Today I completed my Master’s program in Cultura dell’Alimentazione e delle Tradizioni Enogastronomiche at the University of Rome. I presented my final project, a website called Parla Food and it was a hit. I will continue to develop the site throughout the winter. It is designed to offer comprehensive information about Italian food and wine, and the culture that surrounds them.

The whole presentation process was quite interesting. We met in our usual classroom and the members of my program were called one by one to a table in the front of the room beside the commission (two professors and two school administrators) to discuss their final paper and project. After each presentation, the entire class was asked to leave the room while the commission smoked cigarettes. I am not kidding. They may also have been discussing what grade to give the student who had just presented, but they totally spent most of the time smoking. I saw them! After their discussion cigarette break, they would call us all back into the classroom and another student would present her project. After five hours of interrogations smoking, we were called up to the front of the classroom individually. We showed our ID, signed a book and were told our cumulative grade for the course.

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