Chocolate and Brothers

Saturday we took a trip to Perugia, about a two hour train ride outside of Florence, for the annual Chocolate Festival. There were signs proclaiming everywhere that over the years this chocolate festival has made Perugia the "chocolate capitol of Europe." I have to admit, I was a little skeptical at first, assuming that Belgium or Switzerland would be more chocolate oriented than Perugia, but I tried to remain open minded. We came up out of the train station to the main street of Perigua, a quaint city in Umbria, Italy, and were immediately rushed along by the rivers of people streaming through the streets. Hundreds of chocolate "tents" had spiced hot chocolates, chocolate dipped bananas, churros with chocolate, chocolate crêpes, chocolate spaghetti, and of course, millions of assortments of chocolate bars, balls, candies, and liqueurs. By the end of the day, I had tried many things, and I thought I would have a huge sugar high, but I really didn't. All in all, it was well worth getting up at 6:30 in the morning in order to catch the train down there, although I still remain skeptical as to whether or not it can be called the chocolate capitol of Europe.

I was sitting in class today, taking notes on an intense (and therefore extremely boring) lecture about Tacitus' The Annals of Imperial Rome, when all of the sudden my professor looks down at her cell phone (which was on silent) and immediately blew up in front of us, as it seems all Italians have the genetic ability to do. "Dunque, WHY does my fratello (brother) ALWAYS insist on calling me on a Monday morning when he KNOWS that I might be a little busy with this concept of WORK?" in a heavily accented italian accent, which instantly brought me back up to my senses from the state of drowsiness I had already begun to fall into. "He always says, 'Why you never answer, why you never pick up?' and I tell him every time that I DO have a JOB, and can't exactly stop the world for a few minutes to GOSSIP. 3 times he has called me in the past 10 minutes." Someone in the class said, "Well, maybe it's an emergency?" Then my professor said, "Well, I can't imagine who it could be, because I JUST talked to my mother on the DRIVE OVER HERE! AARRUUGGHHH! [my poor attempt at trying to phonetically spell what noise came out of this stereotypical short Italian woman]" and seemed as though she was about to run out of the room. Then, just as is the cultural norm, she picks right back up where she left off on the lecture, in a perfectly normal tone of voice, and acts as if nothing had just transpired. Why can't we do that in the states? Just learn to say whatever's on your mind at the moment, not matter how embarassing, crude, annoying or rude it may be, then get over it in a matter of seconds. If you've never seen it before, you're definantly missing out on a unique adventure.

I love Italy