Thanksgiving

Ello everybody! Happy Thanksgiving / Buon Ringraziamento one day late! (how ironic that Italians actually have a word for it) Boy oh boy was yesterday some sort of roller coaster of zee emotions. So. To my great delight I had to go to the sede (the Smith center, pronounced say-day, not seed) early to make up the oral portion of the art history exam I missed when I was sick :). I had gotten less than 5 hours of sleep the night before. I was nervous out of my SKULL. When the professor had finally set up the slide of the painting I had to talk about, I was pleased to say that I knew what it was, who painted it, the date (to the exact year thank you very much) and its significance more or less. What I didn't know is that she would be asking me about the nature of Raphael's commissions and to compare it to other paintings by him and others that I could barely remember let alone talk about without seeing them. Apparently I did NOT take enough notes in class. But it's not like I didn't KNOW stuff. It's just that the combined pressure of being confined in a chair about 5 centimeters from a professor who is judging you (and whose lip liner is distracting and who I cannot help but compare to Jennifer Coolidge), while having to speak in Italian and just the general fact that if I know somebody is waiting for me to answer my brain literally goes blank and only produces such helpful thoughts as "I NEED TO THINK OF SOMETHING SHE'S WAITING SHE'S WAITING THINK OF SOMETHING SHE'S WAITING"......that makes me a wee bit nervous. She concluded by saying "It seems you have a bit of a difficulty speaking, combined with fear. You should try to connect your thoughts more smoothly, especially for the university exam." I said "K THANKS!" and skipped out the room with a grin from ear to ear.
And then I got to see this same professor for the next 2 hours straight while we had our class. At first not even the stunning masterpieces of the Uffizi could cheer me up. When the words "I just need a hug" came into my mind, I was then reminded that if I were in America I would be receiving many many hugs from all my family members. And then it became even harder to contain tears. Oh and I forgot something hilarious. Before we entered the Uffizi the professor all of a sudden asked, "Who has their presentation in the Uffizi today?" I'm pretty sure we all misunderstood her at first. At least I thought she was asking who was writing their final paper on a painting that is in the Uffizi (we didn't have a choice in the matter, a few weeks ago we were just kind of randomly distributed low-quality black and white photo copies of paintings and apparently the one we got was to be our final paper topic). Anyways the girls whose paintings are in the Uffizi (myself included) raised their hands. To make a long story short, it turned out we had been expected to GIVE A PRESENTATION IN THE UFFIZI. When we arrived in front of our painting. That very day. Not a single one of us had even the FAINTEST notion that we had to do anything REMOTELY like this. And so we exchanged looks of bemusement and shock and the professor scolded us for not having read the syllabus while we all silently scolded her for not having uttered a syllable of this before that day. A great kick-off to the class.
But yeah I eventually forgot about my misery because I grew bored and hungry (as usual) and tired. And instead of sadness I felt extreme irritation. For the past 3 weeks I've been thinking "man this week sucked. Luckily there will be less work next week!" Lies. And now I am just DROWNING in it. Luckily I was able to make up my 2 exams (uhh...we'll see how I did) and midterms are done. It was really great (at this point you can probably already tell I'm going to be sarcastic) because the day after I took my Fashion/Costume exam, the professor told us she was giving them back. But not just that--she was going to give them back to us one by one, individually, privately, to discuss our errors, with the door closed. So I waited around in sheer and utter terror for about a half hour while she called every girl in except me. To make a long story short, she hadn't gotten to my exam yet. But hey, I appreciated the unnecessary anxiety. No but I was cheered up soon afterwards when I HAD A REAL. AMERICAN. SANDWICH. OF REAL. AMERICAN. PROPORTIONS. Me and two of the other Smith girls (who are subscribed to my blog! shout-out to Breana and Sera, haha) went to an American diner! It was SO delicious and exactly what I needed. We got vanilla cokes. They came about halfway through our meal so I was dehydrated and very eager to take a sip. Of pure liquid vanilla sugar. Yeah I didn't realize you had to add the Coke first.
RETURNING TO THANKSGIVING! After the Uffizi I ate lunch in the sede and hung around until three other Smith girls announced they were going to the university class that I had found last week (SUCCESS!!! my fifth attempt but SUCCESS!!) and I decided to go with them. We left an hour early because it was extremely boring and there was a couple that was getting rather intimate and Christine was making me crack up and it was just absurd all in all. Then I went home. A few hours later I changed and Camilla and I made our way to Giovanna's apartment for Thanksgiving :). It was absolutely the best meal I've had in Italy, possibly my LIFE. I can't even begin to describe how amazing the feeling of being full was in that moment. My stomach had visibly expanded by the end of the night. It's something that hasn't happened in far too long. I'm beginning to realize the food we have with our host family is just....not.....great. I'm often hungry. I was looking forward to this meal with GIDDINESS. And rightly so. There was: the best cornbread of my life (usually I don't even like cornbread), pumpkin/squash (it's the same word in Italian) soup, potato puree, amazingly tender turkey with gravy, cranberries, CRANBERRY SAUCE (cranberries are virtually nonexistant in Italy so I was SO happy and surprised when Giovanna brought out the cranberry jellies...they are my favorite), green beans with cashews, corn, yummy stuffing, and some garlicy squashy salady thing that was as amazing as everything else. Oh and pumpkin and apple pies with homemade whipped cream. I think I was actually high I was so happy. There was tons of laughing and picture taking and Giovanna's husband played the fiddle and we all sang. Oh and all the professors were invited. I didn't even care that I had to see the art history professor yet again. Well ok maybe a little when I had to sit next to her buuuut I'm not one to damper the Thanksgiving mood. All in all it was a 100% perfect Italian substitute. And when I got home I had a hilariously wonderful skype chat with my whole family in America. So by the end of the day I didn't feel so sad. :)