reasonably sized cube of butter

  1. Melt your cube (2 Tbsp.-ish) of butter in the microwave, in a mug.

  2. Add all of the dry ingredients, stir.

  3. Pour in some milk. If the batter seems too dry, add a little more.

  4. Stir some more.

  5. Add some peanut butter or nutella or chocolate chips or a banana if you want.

  6. Microwave for 60 seconds (1 minute).

  7. This is actually more like chocolate cake. It doesn’t taste too bad, though. Enjoy! (?)

Potato Gnocchi. This is actually a real recipe I slaved over for a full day. Worth it.

Ingredients:

  • 2 potatoes
  • 1 egg
  • 2 cups all-purpose flour
  • Jar of sauce you bought from the store because you just made the gnocchi from scratch, you don’t need to make the sauce yourself, too.

  1. Boil water. Add peeled potatoes to the pot and cook for about 15 minutes, until they’re mashable, but still a bit firm.

  2. Mash potatoes with fork or potato masher (don’t use a food processor, they’ll get runny and gross).

  3. LET THE MASHED POTATOES COOL, PLEASE. I BURNED MY HANDS ON HOT MASHED POTATOES. I WISH I WAS JOKING.

  4. Mix flour and egg into COOLED mashed potato in a large bowl. The key is to use as little flour as possible, so the gnocchi remain fluffy. Add just enough that the dough stays together and isn’t sticky.

  5. Roll small portions of the dough into snakes, and chop the snakes into small lil gnocchi. Shape as you please.

  6. Cook gnocchi in lightly salted boiling water for 3-5 minutes or until they float to the top of the pot.

  7. Serve with whatever sauce you prefer.

  8. LEFTOVERS: If you fry the gnocchi up in olive oil the next day, they’re kinda like Italian tater tots. Dip in tomato sauce for best results.

Caramel Popcorn. The exact same thing I ate while writing this post.

Ingredients:

  • Sugar
  • Butter
  • Cream
  • Salt
  • 1 bag microwave popcorn
  1. Pour some sugar into a pot. Add some water if you, like me, don't pay enough attention to what's on the stove. This will keep the sugar from burning. And no, I didn't measure anything for this recipe. I'm sorry.
  2. Cook on medium-high heat, stirring frequently until the sugar reaches an amber color (not quite as dark as you'd think caramel should look). I don't have a candy thermometer, so there's a lot of guesswork involved in this recipe.
  3. Turn the heat down and add maybe 1/4 a stick of butter (?), stir until the butter is melted.
  4. Add a splash of cream, stir some more.
  5. Sprinkle in as much or as little salt as you want. Really depends how salty you like your caramel.
  6. Pop a bag of microwave popcorn for 2-3 minutes, as per instructions on the bag.
  7. Open the bag of popcorn. Pour in your desired amount of caramel sauce and shake it up to mix the caramel and popcorn. If you have a large bowl, you could also pop multiple bags of popcorn or just mix everything together in the bowl so the popcorn is more evenly coated.
  8. Store the remaining caramel in a mason jar/mug/bowl/sippy cup in the fridge. It may harden, depending on how much sugar you used and how hot it got. Regardless, you can just melt some more tomorrow to mix with more popcorn, dip apples in, or just eat with a spoon.

Other common dishes I cook include: chicken with whatever I can find in the fridge, coffee with milk and sugar, scrambled eggs and peanut butter straight from the jar. Let me know if you’re interested in any of those recipes!

Thanks for following me through my journey from world traveler to beauty guru to master chef.

I am now a beauty guru: here's how to be beautiful like me.

While packing for a trip to Greece over my fall break (more on that later… probably), I realized I was really struggling to narrow down which beauty/skincare products to stuff in my way-too-small suitcase for the week. I already had to condense my beauty regimen this semester to save space in my suitcase and because some products just aren’t available here. I’ve learned to make the most of what I brought with me/what I could find abroad, and I figured it could be helpful to share some of the tips and tricks I use to keep looking like my best self away from home. Before you read my advice, however, please enjoy this small collection of me in various states of caring about my appearance.

