Christmas holiday in Italy - part 2

Here is the second part of the post about my Christmas holiday in Italy! I’m very late and it’s only a summary of all that happened, but I finally managed to finish it and post it :)

Other friends

Over the three weeks I spent in Italy, I also saw plenty of other friends! I met up with the girls from my high school (Chiara, Denisa, Chiara, Sara and Marisa) a couple of times and one day we even went back to our school to say hello to our old teachers. It was soooo funny, because the janitor didn’t want to let us in saying we would disturb lessons... but come on, it was the last day before their Christmas the holidays AND the teachers were all happy to receive us!!! We spent the whole morning at school, six hours as if we were having lessons, and we visited all our old teachers. It was so funny how the janitor was mad at us, whereas the teachers would just interrupt the lessons and spent a looong time talking to us :) We chatted about uni, we remembered a few things from the past years in school and just had a laugh every now and then. Ti was lovely, because even though I don’t miss high school, I miss my teachers – most of them were such nice people and I enjoyed going back to say hello. Also, I got to spend a full “school-day” with my friends and that was pretty cool as well!

With the girls from school I also had a pizza night after Christmas, which turned into a Christmas celebration with presents of sorts, and then I caught up with two of them a couple more times before I left. Once I had lunch with Chiara (ex-desk mate) and afternoon tea (without tea) with Denisa and then I met both of them two days before leaving for a last “goodbye” :D

Lunch with Chiara

Walking around town!

And then also with Denisa!

I also spent some time with my friend Giulia, as I went to visit her at her place, we spent the afternoon together chatting, listening to music and catching up on the last months. Then we went out to dinner to the shopping centre we usually go to when I at her place and it was sooooo good to be back together, enjoy some time and doing the usual stuff as if nothing had changed! She also gave me a couple of gadgets she had bought for me at a Comic-Con (two Sailor action figures) and my Christmas present: a beautiful doll of Mulan!

Another friend that I saw, whom I hadn’t seen since a few days before I left for London, is Carla – she is from Milan and I met her down in Australia, we’ve been great friends ever since. She came over to Turin to spend New Year’s Eve with me and then she stayed also the next two days, when we went skiing at mountain together. it was so much fun and also very different from our usual meetings haha The last time I had spent a few days with her was at the seaside over the summer: pretty big difference, huh?! :P

In addition, I met some of my friends a mountain, though we are not very close and we really spent little time together. We only had a few basic chats, and that was it! However, at mountain I spent more time than I have in ages with my childhood friends Ludovica and Carlotta and I enjoyed it so much! We go on holiday together during the summer, but it had been ages since we had spent some time together spontaneously and not necessarily with our parents around! Also, I went for lunch with Ludovica in Turin once, which we had never done :) It was lovely, we got to chat about uni and our lives and catch up casually.

Carlotta and I at mountain!

Finally, I also went back to the bookshop where I had my work experience in 2013, where I am friends with all the women in the staff, and spent over an hour chatting to all of them, catching up and discussing books as usual :D I bought a new book, too, the latest one from Licia Troisi!

 

Christmas

I spent Christmas Eve’s dinner at my mum’s sister’s house. There were also my maternal grandparents, my two cousins (Umberto and Vittorio) and Umberto’s fiancée, Emilia, who is lovely! Dinners there are always fun because we joke all the time, we laugh at random things and we simply enjoy pending such a special time all together! we had a wonderful dinner, because my grandmother, auntie and mum joined efforts and we ended up with several entrées (I loved the “paté di prosciutto”!), plin, cotechino and mashed potatoes... what more?! :P Afterwards we waited for Vittorio’s girlfriend to join us and we opened our presents, which in my case were money to put aside for the “Once Upon a Time” convention I am going to in June.

Me and my mum

Lots of love

Mum, grandma and Emilia (cousin's fiancée)

With my grandparents!

Sisters :)

Vittorio, Umberto, me, Emilia and Benny

Dad in the kitchen!

 

We arrived back home at around 12.30am, and mum, dad, my sister Benny and I opened the presents we had made to each other. I received a lovely hat with a puffy pon pon a top, warm and soft gloves (totally in love with them!) and a pair of leggings :)

For lunch on Christmas Day we went to my paternal grandparents’ instead, where there was also my dad’s sister and my grandma’s sister :) Another lovely meal, even though the food wasn’t as good because the best cooks are in my mum’s family! As presents I received an illustrated book (“Fiabe Immortali” by Paolo Barbieri) that I had specifically asked for and more money for the convention :) Yep, now hotel, train and food are definitely covered!

New Year’s Eve

Carla arrived in Turin in the afternoon, we prepared a couple of entrées to bring to Giorgia’s house and we went there at around 7.30pm. At first it was just the three of us (Carla and Giorgia had met a few times before because of me), as we had planned for it to be, and we chatted until the rest of the guests arrived. So three boys, friends of Giorgie, joined us for dinner and it was fantastic! I think it was the best New Year’s Eve I’ve ever had :D We had dinner, with me having something “special” (rice) because they ate polenta which I don’t like, while laughing soooo much the whole time that I almost had tears in my eyes LOL At some stage somebody made a comment about not liking musicals and Giorgia and I decided it was exactly the right moment to “randomly” make a “Phantom of the Opera” song play from my phone. It was hilarious!!

After dinner we went into the living room and played “Taboo” until a few minutes before midnight – it was girls against boys and we were soooo awfully beating the boys haha We had the advantage of having shared a lot of experiences and therefore having lots of things to refer to in order to guess words without using the forbidden ones. 

When the countdown started we went in front of the tv to keep up with the official one and we toasted to the New Year, with the first person I’ve seen in 2015 being my best friend – I loved it! After a few minutes of wishing “Happy New Year” to each other and friends/families on the phone, we went back to playing... and we never stopped playing board games until about 4.30am! We played a few different ones and ti was such an amazing night :)

Returning to England

When the last couple of days in Italy arrived, I wasn’t really ready to leave home again. Yes, I love my life here in London, but I’d also grown accustomed to being with my family once again. I felt very melancholic at the idea of leaving and was very upset about it... packing was pretty sad and I even ended up crying a bit before the flight!