Thanksgiving at the Centro

Yes, I know, I was trying to keep things in order--rest assured, I'll be back to playing catch up after this, but I wanted to share our Thanksgiving celebrations only a day late instead of about a month late.

We did in fact have class Thanksgiving morning--it's a Thursday after all--but there were so few lectures that it was almost like they were just having class as an excuse to get us all in the Vatican so we could wander around. Rest assured, you'll be hearing all about that...when I get caught up. This post is just about the celebrations.

We started out the morning with what Franco called a "Sunday breakfast", which was basically just a much larger breakfast than we usually have, with two kinds of eggs! I love the Centro food, but breakfast is not their specialty--not to say it's bad, just pretty simple. The real breakfast treat was when Franco brought in a jar of Skippy peanut butter, which got a reaction of almost holy reverence from most of us. Mmm, peanut butter. This big breakfast was presumably because the Centro wasn't serving lunch that day because they were busy with the big dinner to come. In fact, when Franco explained how the meals for the day were going to work, he gave the impression that unless we had to be at the Centro for class (Art History or Italian), then it might be nice if we were elsewhere and not underfoot.

Sadly, I did in fact have to be at the Centro for Italian, but rather than a normal class we had an activity day. It was really a lot of fun--we started out with a variation on Twenty Questions, where one person had a slip of paper with an object on it and had to give a basic description of it. Then everyone else asked questions, which could only be answered with "yes" or "no" (or rather "si" or "no", as everything had to be done in Italian), and no wild gesticulating was allowed (our poor teacher had a hard time enforcing that one as we got more and more desperate). Whomever guessed the object correctly (including the exactly correct word--we all had a hell of a time with "cow" because she was looking for "mucca" and not the more common "vacca") then became the next person to describe the object, which made me wonder what exactly was the incentive to guess correctly. The next activity was even more fun--mostly because my group was so tremendously bad at it that it was hilarious. Our professor asked for two people who were good at drawing--one person volunteered, and then the rest of us slid down in our seats trying to hide because we're all terrible artists. Eventually we as a class "volunteered" one other person, and the other five of us were split into two teams and assigned an "artist". Each of the teams were given a sheet of paper with a scene on it that we had to describe--in Italian, naturally--to the artist, who had to draw it on the whiteboard. It went...badly. The other team (who had the person actually good at drawing) did fairly well, but I'm pretty sure our team had more fun--we certainly spent most of the class laughing helplessly at how terribly our directions were turning out.

Here's the first group's scene--they were the ones with the good artist.

Here's the scene for the group I was in.

And here are the results--I think you'll all agree that the other group definitely won on accuracy and artistic talent. We all had lots of fun though!

Our professor was nice enough to let us go a little early, so we had some time to get ready for dinner. Mark had declared the day as "Classy Thursday" (Mark usually decides the color of the day for Wednesday, but this week was special because of Thanksgiving), and most of my group of friends had dressed up for the visit to the Vatican in the morning. I didn't, primarily because it's cold and I will always choose warmth over fashion, but for the actual meal I decided to dress up, even putting on the skirt that I brought with me (mostly so that I wouldn't feel like it had been a waste of space!).

And here you go--I even put on jewelry, not that you can see it in this picture. I felt pretty, although I didn't have any appropriate shoes, so you don't get to see my feet.

Sadly, my ministrations meant that I got downstairs a little bit late (actually, everyone else got down really early), and no one saved a seat for me, so I ended up next to a group of Franco's friends, who all spoke Italian, and our main interaction was when they were asking us why Americans ate these weird things (like sweet potatoes). It was rather entertaining--the cold slices of sweet potatoes weren't popular, but once the candied sweet potatoes came out, they hopped on the traditional Thanksgiving food train pretty quickly. To my other side were more Centristi that I don't usually spend much time with, but to their credit they were very nice about welcoming me into their conversation so I didn't feel left out. Sitting next to the Italians also meant that I was somewhat near my Italian professor, who told me she'd just been telling the group that I spoke Italian very well, which sort of made my night. In any case, now that I've set the social stage, I can get on to the important part--the food!

As I was heading into the downstairs classroom that had been converted into a dining room for the seventy-odd people there for dinner, I saw these platters waiting to be carried out. They're slices of sweet potato, green beans, and lima beans, all steamed and served cold (as the Italians tend to do--it's strange to get used to)

The turkey! Or, well, one of the turkeys. I couldn't get quite close enough for a proper photo, but these were big birds.

In general, it was a very traditionally American Thanksgiving--but with various Italian twists. This is pumpkin risotto, which was really quite good.

Here's the cranberry sauce (NOT from a can) and the "gravy", which was apparently made with olive oil. I wasn't quite brave enough to try the gravy (although to be fair I'm not fond of it under normal circumstances) but I was told that it was tasty, and I did enjoy the cranberry sauce.

GIANT MOUNDS OF MASHED POTATOES! These were delicious and disappeared very quickly, so it's a good thing that they had a platter for about every three people.

Look at the lovely pomegranates--the Centro garden has a pomegranate tree, and early on in the semester Franco explained that they were for the Thanksgiving dinner, so we were all excited to see these. I think I've tried pomegranates before, but this is the first time that I can remember for certain--they're definitely a unique flavor, probably not one of my favorites but I wouldn't object to eating them again. The seeds are a truly spectacular red, which was cool.

DESSERTS! Pina and the Centro cooks apparently made twenty pies. They were all delicious, and I ate far more than I should have, in true Thanksgiving fashion.

Here's the majority of the table I was sitting at. The Centro provided a fair amount of the wine bottles, but several students bought their own for the celebration, so there was a forest of glass bottles along the table. There was also soda, which was a nice treat.

Here's the room as a whole--I never would have believed that this one room could fit so many people! Doesn't everyone look so nice, all dressed up? There's so many extra people because many Centristi had their families visiting, and Franco's family and friends joined us as well.

The room was covered in these sorts of decorations, which was really funny--how many Americans decorate so much for Thanksgiving? They definitely helped set the festive atmosphere! Also, the adorable turkey napkins--I want these.

And last but not least, the stars of the evening. These wonderful ladies are the core Centro staff--they're the ones who cook and clean and basically run everything behind the scenes. In the middle is Pina, Franco's wife, whom I completely adore and is essentially the Centro Mom. They're all wonderful and I just wanted to make sure credit was given to the ones who really make the Centro home.

And since I'm writing this Friday evening, I can even tell you that we had Thanksgiving leftovers for dinner tonight, which was just as wonderful and tasty as last night. And I didn't even have to stab anyone with my fork to make sure I got my slice of pumpkin pie :)