"puicitade" is friulian for "pig killing celebration"

oh my heavens, it is actually HOT in udine today! how wonderful. first day ive actually felt justified in wearing my flip flops; the looks i am getting now are envious.
i had the final exam for my italian course today...i hope i did ok. i studied all last night at the pizzeria down the block. the sweet man from positano, benji, helped me all evening, bringing me cups of tea and tasty snacks and correcting my work over my shoulder. i think he enjoyed helping me, and this morning when i went in to grab a cup of coffee on the way to school he gave me a capuccino for free, and wished me "fortuna" on my exam.
yesterday i started to buck up about being back in udine.
i went to the dentist yesterday morning, to get my tooth situation fixed. the dentist was a very kind man with salt and pepper hair and blue eyes. he spoke wonderful english, and refered to my tooth as "you're tiny problem", in an effort, i think, to help me remain calm. i felt very safe in his hands, i think because he reminded me of dr. gentry...good smelling and gentle and obviously loaded but in a way that assures you that he makes lots of money for a reason. instead of numbing my mouth out with a six foot needle like they do in the states, they used this tiny little gun, about the size of a glue gun, with a needle maybe 2 centimeters long. the needle was put into my gum and then the gun used like, vibrations to send the novicane out to the rest of my mouth. i lost all feeling in about 5 seconds.
so now i can eat again and it doesnt even look like theres a filling, hoorah!
i spent the rest of the day yesterday sipping coffee and doing busy work for simone, positively mind-numbing grape math.
i was suppose to help barbara in the lab today, but simone and luigi and gabrielle all decided that it was much more important for me to go with them to the vineyards for the harvest. ive kind of been taken under the wing of these sweet grape scientists. i go with them to eat in the cafeteria (the awesome italian cafeteria, mind you, with a full bar and carpaccio and other fancy things), and i feel super cool sitting with a bunch of cute italian boys. i am trying to get them to speak italian at all times, but they are too sweet and forget and ask me adorable questions about america or music or food in their perfectly butchered english (simone speaks nearly perfect english, though).
turns out the one guy gabrielle, who i think is kind of a higher-up around here, has a big party at the end of every november at his parents house, where everyone comes togetehr for the slaughtering of a pig, and then they make salami and prosciutto, etc!! simone told me about this and i squealed with delight and told them that such a thing was my main goal in italy. today on the way to lunch, luigi pointed to me and said to gabrielle, "she want to keel your pig". turns out the killing of the pig is actually kind of an event. you have to actaully capture the pig by hand and strangle it or something (definitely, as the swiss boys told me, not as humane a killing as they do in switzerland). simone said his family does their pig killing party in january, and i am so so tempted to just stick it out over here through christmas to participate in that.
blake is here in udine now...he just called me from a taxi cab to have me tell the taxi driver where to take him...
im hoping that we can go out tonight and find some fun people in this town. the boys here are incredibly good looking but so so shy, no one will talk to me. am determinded to make friends...
anyway, all is well. ill have blake upload the fabulous pictures from roma!!!