Happy Holidays!

I hope everyone had a wonderful holiday!  I actually had a wonderful Christmas with my friends here, and I only sound surprised because I had been dreading Christmas thinking about how much I would miss being together with my family.  While I did miss them terribly, with the help of skype and my awesome friends here I actually had a fabulous time!

On Christmas Eve Caroline and I headed over to Kate and Jess's place for Make Your Own Pizza night.  I got to see how much I've grown into liking vegetables while making the pizzas because Kate and I packed ours with mushrooms, onions, red peppers, and then of course added salami and bufala mozzarella. We also used an arrabiata sauce, which is a little spicier than normal pizza sauce.  It was delicious!!!  I am definitely doing that more when I get home since it was so simple and yummy.

After eating a ton of pizza we headed upstairs to watch Elf, a Christmas tradition for the girls, while also sipping on Prosecco.  Some of us had to have espresso since we were heading to midnight mass later that night.

We decided to go to the Basilica della Santissima Annunziata (Basilica of the Most Holy Annunciation) for midnight mass because Kate and her friend Brooke go there for regular mass so it's more familiar.  The history of the church is actually pretty interesting.  It was founded in 1250 by 7 original members of the Servite order.  2 years later a monk was working on a painting of the Annunciation, but abandoned it because he didn't think he could make it beautiful enough and apparently an angel came while he slept and finished the painting.  Pilgrims would visit this church to venerate the painting and would leave lifesize wax votive offerings of themselves.  Apparently by the 1700's there were over 600 of these wax figures, but they were melted down to make candles.  Today the church is known for the Florentine brides that come and leave their bouquets in front of the painting in order to have a blessed marriage.  The facade of this church was made to match Brunelleschi's facade of the Foundling Hospital (Hospital of the Innocents).

The church is to the left of the statue and the hospital is to the right

This hospital was actually an orphanage and children were often abandoned here.  There was a wheel built where a person could put their baby and a nun would turn the wheel so the baby would go into the building without seeing the parent, therefore it was anonymous.

Ok so on to midnight mass...now you should know that I would mostly identify myself as agnostic and have been to a church probably under 10 times in my life, so going to a Catholic mass, in Italian no less, was mainly just to have the experience.  I have been to midnight mass before with Alissa because I just love Christmas so much and like the feeling of everyone being together celebrating.  Everyone is just so happy and thankful, so I love that part about it.  So the service started out with a lot of singing, not holiday songs or anything, but hymns that were very soothing and well sung (unlike our experience in the church in Barcelona).  It was nice not listening to a ton of talking since it was in Italian, so I appreciated the singing.  The service was nice, but it ended up being 2 hours long and in a church from the 13th century you weren't going to find heat so it was freeeezzzzing.  At the end we did the "peace be with you" where you shake people's hands around you, and in Italian you just say "pace". That part always makes me laugh and if any of you readers have seen Dane Cook's sketch on that process ("peace off!") you will agree. :o)

So we then headed home and the walk home was bizarre!  It was 1am and there were tons of people out partying at clubs and on the streets, and then there were crazy drivers out!  I almost got run over twice, so that was beginning to take me out of my Christmas happy mood.  I just didn't understand all the hubbub going on on Christmas Eve.  Oh, and did I mention I was offered marijuana too?  And called Bella Grande whilst being offered it?  Yea...Christmas spirit was running low for sure.

We made it home without dying and I was able to call my family at their Christmas Eve dinner and that was great.  We had to wake up a little earlier that next day to get over the girl's house to have a Christmas day breakfast.  Caroline decided to wear her Santa hat and we wanted to see how many people would say "Buon Natale" to her.  Literally NO ONE said anything to her or even really looked at her.  There were a lot of people out too and no one really cared.  I feel like in the States, if you walked around with a Santa hat on Christmas day people would at least smile at you...but not here.  Weird.

Jessica made an amazing breakfast called cheddar egg bake, and it reminded me a lot of my mom's famous sausage souffle without the sausage.  That was nice because I was really sad about missing her souffle on Christmas, so I got something very close!  Caroline and I then headed home so we could prepare for our big dinner at our place and so we could skype with our families.  We did a lot of chopping and prepping, and I was able to spend a lot of time talking to family, though since we were having our dinner at 5 things got pretty crazy and we were running around like madman.  Thankfully, we were pretty much all ready for the girls when they got here.

Our dinner menu was first a bruschetta bar with eggplant/feta, spinach/fontina, and the traditional with tomatoes, mozzarella and salami.  Then the girls made an amazing fettucini with ricotta and oregano cream sauce.  It was to die for.  Then I had prepared orange granitas, basically hollowing out oranges then using that freshly squeezed juice, sugar, basil and cointreau and freezing it up.  You also freeze the oranges so you can fill them with the frozen ice and it makes for great presentation.

Granita with espresso, perfect!

We had to eat so early so we wouldn't be too full heading to the opera at 8.  Of course we did eat too much so that plan didn't work out too well, but we were still very excited to roll ourselves to the opera to see La Boheme.  We went to this English church, where my parents and I also went when they visited, and they have small intimate opera performances.  It was wonderful and they have truly talented singers there.

The church

After the opera I was able to skype with my family again and watch them open gifts as if I was there.  It was awesome and it just made me so excited to get home and see them.  All in all it was a fabulous Christmas!

On Monday it was a sad day because I went to Rome to drop off Caroline for her trip home.  I came back to Florence that same day and have had the apartment to myself for the past couple of days.  It's actually been nice because I've been able to focus on some things I really wanted to work on, like what I want to do when I get home and my blog.  I should be coming home sometime in January and I couldn't be more excited to see my family and friends.  I do love it here, but I feel ready to start up my life again and hopefully go in a more exciting direction.  I am currently just packing up and will be moving into Kate and Jess's apartment on Friday!  I'm so excited :o)

Hope you all have a fabulous New Year!! xoxo