  1.  Don’t bring a curling iron/straightener from home. Not only will your straightener probably melt and fall apart when you try to plug it in with an adaptor (yes, this happened to me), you also probably won’t care enough to actually do your hair. No one really cares what you look like in class, and clubs are dark enough that nobody can really see what you look like. You could try to buy a 10 Euro curling iron from the pharmacy, but chances are, it won’t get hot enough
  2. Honestly, you don’t even need a hairbrush. I’ve brushed my hair maybe 4 times since getting here. This may or may not become problematic in the near future.
  3. You don’t need to wash your hair every day. I mean, you really shouldn’t wash your hair every day at home, either, but I’ve really been pushing this to the limits. My record here is 6 days of dirty hair. Yes, my standards of personal hygiene are rapidly falling.
  4. If they don’t have the brand/shade of makeup you’re looking for, just don’t wear makeup! Embrace your natural beauty or make people wonder every day if you’re dying or if you really just look like that. Thanks to my naturally rosy cheeks, I spend every day looking like a tomato, and I’ve become quite fond of that. Alternately, get a spray tan (not sure if they actually do that here?) and hope your skin will then match a shade of makeup that is available.
  5. Don’t forget sunscreen! Spending lots of time outside can be damaging to your skin if you’re as pale and pasty as I am. I look at the sunscreen on my shelf every day before forgetting to wear it or even bring it on a trip to the beach. But hey, at least I have sunscreen, right?
  6. All black is fashionable no matter where you are. Anna Wintour would disagree with me, but I’m not writing for Vogue so I can say what I want. The biggest pro of wearing all black all the time is that no one can really be certain if you’ve been wearing the same outfit for 4 days or if you just have a lot of black clothing.
  7. Sunglasses are always in. I’m not just saying this because they hide the dark circles under my eyes and make it more difficult for people to know that I’m staring at/judging them, but… actually, yeah, that’s exactly why I’m saying this.
  8. Shaving your legs is optional. The showers here (or at least the showers in my apartment) are TINY. Definitely not conducive to leg shaving. Thus, I recommend saving this for special occasions like going to the beach. That’s it.
  9. You have NO ONE to impress. Unless you’re trying to become an international pop star like me, in which case you probably should impress everyone. You do you.

I don’t want to disgust you any more with tales of my lack of hygiene or any care about my appearance, but I hope you got a few good takeaways from my advice. Maybe I’ll make a makeup tutorial video sometime soon to show you how exactly I get the “I woke up like this” look I rock every day. I probably won’t, though, so don’t get your hopes up.

Name a more iconic duo than Debbie & Maddie Stuart: I'll wait.

My mom visiting me in Italy is basically the study abroad equivalent of your parents bringing you Panera and staying for lunch in elementary school: everyone wants to sit with you, you seem way cooler than you actually are for one day and as soon as it's over, you're jealous of the next kid whose mom brought Burger King to school.

(My mom did actually bring me some lipstick and like 16 things I ordered online but couldn't ship to Italy, so that's pretty neat).

I am a terrible tour guide, so instead of trying to show my mom around Florence for 6 days (she's coming back in December, she'll see it all eventually), we decided to go to a city I've never been to, where neither of us would have any clue what's happening. 

30 minutes after arriving in Edinburgh, Scotland, my mom asked why I wasn't studying there. I love Florence, but by the end of the weekend, I really was sad to leave.

We somehow avoided rain for four days, even with Hurricane Ophelia rolling in right as we left. At the Edinburgh Castle, we learned a bit about the House of Stuart/Stewart (ugh spell it RIGHT, people!!) and how I was CLEARLY meant to be royalty. We then walked a mile down to the Holyrood Palace, the queen's official residence in Scotland, where I'll be relocating to shortly. I'm sure the queen won't mind if I keep the place occupied for her.

Naturally, high tea was another mandatory stop, as scones with clotted cream are my favorite food.

On Sunday, we went out to some lochs and castles in the western highlands. I wanted to go to Loch Ness, but Debbie heard there's a monster there and really didn't want to risk it (I wish I was joking about that).

My favorite stop of the day was at Loch Lomond, solely because I think the men's choir at my high school sang that song every year?? (It was probably only once, but that doesn't mean the song hasn't been stuck in my head since 2010).

Beyond the touristy stuff, we had some great food (no haggis, sorry) and plenty of gin and Scotch. I listened to four different people play bagpipes on the street. We had the best baked potato I've ever eaten. I also had my first Starbucks in months, which was embarrassingly exciting for me. 

After all the excitement of the weekend, it was kind of nice to be back to a familiar place, even though I wish I could just stay in Scotland forever.

I had to take a midterm today (again, who knew I'd actually have to study while abroad?), so I left Debbie alone in the Uffizi Gallery while I went off to my exam. She got lost on her way home from the museum because Google Maps tried to tell her she was walking the wrong way down a one-way street, so I went to rescue her as soon as I was free. We had to stop for gelato to ease the pain.

If you've made it this far, thanks for reading these choppy ramblings about a weekend with my mom. DM me for info about the really awesome cocktails I had all weekend (didn't want to bore the masses with descriptions of every one, ya know?).

Catch ya next time when I write about either study habits abroad, beauty tips and/or fall break.

