This is 'alloweeeen

I didn't expect Halloween in Italy to be that exciting. It's fairly new here, so I was surprised to see store windows selling Halloween decorations. Now, they definitely go for the more scary themes here, whereas I prefer to ignore the creepy parts of the holiday and take advantage of the pumpkins and leaves and princess costumes and massive amounts of candy. My favorite part of Halloween here is how the Italians pronounce it: they either over-pronounce the H, as in "hhhhhhhaloweeeeeen," or they don't pronounce it at all, as in "'aloweeeeen." It's cute.
My study abroad group decided to throw our own little Halloween party, but we had it on Monday night instead of on real Halloween since we have a midterm due at midnight tonight and we knew we'd all be working on that (I would like to point out that our American professor who knew full well that tonight is Halloween and we should not have to be working on school is the one who made our midterm due tonight. *cough*). We all dressed up as whatever we could come up with what we had brought with us to Italy. I decided to be a zucca (pumpkin)! If abundance of pins on Pinterest is any indication, I figure people must really be in love with pumpkin lately. I just wrapped a blanket around myself and zipped my orange hoodie over it. Easiest and comfiest costume ever.
At our party, we ate cake and gelato, played this fun charades game, and had a variety show. We had been forewarned about the variety show and each set of roommates was encouraged to do something at it. Well, my roommate Katie and I are not very talented. So we didn't really prepare anything until the night before the party when we were laying in our beds. For some reason, we started singing "You're the Inspiration" by Chicago to each other. Why? I don't know. It was neither the first nor the last time spontaneous roommate duets would occur. As we laid there after a long day, weak and weary, performing the song at the variety show seemed like a really good idea. But we knew sometimes ideas that seem great at night don't seem so great in the morning, so we decided that if it was still a funny idea by breakfast the next day, we would sing our duet in the variety show.
It didn't seem funny in the morning. But when we were at the party, after having played a crazy charades game and having eaten gelato, it seemed like a good idea again. So we sang (not lip-synced - SANG) and danced to Chicago's "You're the Inspiration" for our study abroad group. I think it went swimmingly.

I don't know.

Happy Italloween!