(the buffalo mozzarella... perfection... note the drops of milk escaping has you cut it open... hummm...)
I love and avoid this country at the same time. There are many resident ghosts from the past that I can happily live without, but also, well, this bel paese is also so irresistible and charming! Pizza last night made me realize it.
The Europe cup is on: this has nothing to do with the Fijian cup, but it is a big event in which countries from Europe fight for the champion title on the soccer field. It is a very good thing for me, as I can pass if I just say I am “Italian”. You are Italian only during the World Cup, the Coppa UEFA, or the Europe cup, when the soccer’s games are on. Otherwise you are Roman, Trentino, or whatever the name of your city, town or village is. But since I do not speak any local dialect, neither I have any strong accent (a part from the pronunciation of the “R” that is purely roman), no one identifies me as part of his or her people. And I am left to fluctuate in a limbo space, without being able to say I am from a particular area of Italy. At least, when I am abroad, I can say I am Italian, and people are happy with that (they have no idea of how insignificant and general that word is!), but here… lets just say it is good that the Europe cup is on!!!
This also means that many squares have a huge screen mounted, and people gather there at night to watch the game. Since in Italy drinking age limits are not enforced (and most people do not even know the existence of it), and you can drink alcohol anywhere you want (no close areas of bracelets like in the States). You can imagine what wonderful town parties there are in the squares during the soccer games. Last night, on our way to the pizzeria, we drove pass one of those square, right next to the sea… I smiled with joy, and some of those painful memories and being alone in a small island when Italy won the World Cup sweetly vanished…
Pizza! Yeah!!! We sat around the table outside on the walkway, with antipasti, beers and huge pizzas. We could hear people singing, accompanied with a guitar, from the balcony above us, and sometimes we would sign a couple of songs with them. Then there was a car accident right on the corner of the street, and some of the people from my table went to see what happened: with the big white napkin stuck on the collar of their shirts, holding a beer in one hand and a big folded slide of pizza on the other hand. The two parties came out from their cars (one was a taxi) screaming, but once they saw those funny looking spectators on the corner, they calmed down not to attract more attention. Our guys asked to be bribed; they would work as testimonies and say whose fault it was. A foreign spectator would be shocked by all this (the crash, drinking beer in the street in front of the police, loudly ask to be bribed…), but in reality all that was done just for fun, no one was hurt, let just make of it a funny story to tell now. We were laughing like crazy at the table… Unluckily, none of the parties involved in the accident agreed to pay our pizza bill…I can imagine something like that happening in Samoa too. Well, maybe Samoan are not that loud… I often say that Samoa and Italy are not that different after all… we both love food, family, having fun, are lazy, disorganized, corrupted but happy… so far the two main differences are: in Samoa I am a skinny girl, in Italy I am quite full; in Italy I am quite a normal girl for my age (a part the fact that I have a good, serious job), in Samoa people often express their sympathy when they discover I still do not have any child… About this, I truly, from the deep of my heart, suggest one single of you to go on this side and watch this video, as it is one of the best and funniest description of Italy ever!
http://www.infonegocio.com/xeron/bruno/italy.html
Anyway, you may wonder, what have I been up to these days?
The first day I went to visit my doctor. He is a pediatrician and he has been my doctor since I can remember. It made me think of an episode of “Friends” in which Ross was given a hard time because he was still seeing his pediatrician. I could never get why it was supposed to be funny, because I though it was totally normal. In fact, in Italy, you are given a doctor when you are a kid, and you keep him for the rest of yours (or his) life. He was also my brother’s doctor (now he moved in the Alps, so he changed to a local one), and of my parents. He was very happy to see me (I was very happy to see him too, considering that, even from Samoa, I often write him e-mails asking him for opinions). He knows everything about me since I was born, and even now, he follows my blog! Isn’t he the best doctor ever? Grazie Fabrizio!!
The first night I went out for dinner with Mara, her boyfriend Davide that looks just like Aaron of Samoa, and Antonio. 
I have known Mara since I was 15, we used to go horse riding together and spent crazy weekends in Regional, National, International show jumping competition. It was hard for me to stop agonistic riding, but I made that decision 10 years ago when I decided to explore the world, and I have to say that after all, even if painful, it was a good decision.
(my loved one and myself kicking asses, we were winning EVERYTHING!)
Mara instead stayed, and she is now a great well-known instructor, and she still keeps on kicking asses at competitions! Antonio is her friend and student, which I meet in one of my latest trip to Italy. He is also one of the funniest guys ever! The two of them are my at distance angles!!! I just met Davide (and Mara, I totally pass him!!! Good catch!!!) We had bucatini all’ Amatriciana and penne with Cacio and pepe for dinner (in italy, you cannot just ask for pasta, you need to precise the kind of cut you want). It was the best ever (how is possible that with all those pigs, it is impossible to get some pig’s cheeks –guanciale- in Samoa???)! The night grow old with laughing and stories that would keep the king of “Arabian nights” awake for more than one thousand and one nights!
Yesterday, it was cleaning day. My brother Stefano (also known as Zaza’), drove down from the Alps to empty a garage we recently sold. The garage is very small, it is just amazing the quantities of crap it can hold! We throw away a fridge, some chairs, a table… I could not believe we were throwing all that staff! I could just hope somebody will find it and reuse it. In Oregon, if you wanted to get read of something like that, you just had to put it in the street with a “FREE” sign on it. In 5 minutes it would disappear in the house of some starving student, and you would have made his day. But here there is nothing like hungry students: they all still live home with the parents and are all well fed by mamma. And if they come back home with trash from the street, the dad will most probably hit them. Not that the anybody loves living home until he is 30, but the cost of living and rent is so high that it is impossible to make enough money when you are younger to be able to pay a rent all by yourself. Anyway, this means: hard “recycling”. There is not much I want to keep from the garage, a part my university notebooks and books. But I did also find so many treasures… Like a picture of me when I was 4, I looked just like my dad. And the stories I wrote during high school, probably during those never-ending classes of ancient Greek… in those stories, my friend and I, the heroines, were kidnapped in the desert by the sons of the sheik, or went to war with the Vikings… they are so entertaining that I spend the all morning reading them! I should soon decide how they will finish… it was such a jump in the past, in fantasyland!
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