Mexican Christmas

Hi everyone! I hope you all had a very Merry Christmas. Eric and I just returned from Rome. When we got back we found that “Papo Natale” had left us the most wonderful Christmas present – phone and internet service in our apartment!! I’m back in the 21st century! Well, kind of. Anytime I’m doing anything that involves Italians I feel more like I’m going back in time about 200 years. Last week Eric and I tried to go into Catania for dinner. There’s a Mexican restaurant there, and from what I could translate from their website, they have “real” Mexicans running the place- they even had pictures of these so-called Mexicans. We were willing to risk that it might not be exactly authentic Mexican food, we just hoped that they wouldn’t bring out a pizza folded in half and call it a taco. To preface this story, I should tell you that Eric and I have been putting off buying a GPS. First of all we like to think of ourselves as adventurous people who don’t need a GPS b/c we don’t get lost, we just sometimes find a creative way to get to our destination. Secondly, GPS’s cost about $400 and we’d rather spend that money on actual travel and not a computerized map. So back to the Mexican food. Eric had gotten Mapquest directions but couldn’t print them b/c the library printer was broken. Consequently, Eric is driving while I navigate with no map and the turn-by-turn on a sheet of loose leaf paper. This worked out fine until according to the directions it seemed that we should be parked in front of the restaurant, but in reality we were parked in front of a horse meat vendor. Catanians love horse meat. I have yet to try it, but people tell me it tastes like beef. Why not just eat beef, then? Why eat a horse? Eric and I decide to park try to find the restaurant on foot. (grr…I’m in heels) We start walking around and soon find that we are in the Horse Meat District. Even though it is 8:30pm, every other store is a horse butcher who has a table out on the sidewalk displaying various bits of horse. Who goes out to buy raw horse at 8:30pm? How are there this many horse meat stores in one city? Even though I’m passing by horse steak and horse liver and horse intestine, I’m secretly grateful b/c in the fish market they usually have a big swordfish head sitting in the front window, and I don’t know what I would do if there was a dead horse head staring me in the face. He’d probably be mocking me for thinking there might be Mexican food in this neighborhood. Ha ha, “Ney”-borhood. I’m starting to doubt that I’m adventurous person, and that maybe $400 isn’t that much money after all for a GPS. After 30 minutes and still no Mexican food, I decide to give up. I tell Eric I can’t look at any more horses and we find ourselves a nice horse-free pizzeria. A few nights later is our last night before we leave for Rome. We decide to open our Christmas presents that night. I fix nachos and Eric makes margaritas in our new blender (thanks Shelly and Matt!) and we watch The Santa Clause III on TV. I love living here and most of the time it is exciting and rewarding in so many ways, but sometimes I really miss America. Nights like these make me really happy.