My Journey to Italia

Halloween

Last night was the Festa di Halloween at the Enoteca Italiana. It’s strange think that Halloween has already come and gone. It doesn’t feel much like Halloween. The weather has been so strange here, cold one day, hot the next, that it’s hard to think of it as November already! Halloween isn’t very widely celebrated in Italy either. Stores didn’t have very many decorations, tons of candy in shiny wrappers wasn’t being sold, and there weren’t hoards of kids trick or treating. Only in the past couple years has Halloween started becoming popular in Italy, probably due to US influence, so it’s a pretty knew thing here. How strange to me, who grew up loving Halloween. The candy, the costumes, the friends, it was all great! But, there were a few stores with decorations up and some masks to buy, but nothing compared to all the decorations and costumes you can find at Target. I did see a few kids out with their parents in town last night, but their costumes were pretty plain, black capes and pirate hats.

The study center was able to organize a Halloween party for us UC students at the Enoteca Italiana last night. Originally we had to pay to get in, but then the Enoteca decided to open up the party to Italians as well, and we all got our money back. It didn’t start until 10pm and lasted well into the night. I walked there with this guy Alex who lives farther down the street from me. We were supposed to meet at 10, but he got his times mixed up at arrived at 9. Not having my number to call and ask why I wasn’t outside, he actually rang our door, talked to Mario, and came all up. I was listening to headphones in my room and missed all of this. The next thing I know Mario’s knocking on my door and there’s Alex standing next to him. I’ve never had anyone over, I didn’t even know if I was allowed to, and now here’s Alex who’s gotten himself invited in! I was really surprised but it was cool. Mario was really nice to him and didn’t mind at all if he was there. I wasn’t dressed at all so I told Alex to make himself comfortable and went and changed. I had a really hard time coming up with a costume since I didn’t want to spend much money and I didn’t have much too work with. I decided to go with the classical witch and more a black shirt, black shirt, black stockings and black boots. I went for a very classic look and topped it all off with a black jacket and black witch hat. I think I looked very witchy. Alex was Ron Burgundy/Will Ferrell from Anchor Man. He does look a lot like him so it was pretty funny.

We walked over to the Enoteca, thought no one was there yet so we sat in the Fortress for a while. It was a beautiful night so that was really nice. Then we saw Brooke, one of the Study Center coordinators, and her boyfriend and decided to go inside with them. Only to discover there were tons of people already there, in the back of the building, many of which had been drinking a lot before hand and were now working on finishing off the free wine and snacks. It was an interesting experience, the party, lots of people were very drunk and I saw a different side of many people. It will be a little strange seeing them tomorrow. People had really cute costumes though, for only coming up with them that day. There was a group of girls dressed as gondoliers from Venice, some cats, pirates, a Ninja Turtle, Mafia Gangsters and of course witches. Then the dancing started. Usually I don’t like to dance but I kind of forced myself to try and it ended up being kind of fun. Italian guys are very sleazy though and so the whole time we were just trying to get away from them. It was a very American party though, with very American music even. The Italians don’t seem to like to dance as much either, they just kind of stand around and watch which is a little strange. It was cool though. Nice getting out and doing something. I didn’t feel left out either, because everyone was there, even all us home stayers. The only bad thing was that someone took my hat! I took it off to dance because I was hitting people with and when I went to get it later, it was gone!

posted by Madeline Faye @ 4:33 PM