What's going on?

So I haven't had a good internet connection at home in forever, and have been busy with things and not blogging. Excuses, excuses yes. So here is a min-recap of the past couple weeks.

So Italy was fantastic. I went to Milan to visit my friend Federico that I met in Buenos Aires. He and his family live in a small town about an hour and a half outside of the city up in the mountains. Simply beautifulll. For the weekend, the town had a big big party to celebrate St. Martin's day, who apparently is the patron of chestnuts and wine. The whole town, all 9000 people or so, were out in the main plaza, partying, drinking wine, eating chestnuts and other delicious cheeses, hams, etc, and having a great time. It was probably around 25-30 degrees that night, but luckily I survived with the help of Fedo's sister's ski jacket.
On Sunday we headed to Bergamo, between Fedo's town and Milan, and walked around. Bergamo probably has about 300,000 people (I totally made that up), but the main plaza and the little streets with towns of designer shops and restaurants felt very Italian to me.

That evening we went into Milan and spent the night at the apartment of some of Fedo's friends. They took me to have real Italian pizza, was was amazing with fresh mozzarella, cherry tomatoes and Basil. On Monday morning, we headed to Fedo's university so he could turn in his thesis, then did a little sightseeing before heading to the airport to catch my plane home. Some highlights include seeing the Duomo, which truly is magnificent, and strolling down Milan's equivalent of Rodeo Drive, seeing Prada, Gucci and everyone else and their 14,000 EURO purses (no joke, I nearly fell over after seeing that price tag for a seemingly normal leather bag. It made the beautiful long coat next to it- with a price of a mere 800 euros, seem like suck a steal!!!) So unsurprisingly, Italians in general dressed really well and had great style, making me feel like a big bum in my puma sneakers and corduroy jacket. like when we went out of pizza, people were showing up in these designer outfits left and right- and the men as well as the women! Even all the kids at Fedo's university were dressed like they were about to hit the run way instead of to wake up at 8 am and go turn in a paper. Makes me wonder what they wear out clubbing!

So I really had quite a lovely weekend, and hope that you will check out the pics by clicking the link on the left!

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This past weekend we spent in Lisbon, and my roommate Jessica and I walked around and enjoyed the last warm days of the season, because today, to my dismay and sorrow, we awoke to a horrible drizzly gray day. Looks like our St. Martin's summer is finally over. (One of the Portuguese employees at the embassy was telling me that when the weather continues to be warm and beautiful until November (aka St martin's day Nov 11), its called the St Martin's summer). Anyway, we saw Lisbon's botanical gardens, which are pretty, cool, had a barbecue with the Marines that guard the embassy, did some shopping, and slept in!

This week is short but looking to be pretty packed- since it's Thanksgiving, we have Thursday off and are taking Friday off as well and taking off for a new adventure: LONDON! Should be thoroughly exciting,and a very different Thanksgiving for sure. Hopefully we will have regained internet at the apartment by the time I am back so I can post and blog about it. :)

Things are going by so quickly, it's crazy! And before we know it, you all (aka the fam) will be here :) Can't wait!