Buon Natale

BUON NATALE (MERRY CHRISTMAS)

It is that time of year. Christmas is here. This is by far my favorite time of year. This year was no different. Being that Milan is in Italy, a Catholic country, they go all out for this holiday. There is so much to do and see. They really make the city look beautiful.

One of the most unique things I think this city had to offer was there muscial advent calander in the Piazza Duomo. Leading up to Christmas starting Dec 1st a sheet with the date on it was removed from the window of one of the main building in the piazza. A muscian would emerge at 6 and play christmas music from 6-6:30. Every night another muscian was added. Thus by Christmas eve there were 24 muscians playing wonderful Christmas music. The following clip is from the 6th day I believe of december. Count the lit windows and see if I'm correct.

As we all know it just can not be christmas without a tree. So a few friends and I, with the help of our special friend Jim, had a small get together to decorate Gavin's Christmas tree. We had some food played christmas music and basically had a great time.

About a week later I attended the Christmas concert at the Duomo, Cathedral of Milan. I found out about the concert from this app I have on my phone that list all the stuff going on in the city, from plays, to music, to exhibition. Its call eventi milano. I highly recommend it if you are planning a trip to Milan ever. This concert happens every year. See a little clip I managed to grab.

Although all of my friends left for the holidays, I made the best of staying in Milano. I even tried my hand at making my mom's famous Ricotta Cheese Cookies. They turned out ok, a little over done but they tasted good so thats all that matters.

A friend of mine from school is from a town right outside Milan called Cremona. It is only an hour by train so, her family invited me for Christmas. What a wonderful way to spend my holiday. I left Christmas eve around 5 I think. The train was fun. It was warm and quiet not may people traveling here on christmas eve I guess. This year that is probably because Christmas was a tuesday so people took the whole weekend off to go home. Christmas in Cremona was great. Lilliana's Family made me feel so welcomed and at home. We had dinner on Christmas eve then watch a Christmas Carol, opened presents and just hung out.

On Christmas Day I woke up to Christmas cake for breakfast. Yummy.  Lilliana and I drove in to town to go to mass at a special church were her religion teacher was the presiding priest. It was also interesting as this church had cloistered nuns. It was one of the most beautiful churches I had ever seen. After mass we went back to Lillian's home for Christmas "lunch". Once again her mom did not disappoint.  I am still not quite sure what the meat was. I thought it was turkey but then they called it a chicken and then some other bird but never the less it was very very tasty. Lilliana and I then retired to the living room where we watch TV and did homework.

On the 26th we woke up and had another cake thing for breakfast this one was a wafer thing with Nutella filling dipped in hard chocolate. SOOOOO good. Then in true mama style Lilliana's mom packed me a lunch bag of stuff to bring home and eat. There was enough food for a few meals :-) . And then I was off back to the train station to head back home. It was really the most perfect way to spend my holiday, in the country with a bunch of wonderful people.

A few people from home have recently asked me of how the best way to give me some money for school and so I found this website called go fund me. On this site you can set up an account for what ever you want. A lot of people do use it for education purposes. So, I set one up. Feel free to give whatever you would like. You can give it anonymously or with your name. Just follow the link below.

http://www.gofundme.com/1r6rzg


May God be with you and your family in this wonderful season. Filling your heart with joy and life. Until we meet again.

-M-

Artisan Fair

A few weeks ago we had a long weekend due to the feast of the saint of Milan. So I had two options. One was to make good use of the day studying. The other was to go to the Artisan Fair that was at the fair ground. Lets think really hard about which option I would choose.

Yes I chose to attend the Artisan Fair. This was such a good decision. The booths were organized by country. First we check out Italy but only for a bit. We ate so many samples of which one was fresh Torrone sooooooooo good.  We then moved on to mexico I believe here we had reallllly good margaritas on the rocks. We walked around south american countries for a while and then moved on to india. Where Gav bought an elephant incense holder and I got a new scarf :-) I later found out that elephants are good luck in asia as well as the number 6. The incense holder has 6 elephants win.

THEN ... GERMANY

We then entered october fest. We had brats and sauerkraut. This was of course followed up with beer. Many different ones. Some good some not so good. There was a pooka band that played edelweiss with glass of water. So cool.

We also made our way to France were I ate cheese from a monk. Need I say more. There were a lot of really good looking sea food but we were going to meet people for dinner so we opted out. next year. I did however try some sparkling white wine from Italy on our way out that was tasty so I bought it only 4 euro winnnn. All in all it was a great way to spend my day.

 Oh did I mention it also was the first snow of the season. Could a Minnesota girl ask for much more. I think not. Next year I think I will do most of my holiday shopping there. It was very fun. Well I'll post again soon with Christmas updates..
Till we meet again

-M-