Happy Halloween and All Saints' Day!

Well, it was a holiday here in Italy yesterday, as well as today and we all know what that means! No classes and a nice long weekend until Monday.  The holiday is called "Ognissanti", which translates to all saint's. Here are a few pearls of wisdom for ya: This holiday is celebrated to remember the saints and martyrs who died for the church. Then, the following day, which is today, "Il Giorno dei Morti" (the day of the dead) is also celebrated, changing the focus to reflecting upon all other family members who have passed. We have noticed that almost all business were closed yesterday, even our convenient super market just across the street. Had we have thought about this before, we would have bought toilet paper.. uh oh! Thanks to our next door neighbor friends, we made it through the day. ;) Anyways, Halloween in Italy wasn't always celebrated. It has been becoming bigger over the past few years and it's definitely a lot less popular when I compare it to how it is back home. I still made it a necessity for me to participate in the fun festivities, like carving pumpkins and baking pumpkin seeds! It was a lot of fun and I was actually teaching my Italian friends step by step how to do it! They don't have the handy pumpkin carving kits here, so we were left to work with basic knives and free hand designs. They still turned out great, I think! They've also never heard of roasting pumpkin seeds, which was surprising! The difference in costumes over here, is the majority of people dress up as something scary- even the girls!

Here are a couple pictures from the carving pumpkins night! 

A couple of my roommates have discovered a little soup and salad restaurant pretty close to our apartment called Soup and Go, where they had pumpkin soup! I don't know about you guys, but I have never tried this before. We deciding to go there for dinner on Halloween and, 'tis the season, all got the pumpkin soup! It was interesting, but I liked it! Look how cute the bowls were in these jars! 

Later that evening, I went to a Halloween party that was put on by some of my Italian friends! There were yummy snacks, music, dancing, and games all night! I think it was about 2:30am by the time it was over and we started cleaning up! Something else I have noticed while being here is that the Italians are serious night owls! They stay up so late all the time, it's pretty funny. Oh! And something else my friend told me: we (Italians) don't think when we dance, we just go. I believe that, because they are seriously all over the place and so spastic, it's hilarious to watch! Here is a picture of part of the decorated room for the party before everyone got there and then a very short glimpse of one of my friends, Stefano dancing! Ha! 

Yesterday was a relaxing day at home with the roommates. It was really nice to have one of these days, plus, we couldn't really do anything else since a lot of the town was closed anyways. We hung out, made dinner, and then decided to push our beds together in our room to have a movie night! We don't have a TV, so we used one of our laptops and put it at the end of our beds on a little table. It worked out just fine and was definitely worth it! Movie nights are the best, and the only thing we were missing was a bowl of popcorn! ;)