Ringraziamento!!

Oh my goodness. For a country that had almost none of the needed ingredients readily available, and at the least not in our houses (including simple items like flour and butter), I have to say that we pulled off an AMAZING Thanksgiving dinner.
We seriously planned for weeks. We were so excited for this! On Tuesday, Hil, Steph, Tim and I went to the huge supermarket on the other side of the city to buy everything we needed. Wednesday evening, we went to pick up the rest of the items missing, along with the turkey we ordered. Buuut for whatever reason, they had no turkey... so. Paolo came to the rescue and showed up at the store in literally less than two minutes. We tried a couple other places with no luck, then went to my host mom's office. From there, Paolo and her began call all over the city on a hunt for a massive and rare (to these parts) bird... at 8:30 pm... to be served the next day. By the miracle of Thanksgiving, my host mom found a 7.2 kilo (almost 16 pounds) turkey just chillin' in one of the local supermarkets. When we went to pick it up the guy in the meat section actually muttered "American..." after I asked for it... Haha. Dang. And the ladies at the check out were straight floored because they had never seen a bird that big, and even asked for a picture with it. Only after the entire staff got a chance to come see our monster of a meal were we allowed to leave.
Soo. Thursday morning (after Skyping my mom [and Josh and Linds] for last-minute instructions), Hil, Steph and Tim came over and the day began!... right after we made pancakes (YES! Finally made some use out of Canadian Hilary and the maple syrup she's been carrying around in her purse!). I got into my extreme apple pie makin' mode-- yeah, watch out-- for most of the morning while Steph worked on stuffing and Hil and Tim peeled, peeled, peeled apples, potatoes and carrots to their hearts' desires. In the afternoon, Tim brought out Berlusconi the Turkey and the washing process began... which was pretty much hilarious to watch. Then we did all the cool slathering in butter and stuffing with veggies and popped him in the oven!! Around 5, Gianluca and Paolo joined us (and restocked our butter supply) and took over Devilled Eggs while we worked on the rest-- homemade apple cider, mom's brown sugar carrots, gravy, mashed potatoes, etc-- and Tim decorated... haha. By 8:30, everyone was here and the turkey was finished-- and PERFECT! My host dad took out his man-scissors and kind of mutilated the turkey (sorry, Tim... he was really excited to do it... He watched "How To Carve a Turkey" on YouTube on repeat all afternoon) and then it was dinner time!!!
We had a huge, long table with 21 people!! Mine, Hil's, Steph's and Tim's host families, Paolo, Gianluca, Giorgio, Miriam and her mom, Maria and Hilary's counselor! Before eating, they made Stephanie make a little speech about the history of Thanksgiving, 'cause they had no idea what we were celebrating. Throughout the meal I had to go around explaining how to eat-- it's all one course (that was a difficult concept), carrot juice tastes great with turkey... along with gravy, mashed potatoes and the "fruit gel" (cranberry sauce). It was so fun to watch them taking tiny portions of everything, especially the weirder looking things, like Steph's delicious homemade stuffing, but they totally loved everything, and we even heard comments like "Let's do Thanksgiving more often! Once a year isn't enough!" We gave the wishbone to my host parents since they let us use their house, and it was cool to see them all excited about it-- until Anna won, then Salvatore got a little less excited. After dinner we brought down the three lattice-work apple pies which was a totally new concept for them, along with everything else we served, but they were all either really good liars or they legitametly enjoyed it. We were totally pleased with the outcome. Everything was perfect. :]
My family didn't finish cleaning until past one in the morning, so I didn't go to school Friday (along with Paolo, Gianluca, Giorgio and Miriam ahaha). For lunch yesterday we had leftovers for the first time since I've been here, and it was cool to see my host parents still eating turkey even when they could have made something else, so they must have actually liked it! Mission accomplished.
I hope you all had a great Thanksgiving as well :]

Uhm. Three days until Germany and BERYL!!!! :D

Sorry, Dad.

