buon natale

The highlight of Christmas was spending it with my surrogate family. Alison (surrogate sister) showed up early to do all manner of Christmasy activities. Sadly, the first day she was here her wallet and passport were stolen on the bus while we were laden down with packages. Now we know why Romans don't go in for the Christmas shopping like we do - it's simply too difficult to defend your wallet with all of those holiday gifts in hand. We immediately headed home to cancel the credit cards and then went to the police office. Although there was someone there to answer the door we were told we were too late to file a police report. As Alison said, "Sorry you lost your identity, you'll have to come back tomorrow!" It makes you hope nothing grave happens to you after 5 pm here. We came back the next day to fill out the "Denucia" which we were told was the very official police report which would assist us in recovering identification and filling claims. We dictated the story to a police officer who filled in our answers by hand on a photocopy of a form. He then photocopied it once again and we marvelled at how much trouble it took to get something very unofficial looking which we could have easily made ourselves at any hour of the day.

We then went straight to the Embassy with our photocopy. I was steeling myself for hours of waiting in line when I saw a few people at the entrance, but after showing the guard our photocopy we were whisked inside and directed to the second floor. At the entrance we were greeted with a number machine. 6 months in Italy has left me cynical about all attempts at orderly systems but we took one anyway. We had barely sat down when we were called to a window and given the proper forms to fill out. We were pleasantly surprised also to find that they had a photo machine in the embassy, right there were hundreds of people a day are actually in need of passport photos - a work of American ingeniuity to be sure. I recall getting my photo for a permesso di sogiorno from such a photo machine conveniently placed on a cement divider in the middle of a main thoroughfare in Torino. It was nowhere near the office where you had to make the application, by the way. I'm certain the Italians probably hoped to reduce their rate of applicants by having them killed trying to get the necessary photos. As we went down to get Alison's photo from the machine on the first floor we passed by a chaotic room full of people clamoring to get to the windows. This was obviously where they dealt with Italian citizens. I was never so glad to be an American.

With Alison's identity back we went back to our Christmas preparations and back to Italy, the land of inconvenience. We had some cookies planned but as I have already told you, baking supplies are scarce here so this was a challenge. Peanut Butter Blossoms were out since we couldn't find hershey kisses and peanut butter can be bought only at a premium. We weighed the possibilities of breaking up chocolate bars into chunks to use in place of the kisses, but to me it was an abomination to make my favorite cookie with such unasthetically pleasing squares of chocolate. We settled on sugar cookie cut-outs and gingerbread men based on the availability of ingredients. Ali brought the cookie cutters from London since as far as I know, such things don't exist here. We were hampered again when it came to frosting supplies. In the grocery store we could only find the tiniest packet of powdered sugar. We would have needed 100 of them to make one batch of icing. Apparently here "zucchero a velo" is only used for a light dusting on top of cakes. Luckily we were able to get a half kilo bag of it and food coloring at Castroni. If it weren't for Castroni we would have never lasted this long in Rome.