Buon Anno a tutte! Has anyone heard from Jen lately? Jen are you out there?!?! What’s new?! I miss you all desperately! Italian women just don’t compare to the Binghamton Ladies. I am so sick of the all-too-familiar haughty, glazed-over, fish-eye stare. All the girls our age and the next generation older are scarily similar: most have them have dyed their already dark hair black and straightened it flatter than flat, seem to be ridiculously preoccupied with their cell phones, and full of unintellectual, uninteresting conversation. I know that’s a grave generalization. It is what I have found to be true thus far however. I have not met a single girl here that I relate with or can even talk to!! I’m hoping that you all decide to move here soon.

I had a wonderful Christmas and New Year’s Eve! It would have been nice to spend some time with friends, but when you see your family for one week a year, you have to prioritize. Luca and I went to LeRoy for about 10 days and bonded with the fam (WHAT an experience that was!) and then headed to Los Angeles for another 10 days. Originally we had planned on being in CA for 3 but then good old Uncle Gerry & Aunt Brenda extended our tickets. (Can I get any more spoiled?)

I was interested to see how my family would receive Luca, seeing as how all the other guys I’d ever brought home had never been great successes. Luca was a totally different experience. I swear to God that he fits into the family almost better than I do!! It was great, everyone loved him, and we had a wonderful time! I was afraid too that it would be tiresome for me translating all the time (Luca speaks literally 3 words of English: Hello & You are Welcome). He kept assuring me that communicating wouldn’t be a problem. (His explanation along the lines of “I’m like the Pope. People will understand me no matter what language I speak.”)

So we made the trip home and it turned out to be true–my mom and brothers and he spoke Spanish while he and my Dad developed a new language of their own (i.e. they both invented English words that vaguely resembled Italian/Spanish and used a lot of hand gestures).

This year, my parents got the biggest Christmas tree you’ve ever seen inside a house. I am not even kidding. It took up half of the living room! I am Not exaggerating. It was beautifully humungous. We spent lots of time drinking nice wine in front of the fireplace and laughing. I took the Italian stallion on a five minute tour of my home town. (Every tour of LeRoy takes about five minutes because that’s all you need to see everything there is to see). The highlight of the tour was our stop at S&S Limousines where we pretended we were getting married and got to go inside Humzilla.

In addition, we went to Rochester a couple of times, but mostly to the mall. Towards the end of our stay I started to feel guilty for not showing him around the city more and so we visited the George Eastman House and went for an apperitivo (before-dinner drink) at Two Vine.

Then off to California for New Year’s. We had dinner at Melissè on New Year’s– where I did a stage (worked for free) couple of years ago. Yummers!! We also ate at several other great restaurants:
Josie’s
Takao (Sushi!!)
The Biltmore Hotel
Patina
Valentino

We did a bunch of other things too, including going to a LA Philharmonic Orchestra concert at the new Disney Concert Hall. Hotness! Hope you all had wonderful winter breaks!