Chag Sameach and Buona Pasqua

Sorry for the long absence people- have been busy sorting out travels, celebrating festivals and attempting to, for once, get assignments finished early. I think I may have finally got most things under control and can therefore begin to update you all once again.

First off- Happy Easter and Pesach/Passover to everyone! Hope you all had a great weekend and week. Being in Italy has given me the chance to experience not only Easter celebrated in another country, but also to have my very first Pesach away from the family- but more on that later!

We have been lucky enough that for all major celebrations that occur in Italy, our lovely Italian teacher Silvia brings a food for us to try. We have had chiacchiere, which I can describe sort of like kichel (or dried pastry) with lots and lots of icing sugar on them for Carnevale, and last week for Easter we had colombo, which is sort of like a cake with almonds and orange peels in it. What is really interesting about the colombo is that it is shaped like a dove, which although I am not sure of the reasoning behind this, every cake available in the shops was in the same shape. I found out that this is a traditional delicacy from Lombardy (the region I am living in), but around Easter they are available all around the country. Pretty cool! The pics aren't very good as I took them on my phone, but its worth a shot.

Pesach this year was very different to what I am normally used to. While at home (and when we head to South Africa to join the family there) the seder and the whole celebration is generally very loud and all about family and singing/spending time together. This year I joined up with Chabad for the seder, on both nights, and there definitely felt like something was missing! Aside from the fact that I was stuck with shmurrah matzah (blurghh) for the weekend, and no kneidels to go in chicken soup, I really missed the loudness that comes with the giant sederim that I am used to. Even though there were over 100 people at the dinners each night, the fact that the story was read in a mixture of Italian and Hebrew, most of which I did not understand, and there was little to no singing- or if there was singing it was in Italian (very cute, but still not the same) made me begin to miss home a little. Not saying that I am homesick, but I am beginning to think that celebrating the many many festivals away from home are going to be difficult. I was however taken in by a lovely family for the weekend, and will hopefully be able to celebrate more festivals with them throughout the year.

Not as good as real pizza, for but 8 days it will work