Halloween with Leti

For the last weekend of fall break I popped over to Pisa to spend time with Letizia and her family. It's always such a treat for me to be invited into someone's home and spend time with a family, especially while I'm missing mine so much. It's incredible to see just how little difference there is culturally when it comes down to routines, atmosphere, and basic family dynamics. I felt especially at home to be playing with her dog, Mira, smelling delicious odors floating my way from the kitchen, and, perhaps most of all, hearing arguments between mother and son! ;) Here's me and my weekend foster-brother, Tommaso:

Their house was beautifully decorated with warm colors, antiques, art, and an influx of pottery that I couldn't get over (see the kitchen wall, above). As Marco, Leti's mom's husband, is an agricultural professor, he had several of his post-doc students over for a special lunch on Saturday. Not all the photos were in black and white, but apparently all my favorites were.



One afternoon we strolled around Pisa, and what's a stroll around Pisa without a tower shot? We couldn't bring ourselves to hold it up in the photo, as it seems to be doing pretty well on its own these days. Regardless, many people were assisting in the efforts.

Some of Leti's friends invited us to go to a Halloween party at a gay club nearby Saturday night. Most of them were dressing up as characters from Ugly Betty, so we did our best to jump on board. Letizia was the notorious Wilhelmina and was Betty's racy sister Hilda. Here's a couple photos of our dinner slash photo shoot.



Here's the crew in the parking lot before entering the club. From right to left, you have Marc St. James, Betty Suarez, Wilhelmina Slater, and then the odd one out, an amazingly (or perhaps terrifyingly) well-acted Brie from Desperate Housewives, complete with muffin basket.

But then it turned out it wasn't a costume party.

So we made the most of it and had a great time dancing and watching everyone compliment Brie on her (his) costume. Mixed in between the drag shows, th music was fabulous, playing such gay-club favorites as "Oops I Did It Again" and "Lady Marmalade". Then, at around three a.m., just when we thought the night couldn't get any flashier, three completely waxed, oiled-down, naked men took the stage literally dancing their tushies off with nothing more than a tiny towel held over their biz-nass. Us girls were shocked to the very core but I can't say it wasn't a riveting show. Perhaps most disturbing was when the men finished dancing and went to hang out at the bar without stopping for a costume change.

The next day, for a complete 360, we went to Sunday lunch at Leti's grandparent's house. We had a great time looking through old photographs that went back as far as the 19th century.

That day was also Halloween so in the evening Leti and I prepared a special Halloween meal for Marco and her mom. We decorated the table with Halloween confetti, lit candles, and made a delicious thick pumpkin soup. It was sweet of the family to let me share my super-American holiday with them. And then, after dinner, I shared with Leti my only consistent Halloween tradition: watching Hocus Pocus!



And just for a final Awww, here's Mira, their golden lab, enjoyable a restful All Hallow's Eve: