where they make the cheese!

Happy late Thanksgiving!

Although I wasn't at home to celebrate with my family, I wasn't alone for the holiday -- Daniel came to visit, arriving on Wednesday and leaving early early this morning. Once he got to Parma, after a couple extra train rides, we had a very lovely weekend.

Wednesday we had a chill day because poor Dan had jetlag, but we got to eat dinner wtih Nice and Fil and Sarah (as soon as Nice met Daniel she asked how McCain was). Nice had us go to the grocery store to get some vino to celebrate eating together. Very cute!

Thursday was his tour around Parma -- we got tickets to the Correggio exhibit, and went through the museum sans audioguides because I had a bad experience with a tour when my group went to the exhibit. The cool part, again, was going up scaffolding into the dome of the cathedral to see the frescoes up close. It was nice going with Dan, too, because we didn't have an agenda like I did for class so we were able to look at the inside of the Duomo as well. We had lunch at Frank Foccacia (where I successfully ordered a meat sandwich instead of a pepper sandwich this time) and ate some gelato at Milano Chocolat (yum). We rode our bikes over to Anna's, where we had tea with her and Aldo. They were so cute! Aldo kept trying to speak English to Daniel and Anna gave us cookies with her homemade jam (we liked it so much she gave us a jar to take home. SWEET). Anna told me she thought Dan was a very nice boy and that what we have continues for some time. She is too cute.
We had dinner at a lovely little place and admired the city with its Christmas decorations. I got to Skype with the fam after they ate dinner, which was great! Sad that they couldn't see me, but it was nice to see them in all their Thanksgiving glory.

Friday we had planned on going to Cinque Terre, but the weather was so terrible that we changed our plans and decided to go to Bologna instead. It was very rainy all day (although it was snowy as we walked to the Parma train station) but Bologna is a good city to spend a day in in the rain because it is filled with PORTICOES -- basically every sidewalk was covered by a loggia, so it made walking around very easy. We had MTV Italy as our guide, and got to see a couple cool sites - we had lunch in a cute little place where I had some pizza (after unsuccessfully trying to find another lunch place that our guide suggested but probably didn't exist), we went up one of the two towers (it was very narrow and very tall, but had a good view), went inside the main church (very beautiful inside, and very very interesting. Each side chapel had something different in it - we felt like we were in a museum. There was one with a Foucault's pendulum, one had a ton of different relics, one had wood carved statues that were eerily similar to the ones at the Correggio museum, etc. Pretty awesome), saw a scandalous statue of Neptune (when it was originally carved, apparently the sculptor made Neptune's "triton" a little too big...so the church fathers asked him to make him smaller. However, after he recarved it, he made it so if you stand behind Neptune at a certain angle, his outstretched thumb restores him to godly status. HILARIOUS), and went by the University, which is the oldest in the world! We got to see this Anatomical Theater, where students would watch the dissection of human corpses. The room was gorgeous, and there were two skinless statues holding up this special chair. Really cool.
When we got back, Nice asked us if we wanted to go to dinner with Fil. Despite the cold, we walked to the restaurant, which was approximately 19 miles away through a lot of slush and snow. We were freezing and our feet were soaking when we finally got there. Nice was friends with the owner of this Naples-themed restaurant, and we had delicious food (a lot of fried things) under her suggestions.

Saturday Dan and I walked around Parma a bit (we got gelato at Mickey Mouse, and then wandered around a mini-market. An old man was manning this free wine tasting booth and when we got close with our bowls of gelato he told me this specific kind was good with ice cream and poured it in our bowls. Only in Italy. It wasn't bad, though), missed the train we wanted to Milan and ate lunch at a creperie (delicious bruschetta!). We finally got to Milan, dropped off Dan's bag at the train station, and manuevered our way through the Milan Metro to get to the Duomo piazza. There were 9 million cops around with riot gear and we never found out why. We went inside the Duomo with hopes of going up the dome, but as there was a mass going on, we were not able to do so. The Duomo is GIGANTIC (one of the biggest 4 I think?) and very beautiful. We also looked at the Galleria, a huge area of swanky shops covered by a glass ceiling. MTV Italy told us that one of the mosaics on the ground which had a bull on it brought good luck to whomever dug their heel in and spun around, so we did that. We looked at the outside of the Opera House and tried to find somewhere to eat but did not want to get ripped off, so we headed back to the train station to catch a bus to Malpensa. It was rainy and crowded in Milan (very similar to NYC) and Dan had an early flight the next morning.

When we got to Malpensa airport, we couldn't figure out how to get to our hotel, so we decided to take a cab. I asked a cabbie if he was free and after he asked where we were going, he called the hotel himself to get their free shuttle to come pick us up. That would never happen in the US. We finally got picked up and had dinner at the hotel (I felt bad that Dan's last dinner in Italy was in a hotel restaurant, but it was actually decent) and went to sleep. This morning we got picked up at 5:15 am to get him to the airport for his 6:55 am flight. It was hard saying goodbye -- after not seeing him for 3 months it was such a short visit of 4 days -- but we'll see each other in a little more than a month. I slept on the shuttle and train ride back, and listened to a CD on the Discman Dan gave me (since my mp3 player can't charge on any computer except for my broken one). When I got back I slept for 5 more hours, and then went over to the villa to bake Christmas cookies with Steph and Nate. We made our own frosting and cut out cute shapes but they did not turn out at ALL. I will post a picture later because they are quite hilarious.

I only have 3 weeks left in Italy! RIDICULOUS. 2 more weeks with the BC kids here! There will be a lot of work to do this week (preparing for final papers and presentations and exams) but this next weekend our whole program is going to the Alps in Aosta for a ski trip! I am very excited. We also have a group-wide Christmas Party at Anna's which I am stoked about.

I hope everyone's Thanksgivings were marvelous!
Home stretch, man!
<3