2009

We spent New Year's eve in Palermo surrounded by friends at the church. Dinner, games, and cakes at midnight was the order of the evening. I don't have any pictures, bet there was plenty of food. Sicilians are excellent cooks as we have mentioned in previous posts. We also had many different games. The funniest one involved a toboggan, pair of gloves, a die, chocolate bar, fork, and knife. If you rolled a six you had to put on the hat and gloves, and use the utensils to cut the chocolate bar and take a bite. The catch was that everyone else was taking turns rolling the dice and if they rolled a six before you were done you had to take everything off and pass it to the next person. It was highly entertaining to watch. There was also a fireworks stand several blocks over which my husband and several of the guys from the youth group took advantage of. We had a countdown to midnight and then fireworks were set off all over the city. We went home to get some well needed rest.
New Year's day we were invited to lunch with friends and then ended up spending the rest of the day there. There was much food and fellowship and we played the "salad bowl" game for five hours. Our Italian friends loved it. You write names of famous people on slips of paper and mix them into a bowl, then you have three phases, first descriptions, then one word descriptions, then charades. We ended up staying for a light supper of sandwiches and snacks as well. We had a busy two days and were ready to get back into our regular routine.