Week two of Interterm started off with a little trip to St. Louis on Tuesday. First, we went to the Dream Center which is this really big organization that helps a lot with the homeless and cleaning up the area. We got to tour some of the rooms and see how the kid rooms looked like, which by the way looks better than my bedroom ever did so yeah, I'm jealous. After the tour, we were shown the pantry where they keep the food and we were given a description of how they run things there and also some stories from people who have volunteered their time and it was unbelievable the amount of stories we heard where people just felt compelled to go out and do these things for others without a second thought. After being shown their church and getting to sit in there for a little bit, they have these pretty cool looking windows that are like purple tinted and they were pretty cool (wish I had some), they served us lunch which was pretty good. So if anybody was thinking about volunteering, I would highly suggest going to the St. Louis Dream Center because you really can't go wrong there, it's an amazing place with even more amazing people.
After the Dream Center, we had some time to kill so we went to the zoo. I've never been to zoo in January before but it wasn't actually that bad. It was more rainy than cold that day so the animals were still out and about. And to be honest, I took way too many pictures of all the monkeys so there's that (literally, I checked and I have 62 pictures of the monkeys, a bit overkill but hey, they were pretty darn cute, okay?). Of course, I've been to the zoo before but it was still fun and I think everybody had a good time.
Once we got done at the zoo, it was time for our tour of The Hill. We met our guide, Joe, who is this really outgoing, talkative man who you just can't help but smile and laugh whenever he talks, he's really energetic, he was really great. Our first stop was a soap place called, Herbaria, and it was a cool place. The guy who owns it, has this dog that is really cute and she's in almost every picture in the store and even on the business card (shown above) and there's even a story behind how the owner and her found each other. (she showed up at the store and he thought she was a lost dog so he called a shelter and they told him that she was actually searching for a home so he ended up keeping her and named her Soapy, because you know, he sells soaps, it's cute.)
Once our tour was over, Joe took us to Antonino's which is an Italian restaurant in The Hill. It's a really nice restaurant that even Guy Fieri has been to. (If you like that guy.) We started off with a toasted ravioli which was pretty good as far as toasted ravioli's go. And then after the ravioli came the common factor every cuisine has, a salad which was actually better than the German salad we had the first week. After the salad, the meal came out which was two kinds of pasta, broiled chicken and some meatballs. Our waitress hinted to me and a friend that the pasta was good if you mixed both kinds which it was but I kind of preferred the white kind better. The meatballs were good but a bit spicy but they weren't "drain a glass of water with each bite" spicy, they were a middle ground spicy. I didn't get a chance to try the chicken however because I was too engrossed in the pasta and meatballs but I'm sure the chicken was good because my friend kept getting more. After the meal, our dessert was served which was this cute little cannoli that was drizzled with chocolate and had chocolate chips 'sprinkled' around it and the plate. Overall, our dinner at Antonino's was amazing, it was the best meal in my opinion so far.
On Wednesday, we had a Jewish Seder meal which was interesting. We learned all about the history of it and the symbolism which was actually kind of neat. We dipped the "karpas" into the salt water and ate it, we listened to the story, we had the bread, we drank the wine (which was grape juice to be honest), it was nice. The meal we had after was really good. The chicken was nice, and the bread was fantastic, the applesauce and potato part wasn't as good as the German's version though, we had the common part of every cuisine, a salad, baked carrots and brussel sprouts, the works.
Wednesday night, we had Dominican at a professor's brother's house and it was good. We listened to them tell stories about their culture and some of the history behind the food and their culture, it was fascinating. For our meal we had, of course, a salad and then with it, we had this really good combination of chicken and rice with some bean sauce that paired up nicely with it and the potato salad we had was amazing, it was really good. For dessert we had ice cream with strawberries, whipped cream and cookies because they told us that ice cream is really popular in their culture. I think we all had a really nice evening there and I can't thank them enough for letting us come to their house and experience their culture with them. The first part of the week was great, it really was and I'm so thankful for everybody who helped us experience every part of it, I really can't thank any of them enough.
