Audrey, Liza, Elizabeth, and more . . .

Another blog entry about a house party at Via Avesella . . .

The date for our much-anticipated Halloween party rolled around, and we were ready. This time around, Francesca (my new-ish roommate) and I decided that it was time to mutiny: we were going to invite whomever we wanted. (At our past party, Massimo assigned us a guest quota of 6 people.) So, we got all dressed up, invited our guests, and waited. As you can see above, Massimo bided his time by pretending to be a bat, or something.

One of the first to arrive was Elisa, the girlfriend of Stefano, who runs our favorite gelateria (now closed for the winter). She wasn't in costume, but Massimo called her Elizabeth (as in, the queen) for the entire night because of her hair. Her hair was pretty amazing - we'd never seen it before, because at work she always had it tied up and covered by a cap. Here you can see Massimo bowing to her.



I dressed up as Audrey Hepburn for the second time, which was sort of a lazy thing to do. But it was relatively easy to assemble, and Halloween is a pretty new holiday here, so I was happy to find something that I could pull off. I found out that cigarette holders are sold in regular tobacco stores all over the city. I wonder who's using them?

Here I am in full regalia.



My friend Irene usually looks taller than that, I think.

And here's my roommate Francesca, who was a prom-acid-witch of some sort, and her friend Itala, a cat. Itala is Peruvian and is currently an underwear designer in Bologna (she studied fashion in Milan). As you can imagine, this makes every man within 100 miles start drooling.



And below is my friend Natasha, who is blessed with almost the EXACT same genetic makeup as Rosa and me. She came as Liza Minelli. And my coworker Tiziano came as some kind of character from a Fellini film. I don't really know what he was.



By the time everyone had had a few glasses of wine, we all got to sing (this always seems to happen at my house). Chris, a Johns Hopkins student who owns the guitar in question, knew a full repertoire of grunge songs from the 1990s (incidentally, he came to the party dressed in a brown sweater with a leopard-print towel draped over his shoulders - we never really figured out what his costume was - but as you can see in this photo, the towel migrated around the party, spending most of its time with Massimo). When he was finished, we got started on Italian songs. We all sang all the songs, regardless of the words.



The party was a grand success until about 3 am, when Massimo finally took out a wet mop and started using it to shoo guests out of the house. He literally pushed peoples' feet with the mop. Then he got down on his knees and scraped stains off the walls with a teaspoon. (He's certifiably insane, I think.)



In other news, my choir had an amazing interactive concert last weekend, I went to a salsa club and drank an amazing mojito (with practically an entire mint plant inside it) while dancing to music that made me homesick, it snowed yesterday morning in Bologna, and my work life has become rather chaotic. Due to Italian drama and economic circumstances, it looks like the entire company is going to be restructured. Over the past three weeks I've lost my two support systems: Andrea and Letizia. (Andrea can be seen peeing below, in another blog entry. Letizia handled my visa and is a font of feminist advice.) I miss them.

I will try to ensure that my next blog entry is about something other than parties.