And on the 25th day of November, I slip into a food coma and die happy

Normal Italy is good (or bad) enough, but a day that combines Thanksgiving with a city-wide chocolate festival? That should be illegal. On Thursday Piazza Maggiore was crowded with rows of artiginal chocolate shops from all over Italy. There was even one from Belgium. I  saw shoes and scissors and teacups made of chocolate, chocolate "salami" and "cheese"and "kebabs", even a three-foot-long chocolate crocodile. The only thing missing was a good cup of hot chocolate (cioccolatto caldo is more like pudding). I ate the world's biggest truffle - honestly, it was the size of a baseball, and was on a skewer.

The whole day was really like having my holidays backwards: Valentine's Day followed by Christmas and Thanksgiving. This week also marked the beginning of the Christmas season, as the lights started to go up on the shopping streets, and the large church next to the Poli Sci building opened a street fair selling nougat and ornaments and scarves. In America, I hate the consumerism that makes the holiday season start earlier and earlier each year, but without malls or endless repetitions of "Santa Baby", I'm starting to remember how nice it can be.

Thanksgiving of course isn't an Italian holiday, but my program nicely organized dinner in a restaurant for us and our Italian roommates. The Italians may have been more excited than the Americans - like cheerleaders and football, Thanksgiving is one of the things that American movies and TV have shown to the world, but no one quite believes exists in reality. As might be expected, once the Italians got behind the idea, the trattoria managed to cook the best, juiciest turkey I've ever eaten. It wasn't an authentic meal - no cranberries, no mashed potatoes, no pumpkin pie - and the first course was pasta, but it was delicious, and we ate ourselves into a respectable tryptophan-induced stupor.

It was strange to celebrate Thanksgiving away from home for the first time, but this weekend it truly sunk in that I only have three weeks left in Italy, and then this extended adventure will be over. I'll be home in Maine for Christmas, but until then, I can walk home in Bologna, with the snow turning to slush on the cobble stones and the Due Torre covered in strings of golden lights. I'm sad to leave and happy to go -but that's the way its supposed to be.