Last night I went to the theatre with Hilary, Stephanie, Paolo and Gianluca because Hilary's host mom said it was an opera and she had a friend in it, so she made us go to support him. Plus it was free for students. So why not! WELL. I don't know if the dates got switched or what, but whatever we sat through was not an opera. It was this crazyweird band with a singer that was just making noises in this deep grumble, and sometimes would toot some stuff on a clarisax. His voice sounded like a didgeridoo. Straight up. We were hysterical the entire first song... soo not what we were expecting. Like really, I don't know when the last time is that I've laughed that hard. At least we had our own little theatre box, and we were the only ones on the fourth floor... or we probably would have gotten kicked out. Props to the people on the ground floor that had to keep collected.
Anyway.... before the theatre I was chilling in the Piazza d'Italia with the AmeriCANs (American + Canadian... you still get American) and there was the normal 200+ people buzzing around, and Hil said that it's her dream to, before this year ends, be the only one in the Piazza. We realized it's unlikely, seeing as there's still too many people to count even past midnight on weekdays, but we started thinking up some 4am plans.
So after the play finished around 11, it was raining a bit, and we turned the corner to enter the Piazza and... empty. Hil immediately pulled out her list of things to do this year and crossed one off. We ran and danced. And played a bit, too. It was nice. :]

Barack the vote!!

So on the first- Day of the Dead- we drove to the towns that Anna and Salvatore's families are from (Bultei and Flussio) to visit their family cemeteries. I actually was expecting it to be super lame, but it ended up being pretty cool! All of the tombs are above ground, and basically look like countertops (let the ooba tooba jokes ensue...). The richer families (like Anna's) have little houses with all their tombs in them. Then everyone goes on this day to put flowers and candles on the tombs. It was pretty neat.

So I am sitting in class. It's silent. Everyone is taking a Greek test. The professor actually gave me a test, too. HA. Yeah, right.

All four of the girls down the row in front of me are wearing a purple sweater. It's funny. They say Italians are so stylish, and so it seems... at first. Then you realize that they all have the same exact style... and suddenly it becomes far less in style, indeed.

So elections were yesterday (well, we found out the results yesterday), and let me just say... Europe is STOKED. Had this election been world-wide, I guarantee Obama would have won with like, 93% of the popular vote. While I'm on the subject... I can now assure you that explaining the electoral college system to foreigners in a language you barely know is NOT the easiest thing. Anyway. It's really funny to see how excited everyone is about another country's president. Shows how much the U.S. has an effect on the rest of the world though, huh? I mean, anyone know the name of Italy's president?

It's my birthday today.
1. I'm 18! (not 19, Truckee Sunrise! hehe, I'm young.)
2. Yes, I know... two days AFTER one of the most ground-breaking presidential elections in history...
3. I officially, for the first and only time, probably ever, was older than Spike for nine hours!!... which ended two minutes ago, because it's now 9:02 am here, therefore midnight in America, so he's 18, too. Oh well. It was cool while it lasted.
4. Happy half birthdays to Josh, Ashley and Tyler.
5. I get to open my package from home now!!!
6. I am going to a pizzaria and then to a disco with the girls in my class Saturday to celebrate. :]
7. Italians are really big on the whole text-you-right-at-midnight-or-first-thing-in-the-morning thing. Hahaha. Ahh... I like, did not go to sleep.
8. I have to go to a Rotary meeting tonight. Sweet. But it's just my club, so there won't be any of the kids that are usually at the Alghero/Sassari meetings.
9. Yesssss I just got out of making up my physics test by saying it's my birthday. Bitchin'.
10. I don't like lists with less than 10 things on them... so... I bought a bright orange pair of pants. And you're jealous.

Tim just got in trouble for drinking water in class. Apparently you're not allowed to do that in Italy... whaaaaaat...

Oh. So these are the escalator things at the supermarket that I said I'd take a picture of. They're flat so you can put your cart on, but then somehow the wheels are designed to lock with the grids of the escalator so they don't roll when you're going up and down to the parking garage. Genius.