 

DO go chasing waterfalls.

First of all, I think it's impossible for me to avoid getting sick while abroad. It took me six (6!!!) days to realize I have strep and need stronger medication than Advil and cough drops. My roommates are not thrilled. (At least I'm not in the hospital like I was in China... oops).

While ignoring my illness, I took a weekend trip to Croatia- the first of a few trips I've planned that involve overnight buses. 

As it turns out, overnight buses (+strep) and I don't get along.

We arrived in Split at about 10 a.m. on Friday, and although I slept through most of the bus ride, I was exhausted all day. My friends and I spent a few hours exploring before it started raining, at which point we got lunch and gave up for the day. 

Thankfully, it was way warmer on Saturday. We took a little cruise over to the island of Brac and spent most of the day on the beach. My roommate, Emily, foolishly trusted me to drive us around on a jetski. Generally, I'd say I'm good at driving a jetski, but the water was so choppy. I lost my contacts because so much saltwater got in my eyes, so for awhile I literally could not see where we were going.

THEN, it was time for us to return to shore. The guy working signaled for us to go back out for a minute so he could help our friends get off of their jetski. As I turned us around, the whole thing flipped over and we both fell off. I was bleeding when I got to shore for some reason, really not sure how that happened? Moral of the story: don't trust me to drive.... anything.

On Sunday, we spent a few hours at Krka National Park before 12 hours trapped on the bus. Thankfully, nobody wanted to sit by me and my germs so I got two seats to myself. :) Thanks, tonsils!!

Midterms are coming up in Florence, so I might actually be STUDYING this week, which I'm sure sounds crazy to most of you (Maddie is actually studying abroad?). More importantly, though, my MOM is coming to visit, so stay tuned for some mother-daughter selfies and brunch stories.

What if I had actually gone to London?!

(This post is basically just me complaining. Sorry/you're welcome?)

So last weekend, I was supposed to go to London. I got to the airport way earlier than I needed to, just to make sure I had enough time to check in, get my boarding pass and find my gate (the Florence airport has 10 gates all right next to each other, so that part is never hard). 

I got my passport stamped to exit the EU and arrived at the gate just before boarding began. Instead of calling us up by boarding group or seat row, they read everyone's name in order of boarding number. After literally two hours of this, they closed the gate and said, "That's it!" 30 of us were still standing by the gate, over an hour after our flight was supposed to depart.

"Sorry," the gate agent said. "It's too windy today and the plane would've been too heavy to take off if we had let all of the passengers board."

What?

They offered to put us on a bus to Pisa, fly us to Barcelona (where we would spend the night), then get us to London by the following evening. I was so annoyed at this point that I just took the refund and left, even though I was SO EXCITED to visit Courtney and hang out in London and eat brunch and see "42nd Street" on the West End.

Instead of going to London, I did get to take a great nap on Friday afternoon, followed by sleeping until 1 p.m. on Saturday, so the weekend wasn't a total loss.

Here are some pictures of me in London last summer to show you what it could've been like if I had gone last weekend:

Is Oktoberfest just a frat party abroad?

Hey it’s only been eight days since my last post, better than I expected!

Because almost the entire last post was about traveling outside of Florence, I figured I should start this with a bit of information about what my day to day life is like here:

Unfortunately, my terrible sleep schedule followed me abroad. Every day except Thursday (when I have my only morning class), I wake up later than I want to. After spending as much time as possible getting ready for the day-read: deciding which of my 5 shirts to wear-I usually go to the grocery store. It’s about a 10 minute walk from my apartment, so I can’t stock up on things for the week like I would at home. Well... I could if I brought a rolling suitcase to the store. There also aren’t preservatives in the food here, so even if I did buy a week’s worth of groceries, nothing would last that long. Sad!

Once I have my groceries, I make lunch and deeply contemplate what to do for the rest of the day: walk to a piazza to read/write, find a dog and follow it around all day, practice my opening number for when I become an international pop sensation… the options are endless.

(Okay, yeah, my daily life is not very exciting. It’s basically just like being at home but with more cooking and a prettier walk to class).

Somehow I managed to plan a trip for every weekend this semester, which is a little overwhelming, but obviously also exciting. 

I met Lauren (!!!!!!! SOMEONE FROM NEBRASKA YAY NEVER CLOSE THE YEARBOOK) and her friend Hallie in the Munich airport on Friday night, after being yelled at by an airport employee for apparently waiting in the wrong place? He was yelling in German so I just smiled and laughed until he got annoyed and walked away. The three of us took a train to the hotel, where we met Hallie’s friend Bri and got in trouble for having four people in a two-person room. Off to a good start!!

