Thanksgiving in Italy!

Ciao tutti! Things are going really well here. I'm really proud of how much my Italian has improved. Of course I'm still not fluent but I'm honestly amazed by how much I've learned in just 3 months. It may not seem like a lot, I still speak extremely slowly, make lots of grammar mistakes and can't understand absolutely everything yet. But if I think back to when I first got here and I knew absolutely nothing besides ciao, spaghetti and pizza, I've made so much progress. Italian is becoming my instinct now, little words are just automatic for me, I just naturally say perché instead of because or ciao instead of yes. I feel like I'm going to go back home to the U.S in July and it's going to feel so strange to always speak in English..

I'm so happy that I was able to celebrate Thanksgiving here! Of course, no one celebrates Thanksgiving here because it's an American holiday. No one knows about Thanksgiving at all, I told all my friends at school that it was Thanksgiving, some didn't know what it was and most thought that it took place during the summer! Anyway, I wasn't really planning on doing anything for Thanksgiving. I figured I'm in a foreign country so I should just adapt to their culture and forget about Thanksgiving. But my American friend Kaylin thought we should make a turkey dinner for our host families! Her mom sent all the ingredients and recipes from the U.S and we pre-ordered a turkey from a butcher here! It turns out, 2 girls cooking an entire Thanksgiving meal is a lot of work!! Last Wednesday and Thursday we spent the whole evening backing pumpkin and apple pies and making home made noodles. It was so nice, we blasted Justin Bieber's Christmas album and cooked up a storm (: Then on Friday we got to leave school an hour early so we could cook the turkey, potatoes and everything else! On Friday night, my host family came to Kaylin's house and we had our Thanksgiving dinner! The meal didn't start until about 8:30 and all the food couldn't fit on the table so Kaylin and I took on the roles of waitresses and served everyone. Of course, as the tradition goes, before we served everyone their meals we went around the table and said what we were thankful for (in Italian of course). The dinner lasted at least 4 hours! There was sooo much food! Surprisingly everything turned out to be delicious! I was wearing a really tight skirt and after eating my first plate of food I left the room and went and changed into jeans instead so that I could eat more food, I came back to the table in jeans and everyone was so confused and asked why I changed. I said "Ho voglio di mangiare ancora ma la mia gomma é troppo stretto!" (I want to eat more but my skirt is too tight!) I'm pretty sure everyone thought I was insane and my host mom said I'm going to need to go running more since I eat so much.. haha anyway my host family and I didn't leave Kaylin's house until after midnight. I was exhausted and super slap happy and the end of the night. Kaylin and I were just laughing about nothing and my little host sister gave us a weird look when we were laughing hysterically and I told her that I get crazy when I eat so much and she said "not only when you eat alot..." hahahhaa (: We got home from Thanksgiving dinner at around 1 am and I was dead tired the next day when I had to go to school but it was worth it! I'll never forget my Thanksgiving in Italy (: My host dad said that it was his favorite day of the year hahaha but no mom and dad back home, I'm not cooking Thanksgiving dinner again next year..... Way too much work!

Cooking! 

Setting the table

With our turkey!

La mia famiglia italiana

The chiefs of everything!

Besides Thanksgiving dinner the rest of the weekend was really relaxing and fun! (: Minus school on Saturday of course where I wanted to kill myself... haha after school I came home and just slept all day because I was so exhausted from cooking and staying up so late. Then on Saturday night I went to Rivoli with some of my Italian friends from my class. It was a fun time! (: We just went to a cafe got some drinks then walked around for a while. On Sunday I slept in then went shopping in Torino with Kaylin. We both got a lot of Christmas shopping done! It was hilarious we seriously bought sooo muuch we were each carrying around like 4 humungous bags and everyone gave us funny looks. Then for dinner we got some sushi, it was heaven <3 I haven't eaten sushi since I've gotten here and I miss it so much! Afterwards Kaylin slept over, it was so much fun we made paper snowflakes, listened to Christmas music, wrapped presents, decorated my room, made puppy chow and watched Elf in Italian. I understand everything in Elf since I've seen it so much! I forgot to mention that on Monday we didn't have school because there was a festival called Santa Caterina in Rivoli. Kaylin, Nini and I took the bus into Rivoli to go to the festival. It was HUGE there was sooo many stands with food and clothes and just everything! Oh and we ran into a lot of people that we knew. I swear everyone knows everyone in this town! Except I'm so mad because all my friends told me that there were some really cool carnival rides at the festival but Kaylin and I couldn't find them anywhere!! We just walked up and down and looked at all the markets. Then at the end when we had to leave we saw the section with all the rides. We were soooo mad! I told all my friends that we couldn't find the rides and they think that we're like retarded now.. hahaha 

I think that's all for now! I need to start writing more because I want to write a posts about Italian food, school and the language! Next time! Now I'm off to wrap some more Christmas presents (: