This week, leading up to Christmas, was very busy. We had two sessions of training for new missionaries with their trainers, about 30 at each session, one on Wed. in Milano (Cimiano) and the second at the church in Bologna. Myrna made what even the President called "pulled pork," but was actually a mixture of left over turkey breast (frozen from Thanksgiving) and newly roasted turkey breast, pulled, with barbecue sauce. It was really good. She also made home made potato salad (I diced two kilos of onions and two of pickles) and apple crisp, served with potato chips and tangerines from Sicily, which are really wonderful.Sorella Hoopes, trying to stay awake, waiting for the missionaries to come downstairs to eat lunch. I did my financial training with them before lunch, and mostly put them to sleep too.
The missionaries in Bologna, finishing their apple crisp.
During the two hour drive home on the freeway, I snapped this pix as we were about to pass the Barilla (think pasta) world headquarters.
On Thursday evening, Dec 22 (Myrna's birthday) the four office anziani surprised her (it is hard to surprise her--she knows everything), with a special candle-lit dinner, they made for her. Just Myrna and I were served by the elders in the conference room, as they provided entertainment, which was very entertaining, to say the least.
They sang many songs, including Happy Birthday in several languages. They made, and served, salad (Sorella Allen made it), Anziano Anderson made zucchini risotto, which was wonderful, and Anziano Simmons made a baked main dish with potatoes, salami, cheese, and bread crumbs some Italian taught him to make, which was also wonderful. For dessert they had a home made chocolate concoction, with a cream filling and gelato.
Then they put on a 15 minute (I videoed it) impromptu play, where one takes a candle and starts a story, passes the candle to another who continues the story, etc. Anziano Thompson, who used to work in the office and is now a zone leader in Como, wrote and videoed a special song he wrote about Sorella Hoopes. I sent this by email to our kids, who said they received it. This is the first video I have successfully emailed, and I hope to learn to send more.
Then, on Friday evening we went to the Navigli Ward party. These missionary sisters were the greeters at the front door.
Santa was also near the front door, passing out gifts, and the Primary children all were dressed as santas too.
The Young Men and Women were in charge of the program that included songs and skits. The theme was Christmas around the world, which it certainly was.
Then the young people went to the side of the chapel and danced to videos, while the food was being readied in the kitchen and Relief Society room.
The elder's quorum president, from Peru, de-bones a turkey.
While his wife de-bones a large piece of roast pork. When I snuck in to take this pix, she handed me a prize, of piece of roasted crisp fat, which was great.
Members brought Christmas food from their countries.
Lots of it.
We have a few families from the Philippines.
Eating was sort of a good-natured free-for-all.
And there were lots of pannetone, which are beloved in Italy. One American sister missionary referred to them as huge Italian muffins, but not as good as Sorella Hoopes'.
Anziano Robinson made mini cinnamon rolls, and Sorella Hoopes made her buckeyes, with hard-to-find, in Italy, peanut butter. She also made meat balls in hard-to-come-by cranberry sauce, which were devoured very quickly. If I hadn't tasted one before we left, I wouldn't have known how well they turned out.
On Saturday morning, our p-day, we, along with President and Sorella Allen, went to Milano to the apartment of the Salitinos for a roast beef dinner he made for us. He bought a large hunk of beef, from Ireland, at Metro, and served it with mashed potatoes, gravy, and green beans with bacon. Sorella Allen made the salad, and Myrna made her crescent rolls and pecan pie, with pecans that the Salatino's sister brought from California.
Then, we took the trolly to the duomo piazza to see and hear the sights.
There were lots of booths selling interesting things for Christmas, including dried and candied fruit.
Knit scarves and hats, beloved by Italians. I even have and wore a warm scarf.
These guys were demonstrating small ceramic dishes, which have rough bottoms on which you can grate hard cheese, bread, chocolate, etc. and then serve on the dish, or pour from.
Myrna buying some grating dishes.
And sellers of cheeses.
And a booth with enough pannini to give everyone in Milano a fresh roll with pork inside.
It really smelled really good, but we were still stuffed from our roast beef dinner at Salatinos.
They even had the boar's head on display.
We crossed the piazza to go to the world's oldest shopping mall, the Galleria di Milano. On our way we passed the ancient palace residence of the cardinals of Milano. Two old men, wearing black overcoats and red dresses underneath, came out of the palace and walked over and entered the side door of the duomo. I suppose they were going to get ready for the midnight Christmas mass, which would be attended by thousands, and televised. The armed (with machine guns) military guards were in their places. We had earlier received an email informing us that missionaries were not to attend such gatherings, because of potential terrorist attacks. There was one in Milano this week, but we only heard about it though emails from our kids.
Then we walked over to the shopping mall, the Galleria, which had lights in the dome, which were very impressive. Interestingly, we have never seen anything but white lights in Italy as Christmas decorations.
In the mall is the Prada store, where it is said the devil himself shops.
This may be how his evilness will be dressing this season.
And only the devil could afford these prices. The gloves are €2,300, which is about 5% more than US $2,300, and the "beauty case" is only €13,000.
There was a bakery, with Christmas cakes. If you have to ask the price, you probably can't afford it.
And this one.
Or this one. However, they must only have just one cake mold.
This is the latest in women's fashion, I suppose.
And this too.
The Ferrari store in the Galleria, which sells men's cologne, which I smelled but didn't buy.
The Christmas tree outside the mall on the piazza duomo.
People were beginning to gather in front of the city hall, which has some of its upper windows decked out in red. Musicians from Vienna, Austria, appeared in the opened windows and sang traditional German language Christmas songs and carols. Why Austrians? They have been doing this since the time that Austrians ruled this part of Italy for many years. A couple of months ago we saw the queen of Vienna, who ruled for 40 years, Maria Theresa's, summer palace in Monza, which is only a few miles north of here. I took videos of the music last evening and tried to email a short one, which sort of worked.
Then we caught the trolly rode went back to the Salatino's apartment, so we could get home before the missionary curfew. We recently learned that this word came from Italian, through French, and means coprefuoco, or "cover the fire," which is still how they say curfew in Italian.
We stopped off at a mall near our place and bought each of the four office anziani a nice gel pen for Christmas, which was engraved with their names, by this nice lady.
We got to bed and went to sacrament meeting at 9 am this morning. We took to church the elderly (actually probably younger than I am) little (she is pretty small), Italian sister, Adrianna, whose non-member husband used to drive her the half hour to church, but has broken his leg. It was a short meeting, after which the elder's quorum president made hot chocolate and they had more pannetone. We didn't linger longer, but came home and opened our Christmas presents. This was the first time in our lives that we have opened our Christmas presents, just the two of us, together. We have always had family around. We got lots of nice things. Myrna managed to buy me a bottle of Ferrari Black men's cologne. I smelled some yesterday at the Ferrari store at the Galleria, but had no idea that Myrna had actually bought some for me. She also bought, from Amazon, one of the cookbooks I use here, and had it shipped to Amy's.
Our living room after opening our Christmas presents. We ate dinner, left over roast beef the Salatini sent home with us, instant mashed potatoes (Knor), corn, and left over pecan pie. We are now down in the office. I am typing this and we just skyped Mark's family before they went to their hour of church. We have skyped Mark, David and Kevin, and are waiting until it is late enough to skype the rest. We are also going to go over to the mission home to eat waffles and watch the young missionaries open their gifts.
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