Roveredo's bonfire!

I don't know if you all remember last year when I mentioned the bonfires that happen all over northern Italy. Last year we had our own bonfire, but this year some friends and I went to the community one in Roveredo, which happens to be across the street from our house. The bonfires are always on January 5th, which is the night before Epiphany, and are lit all over northern Italy to light the way for the 3 wise men looking for baby Jesus. They also burn a dummy called "vecia" which means old lady at the top of the fire. They burn her because they say she is guilty of all misfortune and mishaps from the previous year, so she must be burned. (Yep, kinda creepy.) Since Rachel's husband and Dustin had to work that night, we decided to make it a girls night. Veronica also came and I made dinner for us three. We had spinach dip and potato soup then walked over to the fire. These fires are HUGE and crazy hot. We had to stand back quite a ways. It was so much fun and I loved the smell of the fire combined with the vin brule (which is a hot wine). Afterward, we came back to our house and ate chocolate cake. DELISH!

Rachel and Veronica

Rachel and me

Getting ready to light their gas-soaked rags-on-a-stick

Lighting the bonfire

Rachel, Veronica and Me!

Vecia burning. Hope you don't have nightmares tonight. Your welcome :)

The view of the fire walking back to our house, this thing burned for days and only stopped smoking last week. The next day the air was heavy with smoke and our cars were covered in ash.

holiday recap!

Okay, so this is totally going to be a picture overload! I am so far behind on my blog but I wanted to get these holiday pictures on here so that I can do my next post on London!

First off...Halloween! The week of Halloween was spent in Paris with Dustin's parents. After sending them off we headed home. We got home on the 30th, the day before Halloween, just in time for parties! The night of the 30th we dressed up and went to a party with our friends Rachel and Sid. We dressed up as cops. I was a city cop and Dustin was a "hillbilly cop." It worked out perfect since he hadn't shaved for two weeks because he was on leave so he had a sweet handle-bar mustache that looked awesome! The next night we spent at our friends Rachel and Sids house and carved pumpkins and ate good food. Rachel is one of the best cooks I know!

For Thanksgiving, we went to our friends Vicki and Todd's house. We had so much good food! We had fun eating all day, playing games and singing karaoke.

Vicki and Larry getting ready to carve the turkey

Me and Vicki

Vicki and Liz

Ben, Dustin and Larry all thinking they need to watch over the deep-fried turkey. They were out there all day! It was their pride and joy :)

Christmas was low key and very nice! We got up and opened gifts for each other than had orange rolls and cinnamon rolls. We pretty much hung out the rest of the afternoon till all our family in the states finally got up! (Ha ha jk. They did get up at 8am but it seems like forever when it's 4pm your time!)

Some of the ornaments on our tree...

One of our snow storms! Didn't last long :(

Trying to wrap my cat up for christmas....Didn't really work out....

One of the cute pies I made for my Italian neighbors. I had never made them before and probably should have taste tested them beforehand... Oh well!

For New Years Eve we went to Venice with our friends Rachel and Sid. We got there around 7pm then took the water taxi to San Marco Piazza. After walking around the square, which was surprisingly empty, we found a restaurant and ate pizza and a traditional italian cake called panettone. It was 11:30pm before we made it back to the square where all the festivities were held and then it was PACKED! We had so much fun and it was way cool to see how Venice celebrates the new year. Definitely glad we went!

On the water taxi going to the Piazza

Gazebo in the square

Countdown to 2011!

Fireworks over the water

New Years Kiss!