The Art of 'No Thank You'

During my time here in Italy I have learned so much about the Italian culture. And i love it! Learning about new cultures is such a wonderful expierence, not always easy but yet still wonderful. In order to remember all of the things i have learned about the Italian culture i have to write them down. The art of saying 'No Thank You' is just one of the many cultural, lets call it, adaptations that i have learned.

Dinner is the most important time of the day for my Italian family. Lauren and i better have a darn good excuss if we are not going to make it to dinner because the Leocata's will do anything to make sure we are all there for dinner. So Lauren and i do anything to make sure we are there on time, which is not that hard because we look forward to dinner every night, how could we not!? Dinner is set up in 2 or 3 courses. The first is always pasta! Any way you can think of doing pasta they do, and more! What made the Thanksgiving dinner this year Italian style was becuase of two differeences. One was that everyone was saying 'buon ringraziamento' and two that we had ravioli before the turkey. Pasta fills you up a lot but it is so hard to stop eating it because it is so good. Then the 2nd course of meat and veggies comes out. The meat is normaly chicken cooked in tons of different ways but always with olive oil, or beef fried with olive oil, or pork cooked with olive oil. Oh we had rabit one night, of course with lots of oilive oil! I have learned that everything is delicious with olive oil :D

But the point of telling you all about dinner time in Italy is to teach you and remind me how to say 'No Thank You' the most polite and effective way so as not to explode with food after dinner. First you must make sure not to eat too much pasta and not too fast. You have to be able to eat the right amount so that you can still have more food after the pasta. But you have to make sure you have enough pasta so that Giovana and Valerio know that you liked it. They judge weather or not you like their food based on how much you eat. So when eating the first course pasta eat slow enough to finish after Giovana and Valerio but do not be last because then you have made the table wait for the next course, and the grandma does not like to wait. I tend to eat the pasta faster than Giovana which shows her that i like the pasta a lot, but then she offers me more! And when they offer you more food you Must take it. If i do not say yes to more of the food that Giovana offers me, i can see the saddness in her eyes, she also makes it very obvious. Italians have the best facial expressions. So you must say yes to more food. Which may make my stomach say no but my mouth always says yes!

This is where the 'No Thank You' comes in. If you absolutly have to say no thank you because you litteraly cannot fit any more in your stomach then start off by saying that the food was great! 'Molto Buono!' or if it was really really good then 'Buonisimo!' Then say 'Non Grazie' 'Basta' and 'Buono Grazie!' Giovana normally will try to give you just a little more, 'Pocino?' And normally i say yes, just because i cannot resist. But the most important thing to do is leave a small spot in your stomach for desert, the special spot! Because Giovana is famous for her desert and you would never want to miss out.

Dinner normally takes about an hour to an hour and a half. And is a careful and delicious process! One that i would not ever miss :D But one that even if i fallow my own advise i still role out of the room and onto my bed with a stuffed stomach, haha.

So warnimg in advanse there are no dryers in Italy so all of my pants fit now, but they might not when i get home and run them through the dryer! Because i am not good at saying 'No Thank You' to the wonderful Italian culture!