The next morning, Lauren and I spent over an hour looking for dirndls (the traditional German outfits tourists wear to Oktoberfest to feel like they’re immersing themselves in local culture) because none of the stores opened before 10 a.m. Once we had our outfits, though, we had plenty of time to drink [too much] beer, eat pretzels and ride an abnormally fast Ferris wheel.

Naturally, we spent most of our day in the tent where guys got up on a table approximately every 20 minutes to either sing "Hey Baby" or do some chant that literally nobody else knew except them. At one point we thought we were sitting next to a rugby team or something, but they were actually just frat bros. Not surprising (still fun, though).

By 3 p.m., all of the tents were fairly full, so we decided to take a break and go back to the hotel for a quick nap. That turned into three hours of sleep, which killed all of our motivation to do anything that night.

Lauren and I still attempted to go see the giant glockenspiel cuckoo clock, which we were told runs every hour from 10 a.m. to 9 p.m. Apparently, that wasn’t true, so we basically just wandered around for two hours before eventually getting dinner (pizza- I literally traveled from Italy to eat pizza in Germany lol). Don’t worry!! We saw the clock do its thing on Sunday morning!! It really wasn’t that exciting, but that’s okay!!

We also met a British guy who tried to hit on us by making fun of us (where is the logic?) then stayed in our room for three (3!!) hours, his drunk friend who disappeared for four hours and showed up at midnight with McDonalds, and some German men who taught us about the history of Oktoberfest.

All in all, I’d call it a successful weekend even though I almost ran out of money and had literally 2 Euros to spare after paying for my taxi home from the airport. Oops.

Thanks for tuning in to this week of MaddieStudies Abroad (Maddie Studies Abroad or Maddie Stu Dies Abroad, you choose). Catch ya next time!

P.S. Just so everyone is aware, this blog exists primarily as a procrastination device for when I really don’t feel like doing the minimal homework I have to do here.

I'm so sorry this took so long.

After three weeks in Florence and a lot of questions about what I'm doing and how it's going, I finally decided to post on this blog I kept promising I would maintain. This still may be the only post I ever write. We'll see how motivated I'm feeling through the rest of the semester.

Contrary to popular belief, I am actually attending classes here... two days a week. This semester I'll be learning about advertising Italian destinations, travel writing and the psychology of mindfulness (ok fine this is a meditation class), in addition to taking voice lessons. 

Obviously that doesn't take up too much of my time, so I've also been traveling, learning to cook and watching some of the great rom coms available on Italian Netflix. 

During my first weekend here, I spent a day in Cinque Terre- five towns along the Italian Riviera coast. Although I failed to hike along the cliffs from Vernazza to Monterosso al Mare, I did manage to get a killer sunburn while hanging out on the beach. 

I visited Venice during weekend two, which wasn't as exciting as I hoped it'd be. The relatively small city holds an average of 50,000 tourists a day. With so many narrow streets and bridges, it's clear Venice wasn't built to hold that many people. Still, I'm glad I got to visit before the water level inevitably rises so much that Venice floods to the point of being uninhabitable. 

Last week, I was forced to think back to one of my many summers at Camp Lake Hubert. I tried out horseback riding and soon realized it wasn't for me. A few days after deciding I'd never ride a horse again, my counselor told me I had no choice. I told her I had been bucked off a horse to get out of going on a ride with my entire cabin. 10 years later, I remembered that story was made up, so I decided to give riding another go.

As I am still sore 4 days later, it's safe to say this still isn't my favorite pastime, but Ariel (the horse) and I did have a lovely time exploring the Tuscan countryside. She stopped at every possible opportunity to try and eat any grape, grass or branch that crossed her path, and I was unable to stop her. Not surprising.

I'm writing this just after returning from a weekend exploring Maremma and a few other little towns in Tuscany. I helped a girl find the phone she lost on the beach, hid in a cafe to avoid rain for an hour, walked up too many stairs (but saw some killer views), visited enough Catholic churches to keep me away from mass until Christmas (sorry, mom), bathed in some natural hot springs that are supposed to be ~healing~ but I think they were just kinda gross, and enjoyed exploring some of the less-touristy areas of Italy.

I've also spilled food/wine/water in multiple public places, tripped over children/animals/stationary objects, knocked over a bike and shattered my phone screen, so I'd say I'm really starting to blend in with the locals here. Stay tuned to find out if I ever learn Italian (doubtful) and to hear about where I'm going next!

Thanks to all of my fans for supporting me through this journey. Peace & blessings to you all.

P.S. @Mom & Dad, I'm doing all of my homework and I'm making friends, don't worry!!!!!