Went to an art opening, and gypsy market. Bri got punched and I ate meat.

Cara famiglia,
Missing you all a lot, but Italy is so wonderful.
Last Friday we went to an art gallery opening. It was called arte & industria, and was all kinds of chairs and sofas and light installations. There is a girl who studied here last semester who interns and the gallery, so we all tagged along and crashed the party! It was fantastic. We stood around drinking spumante and eating all their great food…and apparently there at a lot of midgets in the art world because there were a lot at the opening. Anyways, Betsy, I know you would have loved it…
Then Saturday morning we got up early, really anything is early because we’ve been sleeping in a lot, and we went to the gypsy market! It was cold and rainy, but we walked around for 2 hours. The market was huge and lined a main street in town for probably a mile. The vendors had all kinds of stuff..shoes, clothes, linens. Since it’s the rainy season everyone is selling umbrellas, and everywhere you go you hear umbrellaumbrellaumbrellaumbrella. It’s actually pretty amazing how fast they say it, I definitely can’t do it!
Saturday night…well that was an experience! My roommate, Bri, and I decided to go dancing with some of the local people. We were standing in line to get into this club, Sugar Reef, with our friends Claudia and Bea who were telling us allllll about how jealous Italian women are. They were saying that in the club you have to be careful who you talk to or dance with, and you have to make sure there aren’t any girls staring you down because they might come up and yell at you if you get to close to their boyfriend haha. We all laughed at that and thought it was so funny..but didn’t really think twice about it. Well, about 2 or 3 hours later everyone is dancing and having a good time..and Bri met an Italian guy named Emanuelle. They were dancing and talking for a little while…when all of the sudden, out of NOWHERE, a big tall blonde girl ran over, started punching the guy, turned and PUNCHED Bri across the face, and then went back to attacking the guy!!!!A couple of guys jumped in and protected Bri, and she was fine. She doesn’t even have a black eye, which we were both a little disappointed about. They weren’t lying about Italian jealousy!
We got home around 5 in the morning, went to bed and then had to be up bright and early to catch the 11:45 train to go have lunch at Claudia’s house. Her family is SOOO WONDERFUL! She said her mom cooked and cleaned for 2 days. There was so much food it felt like Thanksgiving, and her mom is and incredible cook. She even made lasagna from scratch..and I had some. I decided I was probably going to eat some meat in Italy and I had a little! I figured if I have to break the streak at sometime…homemade lasagna in Italy isn’t a bad way to go. Haven’t eaten any meat since, and I don’t expect to eat a lot. But to all the carnivores back at home, aren’t you surprised! And proud!? They even opened a bottle of champagne and toasted to us being there…it was so great and they are such a nice family. Claudia’s dad makes his own wine, her grandma lives with them and while we were there had a friend come over to just hang out haha…her mom is the most amazing cook, and Claudia is the nicest person in the worldddd, I loveee her! I think I would like to adopt them as my Italian family. Yeah, it’s decided! After lunch we drove into Siena and went to the Piazza del Campo, if you haven’t seen it, Google image search that! It was amazing, and it’s the only Piazza in the world of its kind. On the drive home I got to see the stars! It has been cloudy and rainy most of the time we’ve been here, and seeing the night sky in Tuscany was..bellisima.
Anyways, Love you,
Jenny