Happy Thanksgiving!

Sometimes writing these blogs is easy, I just start writing and then after a while I realize that I've probably written enough to bore my readers into a state of numb confusion... and voila!

Other times, it's harder... I don't know, the words just don't come to me as easily as they sometimes do. That's what happened when I was trying to write my "Happy Thanksgiving" blog on Thursday. Maybe it was hard because the holiday left me in such a daze that I wasn't sure how to describe how I was feeling about everything. Maybe it was because I'd had an exam that day and had used up all of my brainpower. Maybe it was because I'd eaten too much and my brain couldn't function because my body was focusing all of its energy on digestion. Or maybe, and this is a very definite possibility, it was because I was trying to think and write coherently at 3:00AM after a very, very long day.

Whatever the reason, I didn't manage to write a blog on Thanksgiving. Sorry about that. Let's just pretend that I was confused by the time change. Hey, it's plausible - you try switching continents!

I woke up on Thursday feeling surprisingly content, even though I couldn't escape the burden of the knowledge that I was away from my family on Thanksgiving - my favorite holiday precisely because it brings us all together. I lay in bed for a while thinking about my situation and the more I thought about it, the more I realized just how much I am thankful for.

Of course, I'm thankful for the opportunity that I've been given - to live in this beautiful country for a year, meet incredible people and have amazing experiences that I'll remember for the rest of my life. I'm thankful for my family and friends back home who will always be there for me, even if I do live on the other side of the world. I'm thankful for my cozy apartment and my roommates, for the shoes on my feet and my incredibly warm scarf. I'm thankful for the snow here and for the tasty roasted chestnuts that I can buy from the street vendors on my way to class.

It's so much more than just than being thankful for what I have, though. I'm thankful for every experience I've had, for the lessons that I've learned and from the trials I've overcome. On days like Thanksgiving I miss my brother so much that it hurts, but I think of my family and of how strong they are, and I'm incredibly thankful for how close we have become. Being here, so far away from them has made me realize just how strong our ties are - that I can feel so close to them even though I haven't seen them in months.

I'm thankful for my friends here in Bologna, and for the study center which organized the incredible Thanksgiving feast in Padova. As it turns out, Italians suck at cooking Thanksgiving food... but hey, it was hilarious trying to guess what was actually in the strange dish they called "stuffing" or which body parts of the turkey we were being served. Was it even turkey? We'll never know.
The dinner, although perhaps not as satisfying as my mom's collection of traditional recipes back home, brought all of us Americans together to celebrate what we have to be thankful for here in Italy... which, among other things, is a group of wonderful friends that we can feel at home with during the holidays. Also, it's a group of friends who makes incredible desserts which make up for the Italians' lack of Thanksgiving savvy. The potluck portion of the dinner was amazing, with dozens of desserts. Chocolate cake, apple pie, banana bread, cookies, mmmmmmmm it was delicious. Yes, I'm definitely thankful for dessert.

I hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving back home - I would really love to hear about it so leave me a comment or write me an e-mail! Tell me what you're thankful for :)

2 Degrees in Bologna...

It is officially freezing. Actually, it's 2 degrees celsius which is still technically above freezing. However, the windows in my house are frozen, which leads me to believe otherwise.

Brrrrr.

The weather here has definitely taken a turn for the worst, which is one of the reasons that I haven't blogged in a while. I just haven't really done anything. I've been curled up inside studying for exams, so I haven't been taking many pictures or traveling much at all. Maybe I'll be able to scrounge up a few interesting experiences to fill a blog, let's see...

First of all, I am officially a nanny. (Or as Italians say, a dada.) I have two very small new friends, Carlo (3) and Giorgia (7). I meet with them 2-3 times a week to "teach English" which usually consists of playing with Carlo's toy cars or watching "High School Musical 3" with Giorgia. It's not a fun job, but somebody's got to do it! An added bonus is the fact that the family has a winter vacation home in Cortina. Where's Cortina? Here's a picture, courtesy of Google:
Simona, the kids' mother, told me that if I come with them for a weekend and speak English with the family, she'll pay me 60 euro per day and "of course" pay for all my food and activities (for example, skiing and excessive cocoa-drinking). As I said, definitely not a fun job.

