"Un buon tempo era divertivo da tutti" "A good time was had by all"

Well, Christmas has come and gone. We had a great day together, and got to speak to some of you, too, which was nice.

As usual, Christmas started on the 24th, with our "Christmas Eve Fairy" gifts - new cozy jammies all around. On Christmas morning, we were all spoiled, as usual - we got a real variety of books, which means I've been up til the wee hours every night since. Plus we got chocolate bars and games and facecloths and brita filters and clothes.. life is good!

Once all the gifts were opened, and most of them tested, we went to our neighbour's apartment to eat. A few days before Christmas, I had taken some homemade ginger cookies over to her, and she invited us over for lunch.(remember, lunch is the big meal here)

Terry was already planning to do turkey, but couldn't find a big one, so he bought two. Terry prepared the turkey and fixings, and we took it over to share with Francesca and her husband Massimo and their son (I can't remember his name), plus Francesca's brother Claudio, and their mother. Claudio and their mother also live in the building, but on different floors. Their family actually built this apartment building 60 or so years ago, and Claudio still cares for the apartments. Francesca speaks very little english, and Claudio speaks some more, but we were able to communicate quite well, I think. Massimo is a teacher (or principal, maybe), and he speaks very clearly with simple vocabulary. It would be so much easier if everyone here spoke like that! (or if they all had subtitles when they spoke)

We had a great meal, and excellent visit with the neighbours. Boy Terry's blog covers the more mouthwatering details of the day. Unfortunately, I didn't think to take any pictures during lunch, so you'll just have to trust me when I say we were a beautiful sight to behold. (I was particularly radiant!)

This morning (28 Dec), we were quite surprised to wake up to snow! I took a little walk up through centro to see if I could get some nice snowy pictures of town, but the snow really didn't stick. It snowed almost all day, and we don't have anything to show for it except on some trees and rooftops.

As usual, you can see the pictures on facebook.

Ciao to all, and Happy New Year!