Thanksgiving in Roma

This past Thursday I had a site visit with my history class, which meant I had to skip philosophy class in order to actually get to the Olympic Stadium on time to meet my professor. Italian class I just skipped on principle, but that's beside the point. The site visit was really cool. I had been to Stadio Olimpico for the Roma-Lazio game, but I somehow failed to appreciate the plethora of fascist symbols, sayings, propaganda, monuments, statues, etc, even though they were absolutely everywhere. Mostly because it had been dark then and I was way too caught up in the excitement of the crazy soccer match I was about to see. When I say they were absolutely everywhere, though, I mean everywhere. From huge blocks of marble representing a timeline of fascist history to a giant obelisk in front of the stadium inscribed with MVSSOLINI. Apparently the reason all of these things are still there is because the Allies used the area as a headquarters after the war, which prevented people from destroying all evidence of Mussolini and the fascist regime in the initial post-war frenzy. And now it's just there.

Once I finally got back from the site visit, I began assembling all my Thanksgiving food. I had literally been preparing for this for six weeks. I am that much of a Thanksgiving freak. I had to have my traditional menu: turkey, cranberry sauce, mashed potatoes, green bean casserole, and stuffing. Everything was pretty easy to find in Rome except the cranberries and stuff for the casserole. When Alex's mom visited, I begged her to bring me french fried onions and Campbell's cream of mushroom soup to make the casserole. The cranberries proved to be slightly more challenging. I read online somewhere that Italy just doesn't really import them because people here don't like them. Luckily, I'm not stuck in Rome, so when I was in Brussels last weekend, I popped into a grocery store to look for cranberries. There they were, Ocean Spray and everything. If you want to know how ridiculously excited I was, just ask Alex. I think my little victory dance may have slightly embarrassed her. Yet victorious I was. I packed my cranberries in my carry-on and guarded it with my life. After that, everything was easy. I obviously wasn't going to buy an entire turkey here, so I opted for the turkey sandwiches option and bought deli turkey and fresh bread. I had never made stuffing before, but it's easier than I realized and turned out to be really good. Overall, everything was amazing. I had my friend Jenna over and it was just the two of us since Alex had left for Morocco that day and our other friends all had plans. But I wouldn't have had it any other way. We had a tiny, delicious, happy Thanksgiving. And then I got to Skype my family while they had dinner too. Overall, my first Thanksgiving away from home wasn't bad, but I don't plan on being absent from another one any time soon.