Thanksgiving in Italy, goodbyes, rain, Advent season!

The past few days have been quite eventful. We had an international Thanksgiving, said goodbye to many people, had lots of rain, and the Advent season started! (Duh, the title basically explains it all!)

Thanksgiving
Here at CC there are quite a number of Americans, or at least, there were when it was Thanksgiving. Zack and I have talked about having a Thanksgiving meal for quite some time. When Tony came back from the States in the beginning of November, he brought back a whole bunch of typical Thanksgiving stuff, like pumpkin pie filling, cranberries, craisins, etc.. It made everything seem possible, since I have not seen those things around here. There is a tradition to have a big meal at the end of the harvest, but since 1. we don't know when that day will arrive 2. it was almost Thanksgiving 3. there were a lot of people around from all over the world, we decided to have Thanksgiving dinner! We had a day before, since the appointment to take the olives was on the actual night. It was such a fun night! The tables were decorated with nice napkins and fancy glasses that are usually reserved for the guests. The people who were making all the food were feverishly cooking and baking all day. Tony took charge of the main meals, with the help of Elisa and Zack. Since Tony is a vegetarian and is lactose intolerant, the foods were altered a bit, but everything still tasted delicious. I don't think I have eaten that much since I got here. I was barely able to finish my plate. We had turkey, tofurkey, cranberries, potatoes, a delicious soup with chestnut pieces in it (how brilliant!!), roasted vegetables, and dessert thanks to Rike, Kelly, our South African volunteer, and myself. Rike made a German Apple Crumble, Kelly a Malva pudding (similar to a sponge cake, but it has apricot jam in it and some sort of sauce with cream in it) and for the first time ever, I made aranygaluska (which happened to turn out to be one of the best ones I have ever eaten. I am so proud of myself!)!
After doing all those dishes (we had about 25 people eating here), and cleaning up, Antoinette presented us with a game. Two teams, each player with a number. A asked questions about CC related things and then called out a number. The people with those numbers had to run to the "yes" or "no" chairs, and whoever sat down first, their team got a point. It was 'The Best' vs. 'Pink Olives.' Unfortunately, I was on the loosing team, but I think it was because Zack had the same number, and I am afraid that Zack might hurt me (things got pretty intense while fighting for the chair!). Zack used to play football and is quite bigger than me. I would rather loose to him than loose an arm.
There is a game called "Sardines" that we have been wanting to play for months now. We never got around to it, so we decided that that night would be perfect! The object of the game is the one person hides and everyone else searches for him/her. If you found that person, you hide in the same place with them. It's best to play with a lot of people, so you really do end up like sardines in a can! Paul hid first, and of course he knows every crook in this house, he found a pretty good place (I am still not saying where...); I found him first, than Ethan and Raymond. The four of us were in that little place for some time, and than we tricked the others are came out. Zack hid next, finding possibly the dustiest place in the house. There is a loft in one of the rooms and he climbed up there. Ethan and Raymond did too, so I was like, what the heck, why not! It definitely wasn't easy getting up or down! But so much fun! The night finished around this time, and we probably ended up watching a few episodes of 24 afterward (we have Season 3-7 here in the Colonica, and we all got hooked on it. Watched it every chance we got.).


Rain
There really isn't an update on this, but the fact that it has been raining almost nonstop. Well, today it was a better day; it didn't rain for the most of the day!

Advent Season
As you all know, Advent began last Sunday. This is exciting, because that means Christmas is a bit over 4 weeks away! We have a wreath, but no candles in it, haven't gotten around to it yet... On the first of December, when I stepped out of the hallway from my room, I saw that a little Angel, called Rike, dropped a few presents for me. She left me an Advent calendar and some delicious German cookies. Rike and I also made Cecilia an Advent calendar, with 24 little packages in a shoebox. She was so happy, and so were we when we saw her reaction.

Goodbyes
This is the saddest part of the blog for me. During the harvest we had several people come and go. We had the Swiss family with two little boys who seemed to make everyone's days a little bit brighter, Steven, the Dutch man, who went crazy with the chain saw and made pretty amazing tortillas (I rolled, he flipped), and several others. We still have Michael from San Diego and Kelly from South Africa, who are staying almost until Christmas. But the worst goodbye was Zack and Ethan. Their time here at CC expired and they flew back to Kentucky. It was not easy to say bye because we became such a tight-knit group and they felt like brothers to us. We became very close, so seeing the first part of our group leave was quite upsetting. Raymond leaves in 8 days, Dennis in 16. I even had a dream that Rike is also leaving, which made me sad, since it's only going to be the two of us after Christmas (though, there might a British guy named Adam coming!).
The last night The Klemme Boys were here was fun. We played a round of our favorite game, Apples to Apples, with Iris-o and Kelly. Took some pictures, remembered all the good times we had and said our goodbyes. Our group is missing a piece now, but glad that they home happily with their family.

By the way, bought some awesome Twinnings Infusion teas. Amazing! Currently I am sipping on a Raspberry-Echinacea cup. And, 19 more days!

That is all for now!