Italians love cookies

    Despite all the nutella, gelato, pastries, tiramisu, fine chocolates, etc. you can enjoy in Italy, a good ol' American cookie is nowhere to be found.  It's the same for brownies and the vast majority of baked goods we appreciate so much.  Taylor (my roommate and coworker) and I have already seen how to use this to our advantage with shamelessly getting the students to like us and creating ways to spend time with them.
   Friday night we hosted our first movie night at the studio, so students could come and practice English in a completely non-academic setting and (hopefully) have a good time.  You never really know about the turnout for events without prior connections, and since the majority of our invites were mass announcements we expected about 3-5 people to show.  When we got an email from a girl expressing her disappointment at having to miss our event due to a medical appointment, we were surprised and thought people might actually come (Italians are notorious for not committing to anything in advance, so getting a 'regrets' email is pretty out of the ordinary).  Reid (another team member) was at the studio with us while we were setting up, and gave us the exciting news there was an actual gathering of people waiting outside.  Approximately 16 students came, 3 of whom joined Taylor and myself afterwards for dinner.  Looks like our bribe for American sweets worked, and the Italians loved the oreo balls and classic chocolate chip cookies we made that morning.  It was so funny to hear one of the girls talking about 'the biscuits' later and how they're much better than Italian biscotti, which made me think "well of course, they've got heaps more butter and sugar...but you don't need to know that."

stalker snapshot of half the group

     This morning in the first level English class we TA for, several people asked when we'd do another event.  One girl even asked if we could show a movie in the morning sometime since her evenings aren't free.  It appears God's given us a neat way to make friendships with the people that are so hard to get to know, so we're excited about that!
    I also ran into a girl who came Friday night, and she mentioned the cookies again.  I made the (obvious) connection that if she had never had one before, she certainly hadn't made any herself, so we have a baking party planned in the near future.  Italian girls especially are more closed off to strangers and people outside their group, so maybe baking will be an opportunity to create quality time and earn the chance to start friendships!