Happy Holidays, etc.

March 9 was: Women's Day

For International Women's Day (or is it, "Woman's Day?") last Saturday, Arianna had a bunch of her girl friends over at dinner time, along with their kids who all played together while they ate and "fatto chiacchiere" (made chit-chat). It reminded me of Christmas Eve at home. I didn't expect to eat with the women since I usually only have meals with the family during the week, but they invited me to sit and we had some pasta, salad, and THEN... one of Arianna's friends brought out her specialty: fresh ricotta cheese spooned into balls on your plate with honey dripped right on top, mmmmm. And then strawberries with whipped cream, but I already had a stomach ache. There was plenty of food, Italian conversation, and mimose to go around. Plus lots of noise from the kids in the other room. It's starting to feel like home.

March 17 was: St. Patrick's Day

I didn't even know it was Saint Patrick's Day on Monday. Obviously it's not celebrated here in Italy like it is in the States, where we all claim to be Irish for the day. There are Irish pubs around but to every other Italian it was just like any other day. In reality, every day is a Saint Day for them but I would have hoped for some green leprechaun figures or tableware to pop up in stores. Anyway, a lot of my friends engaged in all-day pub crawls (clearly marketed towards American students and other tourists, haha) but I wasn't feeling well this past weekend and also had to finish an art project at school, and by the time I was done it was already after dinner so I ran home and reheated the risotto di funghi that Arianna had made that night. After all that was finished it was a bit too late to try to make plans, so I surfed the web in Italian and caught up on my blogging.

March 19 was: Fox's Birthday

Fox as in, The Fox School of Business at Temple. This year marks its 90th anniversary in the States and, in an effort to connect our Rome campus with our Main campus in Philadelphia, we celebrated in our Econ class with some champagne and a video clip of Dean Moshe Porat saying some inspirational stuff back in Philly.

March 24 will be: Easter Day

Mom and Dad brought me some PAAS to dye Easter eggs here. Unfortunately I haven't seen a white egg for sale yet, so I don't know how they will turn out. I was hoping to go to the beach one day this weekend with whoever is not traveling, or at least pack a picnic lunch and venture over to Villa Borghese, but the forecast doesn't look good. Rain with a chance of clouds. Oh well, it will be nice to have Monday off anyway and it will be really interesting to be in Rome for all of this.

Enjoy the holiday :-)