Carla made a flying visit to the States this past week on the arm of her adorable but not-so-much-with-the-English-speaking Milanese boyfriend Ricardo. I couldn't make it to NYC to see them because I got sick after Thanksgiving, but yesterday they took the train up to Fairfield for lunch! Carla hasn't been back to campus since the day we graduated, so all of the new dorms, new dining hall, hyper-masculine stag sculpture, etc was new to her, as was our little museum. I did my best in speaking Italian, and we had fun discussing lots of idiomatic expressions and whether they exist in Italian. "By hook or by crook" was particularly tough, since even Carla wasn't sure of the words for "hook" and "crook." I learned a new equivalent to the old "in bocca al lupo"-- "in culo alla balena," or, "in the whale's ass!" The correct response to the former is "may the wolf die," while the correct response to the latter is "let's hope the whale doesn't shit." You've gotta love language.
Here are Carla and Ricardo posing with Lucas the Stag mascot, who was helping some students fundraise for a teddy-bear drive:
Ricardo even purchased his own Fairfield University sweatshirt! He also took this lovely photo of us outside Bellarmine (it took me a while to realize that he used a filter on my phone to take this since I never do):
Roomies forever!
