Espresso Mess-o

My host family left for Sicily on Thursday morning. Ariana just bought a house there but it's not furnished yet so they're staying with friends. She left me a ton of food in the fridge and wrote out all the important information I need to remember, such as the cleaning lady's number and "Only one home appliance at a time," as not to blow a fuse. But just in case I forget, she also showed me where I might find the fuse box on the ground floor, and left me the key for that room.

One other thing I was delighted to learn before she had left was how to make espresso. I'm the first of the 4 other girls she's hosted to have learned; I guess they didn't drink coffee as much as I do here! You use this cute little metal stovetop machine and pack the espresso grounds into the middle container, fill the bottom one with water, screw the pieces together and set it on the stove to brew.

Unfortunately, the other day I kinda left it on for too long while talking on Skype with my parents, and it was a huge mess. Not only did the plastic handle completely melt off, and the plastic knob on top get all disjointed because of the heat from the metal, but the inside of the container which holds the water pretty much turned to ash since all the water boiled out of it. I tried to clean it as best I could but the burnt metal smell just won't go away. You can't use soap to clean these machines otherwise the coffee will come out all soapy-tasting (Ariana specifically instructed me on this in Italian when I was learning) so basically I'm just going to buy a new espresso machine and hope that Ariana doesn't regret her decision to teach me in the first place.

I swear I'm not completely incompetent in domestic matters, contrary to what she may believe.

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