Buon Anno Tutti!!!!

Oops...a little too much time has gone by, huh? I'm just going to jump right into things though!
Exams: Two of them went pretty well, all things considered. My art and architechture class was my favorite mostly because I could go to all the places I'd studied right after and touch what I'd learned about. However, my international relations exam didn't go quite as I expected. I had an hour and a half to write 1 long essay, 2 short essays, and do 10 multiple choices...the clincher, all in italian. I just felt bad for my professor afterwards that he even had to read it. It takes me so long to express ideas in Italian so I got a little nervous that I would run out of time to answer all the questions (and I did)...I ended up resorting to my basic phrases because my mind wouldn't cooperate, it wouldn't think of answers and conjugate verbs at the same time...so I'm pretty sure my answers went something like 'there was a war. it was bad. there were many changes.' ...maybe not quite that bad, but you get the idea:) And there was a question I couldn't answer about a treaty that my german friend said he didn't think was mentioned in any of the books, he only knew the answer because it had taken place in his town...lucky kid:) I'm hoping for the 'A for effort.' ;)
On the bright side, exams ended just in time for Dad and Mom's arrival...YEAH! We had a blast wandering, shopping, and developing our culinary appreciation:) We took a great trip up into the Dolomites to Bolzano where we stumbled upon A)a HUGE Christmas market (great news for mom and I) and B)Vin Brule...hot, spiced wine. So good! It was so awesome to see them! The whole trip went by too fast with the only "minor" fluke being when I put us on a train to Rome instead of Bologna...oopss! So much for my chance to show off my "train riding expertise"...ah well, it was bonding time:)
Christmas: I headed back up to the Dolomites with a friend to be in the snow. We rented an apartment, applied our cooking "skills" and put in some solid time on the ski slopes...in jeans and sweatpants! It was beautiful, really beautiful and I'm so glad I got the chance to do it, but I missed everyone back home. Christmas just wasn't the same without family, Grandma's cooking and carols...Italians just don't have the passion for Christmas music that I do! But spending Christmas in a small mountain village, skiing in Italy was a fun memory to make.
The day after Christmas I waited in the airport for Drew and Bree to arrive. They were a pretty awesome Christmas present...that's kinda cheesy but true:) Their two weeks here went SO fast...we spent our days talking, lauging, and traveling and our nights talking more. We saw Venice with practically no tourists and rode the bumper cars with all the middle school italians. We walked arm and arm, climbed every tower we could find (well two of us did), and signed the wall next to Juliet's balcony in Verona. We were pretty cute:)...but I won't bore you with all did because most of it's probably only funny in the "had to be there" kind of way. Suffice it to say we had an amazing time but we didn't have enough time...and we laughed at Drew a lot:)
New Year's was a little dramatic; it was the best and worst I've ever celebrated. We all went to the main Piazza to bring in the New Year and it was amazing. It was FULL of people, FULL! The city had constructed a huge witch (some strange italian tradition), maybe 30ft high, and set it on fire at midnight. So there was a huge bonfire, fireworks over our heads and champagne bottles being opened like crazy at the end of the countdown...lots of yelling "auguri" and "buon anno!" Unfortunately, about five mintues after midnight we checked our pockets and discovered several items weren't there anymore. Bummer. Bree's camera, Joe's wallet, and my phone and wallet were among the things taken. What a way to start the New Year, huh? So, instead of celebrating, we spent New Year's day canceling credit cards. I was lucky in that I wasn't carrying any important documents in my wallet. And Drew was lucky because she got to pay for anything I needed that week:) No serious damage done...I'm doing my best to remember pre-countdown rather than post-countdown.
And now, I'm enjoying a couple down days and working on organizing the next few months of my life. I have to start looking at classes for spring and figuring out when I can travel some more:) I got lucky with the classes I took in the fall because they all ended in December...a lot of kids are still in the middle of classes so they aren't really on break. I, instead, have a long vacation because spring semester classes don't even start until the middle of February. Kinda crazy.
If you've made it to the end of this, congrats! That's pretty much the full update. I'm making it my New Year's resolution to update this thing more regularly because I didn't do so well last semester and so that I don't set myself up to write novels all the time.