The happiest Thanksgiving ever.

Thanksgiving.

In Italian, il giorno de ringratziamento. A day for giving thanks. A day to eat. A day to remember how blessed you are.

Boy am I blessed. I think I am going to drop the sarcastic sassy-ness for this blog. I want you all to know how blessed I am. Thanksgiving this year was truly the best Thanksgiving I've ever had. I want to tell you all about it. Hopefully it will give you some of the same joy it gave me.

While I have loved being Italy for more reasons than I can name, I have missed my family more than I ever thought was possible. As many of you know, I have an aunt who is at home with breast cancer. I also have a hockey-playing uncle who had a serious spinal injury recently. For someone who is as close to their family as I am, it is incredibly hard to be here while all that is happening at home. And I thought that Thanksgiving would be the worst day of the trip when it came to being homesick. It's a day when you're supposed to be at home, with family, being lazy, eating, and watching football. Well, I thought was going to be one for five with that list. I was going to eat. That was about it. I wasn't going to be at home, I wasn't going to be with family, I had class from 9-3 so I couldn't be lazy, and football (the American kind at least) doesn't exist here.

But when it was all said and done, my Italian Thanksgiving surprised me by putting me at three and a half for five, two and half things more than I thought I would have. I'm so excited to tell you about all of this happiness!

So, it started when our absolutely outstanding and amazing program director, Jodie, decided that we should have a Thanksgiving dinner. One thing led to another and before we knew it, we were all inviting our host families to a Thanksgiving celebration. We were also planning to make pies for dessert. Jodie hired someone to make the turkey and all the food but the students were responsible for the pies. So pies we made (except for Leslie and I because I was down and out with an upper respiratory infection (yuck!) and Jodie thought it would be best if the very ill and probably contagious girl didn't make food for everyone to eat...probably a good choice). So anyways, after the decision that we would have a Thanksgiving celebration was made,  I felt a little better about not being home. Emphasis on "a little."

When the day rolled around, I was unexplainably super duper really extra excited. I was just stoked on the whole dinner thing and excited to meet everyone's host family. I must have subconsciously known that it was going to be the best day ever.

I will start my description of the night by saying that dinner was unbelievably delicious. For an Italian chef who doesn't make turkeys very often, this guy did a fantastic job. It was moist and flavorful and HUGE. Before they carved it they brought it out and set it on a table in the middle of the room, and it almost took up the whole room. Okay, not really, but it was ridiculously big. And we had mashed potatoes (one of my favorite foods ever), peas and carrots, cranberry sauce, and CORN ON THE COB! It was so so so yummy. And the people in my program are pretty good pastry chefs if their pies are any kind of indicator. But better than the food was the company. I sat with Leslie (my roommate) and Anna (my host mom (!) who is in the picture with me and Leslie) and Amy and Madeline (very good friends) and Carmen (Amy and Madeline's host mom). We talked and laughed and had great conversations in Italian. It was amazing to meet all the host families and have everyone together in one room. At one point during the night, it struck me how similar this would have been to my Thanksgiving at home. Tons of people (almost all of the 39,827,128 members of the Tocco family were together), good food, Italian culture, loud people, laughter, all the things Thanksgiving should be. Everyone looked super classy and beautiful. It was the perfect dinner.

After dinner I came home and was hoping to be able to skype with my mom and all my family. I can't say that I wasn't a lot disappointed when I found out that wireless internet wasn't an option and Uncle Vito's webcam didn't work. I almost cried. So I called on the phone instead and my mom started passing the phone around to all the different members of my family. When I got to Emma, she told me that they got the internet to work and I could call on skype. So I did, and I have never been more excited to see my family than I was in that moment. It's true that when something is taken away you appreciate it much more. I talked to almost every single person in my family and it was so wonderful. Then my papa talked to my host mom in Italian. Vair vair cool, if you ask me. Then I talked to everyone some more. It was amazing beyond words. I am so truly blessed by my family. Every person in my family is a beautiful soul and I love them all dearly.

After I hung up, I cried a little. But really, I just couldn't stop smiling. I smiled for a long time after I hung up. I actually had a hard time falling asleep because I couldn't stop thinking about how blessed I am. I have so much to be thankful for. At some point, I realized that I did have Thanksgiving with my family, or at least one of my families. The people here have become my family. And this place has become my home. It may be a second home, but it is home nonetheless. So with that realization I got to check two more things off that list. The other half came when I veged (vegged? veg'ed? how would you write that?) out after I talked to my family on skype and watched CSI online until two in the morning. Lame, I know, but I did watch something American on my computer, which is kind of like watching football on TV. I checked the football scores online too. Does that count? I know it's not the same, so I'm giving myself half a point. That puts me at three and a half on my list. Pretty good considering the fact that I am in a country that doesn't celebrate Thanksgiving at all, eh? I thought so.

So in conclusion, I would like to make this statement (which I have already made several times, but, as Gail says, there's no harm in restating your point and making it extra clear): I am incredibly blessed and have so much to be thankful for. And I have a feeling that I can't even grasp how blessed I truly am. I really have no idea. But I know that I ought to be thankful always. I love my families, Tocco and Klooster and especially my new Italy family. And I love skype. And that's all I have to say. I hope everyone else had a joyful, blessed Thanksgiving as well.

Ciao a tutti! See you all in less than two weekssss!!!!