Assisi and Halloween

So I got to the bottom of the mysterious dinner on Thursday night.
Turns out it was Francesco's birthday. So he will from here on out be referred to as my 38-year-old brother. Thank you very much. Today was a continuation of the celebration, since it's All Soul's Day (clearly a celebrated holiday in Italia) and we had ANOTHER outrageous meal in his honor. This one was serious, though. Leonardo, his wife, and their baby joined us. Along with an outrageously loud and opinionated woman who I can only assume was an aunt. I missed her name. Which is a good thing, because I'm glad I didn't have to converse with her alone. She was so animated with her hand motions--every time she started talking I was afraid she was going to knock everything off the table. Keep in mind, for the majority of lunch our conversation was about salmonella. No one feels that strongly about salmonella, Aunt "Sally". Get it? Salmonella--Sally? Lunch lasted for like three hours. Everyone talked loudly and drank wine and occasionally glanced over at the awkward foreign girl making faces at the baby and slowly getting kinda drunk... Casual Monday afternoon.
This weekend was lovely. I ended up going to that Halloween party at the University. What a strange experience. Europeans don't dress up as funny things for Halloween. They only dress up as "scary" things. Therefore, this party looked like a scene from a Disney Channel Original Movie. With grown ass people wearing witches' hats, and wrapping themselves up in toilet paper like mummies. With more cigarette smoking indoors and alcohol consumption--that was less like a Disney movie, I guess.
Saturday we took a lovely little day trip to Assisi. The birthplace of everyone's good friend St. Francis. It is such a beautiful little medieval town. There's really not a whole lot to do besides visiting incredible churches, and these crazy castles. But it was a very nice afternoon, and we had a wonderful Italian lunch at a great little cave-like restaurant. Afterward my friend Anna bought this meringue. Totally normal. I'd never had a meringue before, but this one was pretty delicious. The town really was beautiful, though. It was like stepping back in time.

Yesterday was Halloween. We were gypsies. Please don't get confused imaging something sexy like Esmeralda from the Hunchback of Notre Dame (also, please excuse the number of Disney references in this post). Real gypsies--or at least Italian "zingari" are MUCH less glamorous. This is what real ones look like. They walk around important monuments and harass tourists for change. Usually just shaking plastic cups with coins in them while pointing to laminated pictures of children. In reality, they're pretty terrifying. So, we did our best to imitate that. Even Spencer got in on the action. Disclaimer: my belly is stuffed. I'm not THAT out of control...yet. They always look like they have pillows stuffed to make them appear pregnant. I'm not entirely sure what the deal with that is. I mean, if they're not pillows-and are in fact babies-I don't get why they're so lumpy... I'm not sure if we were being offensive or not. But I think we looked pretty hilarious. Again, though, lost on the Italians. Funny costumes aren't their thing.
Today was totally worthless because it's raining and everything is closed for the holiday. So it's not even my fault, right?
We leave for Rome on Thursday after class. I'm so excited. I fully intend on having a Lizzie McGuire-esque adventure. (again, the Disney thing, sorry.) And I'll let you know all about it. That is, if you don't see me in a tabloid impersonating an Italian pop star.
A dopo. Baci!