What were you grateful for this week?Pinterest- it’s great for Halloween party ideas and quiche recipes. 

What was the most difficult or challenging part of this week?Trying to buy a train ticket online. I’ve used my credit card at stores here with no problems, but for some reason it wouldn’t work for an online purchase. I had to call my bank and it was kind of a mess. But it got figured out eventually. 

Tell us about a “wow” moment you had this week. I made some food for a Halloween party we went to. 

Tell us about your week! It was a good week! Halloween isn’t really celebrated here in Italy, but one of my host family’s neighbors had a Halloween party. [My host mom] had me make a cheesecake and a quiche for the party. I had never made a quiche in my life, so thank goodness for Pinterest! I also bought some clementines and drew little jack-o-lantern faces on them (thanks again to Pinterest for that cute idea!). 

I hadn’t really planned a costume, so I decide I’d just try and find some face paint somewhere when I went to Alba for school. I had no idea what kind of store would sell face paint, so I just wandered around and miraculously found some. Not sure how I got that lucky. I decided to paint my face as a Mexican sugar skull because it sounded easy. Turns out it’s not that easy. It was pretty hard and took a long time and I only did half my face. For [my host family’s daughter’s] costume we went to a party store that had a very limited selection of costumes. Luckily they had a fairy costume in her size that she really liked. [My host parents] both just got masks to wear. The Halloween party was fun! We ate lots of food and had a good time. [My host family’s daughter] was the only kid there, so some of the adults did a little Halloween puppet show for her. It was really cute. She loved it. It was definitely different than any American Halloween party I’ve ever been to, but I enjoyed it!