friuli doc!

johnny and i are sitting at the western union office using the internet. its like 1euro an hour and its run by japanese boys who wear cute shoes and play animated video games all day.
things in udine are going fabulously. i think im in love with this town. it is old and rambling and has a big castle on a hill in the center of town, and its surrounded by beautiful mountains that look blue through the cold air.
john got here friday afternoon. i had him meet me at a little park (giardino loris fortuna) near my no.10 bus stop, and when i arrived in the park after school he was sitting there by the fountain reading bridget jones. i dont know that ive ever been happier to see anyone, and it was as though not a day had gone by since we parted ways.
this weekend has been amazing. as i said, it was the friuli reginal food and wine festival, and the town was completely (still is, actually) packed with people who came from far and wide to taste the local specialties. udine, being just recently a part of austria, is very different from the italy that i am use to. it has alot of obvious austrian influence, in the architecture, the food, and the people, physically. there are alot of blondes, and the people are more business like and soft spoken, but everyone is beautiful, extremely fashionable, and very very nice. i think i just happened to run into the only two truly mean people in the town on my first day, because since then everyone has been very kind and accomodating. they dont necessarily speak english, but if they know even a little they will use it, or they will smile sweetly and encouragingly when i speak italian to them. this weekend has been great practice for the language, for me and john both. at the festival we had to ask for our food and drinks in italian, directions around town and where to catch certain busses. my accent is pretty flawless and it was great to see people not even think twice in answering my question when i phrased my sentence correctly. sad, though, because ill ask a question but then they give me this big long answer and i feel like i should stop them and say, "no, dont bother, just point" because i have no idea what they are saying in response.
the festival was A BLAST. it was so much fun. there were thousands of people milling through the alleyways and the piazzas, , and everyone was so happy and laughing and drinking wine and eating ham. i have never seen so many pork products in my life. there were whole pigs that people were just slicing up on tables, and handing out fistfulls of the juicy meat to ravenous festival-goers. i, as im sure you know, LOVE pork, especially prosciutto and salame, so this, combined with the fantastic local wines and fresh CHEESES made this festival pretty much my dream come true. the people were all so fun and happy, and as john put it, the crowds were "refreshingly ruly", as in, there are thousands of drunk people gorging themselves on cheese and everyone is packed into picknic tables spread out through the piazzas, but theres no discontent or screaming, only laughter and singing and music. the first night we just wandered ainlessly glugging the perfect wine and sampling the food, watching bands play and eying the pretty people in the crowd. toward the end of the night i ran into a group of kids from my italian class (oh, yeah, my italian class is wonderful and much bigger now...we have kids from portugal, spain, a cute canadian boy, etc). they were all happy to see me, as we are all in this together, so we all went through the streets and hung out and talked about how HORRIBLE allessia bruno is (the mean mean woman in charge of my program). i was happy to know that it wasnt just me she was mean to, apparently everyone has horror stories. except the canadian boy, who said he made sure to go to her office directly at his appointment time and "apologize for bothering her". i told him he was a suckup.
saturday morning john and i went out for lunch at this little cafe down my street. i figured it was close and cute so we tried it. its a pizzetteria, and it is the most wonderful little cafe ever. john and i sat there reading italian vogue and eating our pizzas, which were made from scratch and just perfect (and huge and cheap!). the people who work there are wonderful; theres an old old man who is so handsom, in manner of paul newman, and hes sweet and smokes marlboros by just letting them hang from his lips and exhaling through his nose. theres also a little italian who makes the pizzas, and he explains exactly what he put on each one ("pomodori, insalate, e...oh! prosciutto crudo! bon appetito!") as though they were each a work of art. theres also a girl who works as a waitress and shes too cute for words. she loves me and john (weve been to this place 3 times now, so were regulars after this weekend...we even sit at the same table each time) and told us excitedly, "i am not italian, i speak english!" and just smiles at us and i am totally going to be her friend. the cafe is wonderful, and theres lots of locals from the neighborhood; old men drink wine there all day, and younger guys come and drink expressos and smoke cigarettes, and people walking there dogs wave inside and yell "ciao!". the tv is set loudly to mtv italian music video channel, which is oddly comforting and makes the atmosphere happy and familiar and excitable.
we went to the festval again last night, and it was great fun. we met up with my italian lab partners, the scientists who are teaching me to analyze grape tannins or whatever. they are HILARIOUS and they speak english but also encourage me to speak italian, which is great. the main guy, simone, is so cute and loves that we are from the south. he lived in california for a while and apparently the californians told him horrible stereotypical things about southerners; basically that we are backwoods rednecks and run around barefoot and tote rifles and drink stilled moonshine morning till night and speak a different language and were all scary raging republicans. the other day in the lab he was making fun of me and i was a bit miffed until i realised that he totally doesnt think that stuff is true and he was just joking.
theres another guy, luigi, from my lab, and hes funny and has huge facial features which makes his expressions particularly bogus. in the lab the other day we were freezing grapes with liquid nitrogen and they just sat in their regualr clothes and joked around and poured the liquid nitrogren onto the grapes out of a glorified paint can and we watched the little droplets roll across the table top, and i thought, surely there is a safer method to science then this, but it was alright. it was like alchemy, we made purple powder out of the grape skins!
so anyway, the scientists were all there, and there was a band and it was wild. simone pointed out the fact that one of the food stands was selling snails and i got excited because cooper for some reason is convinced that i am in france and that people here eat snails, and his one request was that i eat snails for him, so i told simone that i had to have some. they were pretty delicious actually.
the food here is so different from what we think of as italian food. lots of just cheese and meat, and polenta cakes, and sausages, and schnitzel and treats made out of apples. its wonderful.
toward the end of the night john and i were walking home, and down an alleyway we saw a big swarm of people. we went to see what the comotion was about, and it was just a little bar with a dj and a huge mass of italians standing outside. we ewnt and stood in the crowd and watched them, and the dj would play these italian songs and everyone was going crazy, everyone knew all the words, and they were singing and dancing. it was great. then, one group of people broke out in some chant-like song with the word napoli in it, and then another group of people started singing another song about friuli, and another chorus broke out in another song. i gathered they were football chants, and they seemed region specific. it was so incredible, everyone taking a side and singing a song and it was all so amiable, though, not at all like drunk frat boys from georgia shouting on one side of the room while gator fans shouted on another. it was beautiful and everyone was so wild and happy and sang so loudly. i have never loved italians more then at that moment, watching them all. john and i were just awestruck.
i have class tomorrow, and then on tuesday simone is taking to the "experimental farm" to harvest grapes!!
not sure yet when john is leaving, either tuesday or wednesday...
oh, and im about to post pictures. i love you all!