Happy belated Thanksgiving to everyone! :) Everything here has been farely smooth sailing since leaving Pistoia. The city of Florence is great and I have started to make friends here, ironically starting Thanksgiving day. My ex-coworker and friend from the school in Pistoia also works for a NY school here in Florence and he invited me to have an American Thanksgiving dinner with the students. Their program has some 25 students all of whom were incredibly welcoming. The dinner became progressively more American starting with focaccia and mozzarella, then pumpkin soup (yum!) and then the real deal with apple and pumpkin pies and turkey, etc. Side note: we even had a real florentine Count sit at our table. Afterwards i went with Lorenzo and his coworker to an ex-communist social center and met his friends who are hilarious. The grafitied building is where the young left wing political party meet as a low-key hangout. There are also free boxing lessons I hope to give a shot sometime soon. Not the typical Thanksgiving in Winona with the family, that's for sure! The food CANT compare to what our family makes. Period. Sabrina’s pies, green bean casserole, and of course making the lemon dessert and fruit salad with LB.
Then the following Sat. we had a more traditional dinner at the family's home with all the trimmings. There were 3 languages being spoken that night, italian, english, and some german. Also one of the young cousins threw up 2x which i was fortunate enough to witness both :/ Maybe we can consider her lucky because she had thanksgiving dinner twice, haha just kidding, sorry.
In terms of work, I don't do a whole lot except pick up and drop off the kids places and maybe empty the dishwasher or take out the trash during my 'off' hours. We eat at 8 and afterwards the kids go straight to bed. I am starting to get used the parents’ teaching style but it isn’t how I want to raise kids. Anyways, they also had the pleasure of seeing me quite tipsy after a glass or 2 of wine, oops :)
It is the raining season right now so it has been a little frustrating and unmotivating to explore the city. However, I’ve been keeping busy taking a couple hip-hop classes with the fantastic teacher I took class from 2 yrs ago. Also I've visited Pistoia to see the Spanish students which was really fun. One of my old roommates bravely took on the task of cutting my hair and did a great job. And then I still have conversation exchanges here and there with really nice (and patient) Italians. People ask if I'm homesick and luckily I can say not yet. I'm looking forward to seeing Christmas in the most famous Catholic country. The city has hung Christmas lights along most of the big streets making night strolls very romantic.
Other than I've been relaxing. The carbohydrate diet is starting to take its toll so I plan to start at a local gym where they have a ton of cool classes. Christmas shopping for the family is next on my list. Hope you all have a phenomenal December getting in the spirit of the holidays. Missing everyone, especially around this time of year…kisses, Julie
