let the christmas countdown begin

November 24
The first thing I did this morning (after drinking a whole bottle of water and taking a few Advils… heh) was turn on my Christmas music playlist!!! Oh yes, the countdown to Christmas has begun and I am soooo excited!

Marilena and I decided to spend our entire day today Christmas shopping. We’ve been planning our shopping day today for weeks… no joke. We left the house around 11ish and headed downtown towards San Lorenzo. I can honestly say that San Lorenzo is MY MOST FAVORITE PLACE TO SHOP IN THE ENTIRE WORLD. It took us a little while to get into the swing of things and to commit to purchases but once we did time and money flew by. Eventually, my bags weighed sooo much and were cutting off the circulation in our arms and hands so badly that we decided to call it a day and head home. I hope everyone is excited for me to come home – if not, they should be because I’m going to be, liek, the blonde version of Santa Clause with a big sack of treasures for everyone!!!

I’d love to list off the millions of things that I bought for everyone BUT (in the off chance that anyone still actually reads my blog) I don’t want to give away any of the surprises. Some funny things happened today while we were out… let’s see, we witnessed the Africans selling illegal purses and sunglasses get the signal from their homies that the cops were coming and they all literally packed up and in a matter of seconds were SPRINTING away – I could not stop laughing. Also, a guy selling us **** ***** ****** (I don’t want to give anything away) had a huge crush on Marilena and I and gave us some Hello Kitty pins for free. Eh… THANKS buddy; we weren’t really sure how to react. Around the time he offered us his lunch that he packed himself for the day we said our “no thanks’” and moved on. Hahaha.

On our walk home there was a Manuel sighting… he was riding by us on his bike in THE most classic outfit I have ever seen: aviator sunglasses, a snow hat (the kind with string that you tie around your face and a big fluff ball on top), and a really small, bright, turquoise sweater!!! Just picture that. I laughed so hard that it hurt.

After we got home and sorted through our loot we spent a few hours at the gym working off our turkey feast from the night before. It felt good to sweat, notgonnalie. We were confused by the abundance of cute boys at the gym today… I think that’s the first time I’ve said that in all the three months that I’ve been in Italy. We were more confused than excited about it… haha.

Our room has been FREEZING lately. Right now more than anything i’m missing my usual SCU outfit of Uggs, sweatpants, and hooded sweatshirt – if anyone sees me over winter break, don’t be surprised if this is what I’m wearing. Everyday.

Dinner conversation was really entertaining last night. Susana and Kike were out for the evening sooo it was Manuel, Marilena, and I. Manuel went into a tangent about how Santa Clause only wears a red suit because Coke wanted him to so that he’d advertise for their company… I told him he was full of shit and we got in a fight as usual. He and I have a love/hate relationship and I think we both get a lot of pleasure out of telling each other that the other person is stupid. Ohhhh Manuel.

We’re trying to convince the family to decorate the house for Christmas; well, I am atleast – besides carving pumpkins, decorating for Christmas is my favorite decorating time of year! I’ve learned so far that on December 8 ALL Italians buy their Christmas trees (it’s, liek, designated Christmas tree day or something). Unfortunately Marilena and I will be in Switzerland that weekend BUT I’m going to bother them everyday to make sure that they buy one for our apartment!!! Ahhh, I’m in such Christmassy mood already and it’s not even December yet!

After dinner Marilena and I dragged ourselves downtown towards the Duomo and met up with Navid, Natalie, and Chris (her boyfriend from SCU that’s here visiting) at Astor for a few drinks. Navid cracks me up. It was a mellow night and we ended up coming home around midnight-ish. Lots of stuff to do tomorrow….