On a less cocoa-filled note, I took my first exam last week in Applied Linguistics. The first part was written - the prova scritta. It consisted of 5 questions which were painfully broad... one of the questions was literally "Write about something that you find important." I was tempted to write about mexican food (I miss it, alright? My diet here is severely lacking spiciness!) but I figured my professor might not find it as amusing as I would. After 30 minutes of writing she said that we only had 30 minutes remaining on the exam. I found this a bit surprising... see, I was expecting two hours because our professor had said "you will have two hours." Go figure. I only managed to finish 3 of the 5 essay questions by the time she took my paper. I'm not sure why she cut us off early - I think she probably had a meeting or something, most likely with the devil. (Okay, maybe not, but it was still a rude thing to do.)

A week after the written portion of the exam, I went back for the oral portion. Luckily, my professor allowed me to orally discuss the questions that I'd left blank on the written test. It was pretty terrifying, discussing linguistic theories in Italian... especially because there were other Italian students in the hall, just watching me! At first I was extremely nervous and the professor said that I could explain in English if I wanted, but I said no. I felt a little more confident after that, and at the end I received a 28 on the exam. The maximum score is 30, so I'm not complaining!

In addition to doing well on my exam, I had another wonderful surprise last week! Someone rang the buzzer at our building about 10 days ago and I answered "chi è?" like I always do.... but instead of hearing garbled Italian on the other end of the line, I heard "ummmmm.... hi, is Pierluca there?" and my heart lept for joy - Americans!!!!

Kevin and Jeff, to be precise. Pierluca met them when he was visiting a friend in California, and they stayd with us for over a week. A few days after they arrived, my friend Allison (the girl I stayed with in Dublin) came to stay with us as well and for the first time in the history of my apartment, the Americans outnumbered the Italians! Yesss! It was nice living with people who don't find me completely bizarre, and it actually really helped with my homesickness. It was almost like being back home! On one of their first nights here, we ordered pizza, drank beer and watched James Bond. I'm just not sure there's any better combination in the world.

We also made mexican food... not once, but twice.

It really was a beautiful week.

Si, possiamo!

I was riding my bike home yesterday morning, crossing Piazza Maggiore at 7:00 along with the first rays of sunlight, and it hit me - President Barack Obama. I didn't know whether to laugh or to cry, so I did both. I probably looked like a crazy person, racing through the piazza, letting out a whoop of joy as tears streamed down my face. (This is a picture that Leslie took of me before Obama took the election - so imagine me looking more or less like this, but much more disheveled after having stayed up all night.)
As much as I would have loved to be in the United States for this election, it was incredible to see the amount of support that Italians have for Obama. We were all crowded into the public library, hundreds of us, watching CNN on big screens, cheering and shouting "Si, possiamo! Yes we can!" I don't think there was a single person in the room who didn't support Obama. Most of the people there were Italian, and the few Americans were easily identified by our facepaint, which attracted a lot of attention.

When I say that we attracted attention, I mean it - I was interviewed on the local tv station Rai 3, and we were photographed several times. This photo of my friend Molly and I was printed in the Bologna-based newspaper Il Resto del Carlino! You can tell by our concerned expressions that it was still early in the evening...
Unfortunately I wasn't able to post the clip of me that was shown on television, but it was extremely short so you're not missing out too much.

At 3:30AM, when the library closed, I went to a friend's house and curled up on the couch with three of my friends to watch the rest of the election unfold. We were all exhausted - that is, until CNN projected Obama as the winner of the election, at which point we were no longer tired. At first we were ecstatic, and then speechless as we watched it all... watched McCain's extremely graceful concession speech, watched thousands and thousands of people in Chicago screaming "Yes, we can!" in celebration of Obama's victory, watched Martin Luther King's gospel church singing their hearts out, watched Rev. Jesse Jackson weeping in the crowd, watched Obama accept his victory in one of the most touching and humble speeches that I have ever seen delivered by a politician... it was beautiful. (It was also hilarious, because we were watching the speech live on CNN.com, but also dubbed in Italian on TV...)

I have never been so proud to be an American, so inspired by a president or so hopeful for the future. Yes we can! Si, possiamo!

Ahh, so exciting. Still hasn't sunk in completely, I think...