Back to the keyboard for this post! I thought I’d try something new, again. I wanted to interview someone who has an even bigger claim to third culture-ness than I do: my friend Danielle Russo.

Dani is an American expat living in Rome. She is married to a Colombian national, and they have two adorable children. Dani is the owner of a thriving tour company, When in Rome Tours and an overall superwoman (she often travels across the world ALL ALONE with her two kids in tow…that garners special mention of superwoman-hood in my book).

I met Danielle when we were both working for a translation agency in Rome ten years (!!) ago. We became fast friends, and have thankfully been able to stay in contact, notwithstanding the various moves and children that have popped up recently.

I wanted to get her perspective on combining three cultures, and what she thinks of her grand experiment. Her answers funny, poignant, and somewhat surprising. Here they are in full:

• Do you think your kids feel more Italian, American, or Colombian?          I think my kids feel more American! Especially our oldest, Sofia because her schoolteachers and friend’s parents are always singling her out because she speaks English, so that seems to reinforce for her that she is special. That said, she knows the Italian national anthem by heart, but not the Star Spangled Banner.

• What’s the best three language combination of a sentence that you’ve heard from them?                                                                                “Papi, Me Trajes los canuches per favore?”   (Rough translations: Papi, can you bring the straws here please?). “Straws” is cannucci in Italian, not canuches Spanish. It’s pitillos in spanish.                               Second to that is, “Mami my muneca is broccato.” (Rough translation: my doll is broken).                                                                               Third, “Sofia, what do you want Santa to bring you?”  “I have to ancora decidere.”

• Are they able to converse with their relatives easily?                             In the US, yes. In Colombia, not so easily. It is the weakest of the three languages, and with a large family, lots of people always talking and yelling at the same time, they get shy and are afraid to speak.

• Describe a typical family meal…what culture does it draw from?        Our meals are about 60% Italian, 20% Latin, and 20% international. We don’t mix and mingle at the same meal. But if we are having an Italian dinner, we generally do not do the primo, secondo, contorno, etc. But just one or two of the courses and basta.

• What is the best part of being a part of three cultures? Is there a bad part?                                                                                                    The best part of it is feeling like we are a sovereign nation of our own. While outside the windows it is clearly Italy, in our house, our third culture reigns. We speak a combo of three languages, we aren’t afraid of drafts [a well-known Italian fear], and we just go with the flow. Holidays are always fun, as we honor American, Latin American, and now Italian traditions as well. In America, Santa fills the stockings on Christmas Eve, but here in Italy it is a haggard old (but good) witch [la Befana] who fills them a week later. My kids get two stockings! Lucky devils.                                                                                                  The down side? My three year old boy is just now beginning to speak. When he started preschool he was so frustrated because he couldn’t communicate that he would scream, hit, and even bite. We were called to the principal’s office before he even turned three! Yikes.                 For me as an adult? I feel like I don’t truly fit in anywhere anymore. I am American, but when I go back to the US, I notice that I have less and less in common with old friends, relatives, and paesani. Here in Italy, I don’t think I will ever assimilate 100%. And I wouldn’t want to.

One of the biggest compliments an Iranian can give regarding someone’s physical appearance is this: “Boo-reh.” As in, he or she has blond hair. Or a fair skin tone.

The term “blond” is used rather loosely here. It can run the gamut from Nicole Kidman level of fairness to Penelope Cruz level of fairness. (Why I chose two former Tom Cruise flames, I have no idea.)

Wait a second, you’re thinking. Penelope Cruz isn’t blond! Or fair! Well, sometimes she gets highlights. And even those count as blondness in the Iranian realm of “boor.”

Iranians are obsessed with blonds. Italians are a bit better, but not by much.

A and I are by no means strangers to this phenomenon. Before we were married, everyone we dated was blond. Before I met A (definitely a brunette), I was pretty sure that my husband would be 6’0”-6’3” tall, blond, with green or blue eyes. Our children would have brown hair and green eyes.

As I’ve mentioned elsewhere, my sister and I learned to speak English by watching CHIPS. While everyone drooled over Panch’s tall, dark, and handsome looks, we were completely in love with John’s floppy golden hair. When I was in middle school, I was obsessed with Stefan Edberg and Darien Hatcher, two athletes who are as blond as you can get. A Swedish flag adorned my school binder, and I even convinced myself that I loved Wasa crackers (aka tree bark).

So far, P doesn’t seem to be immune to this infatuation with blondness. When she was a little over six months old, we took her to a bar in the middle of the day to watch a World Cup game (get all the judgments out of your system now). We were sitting next to a blond woman, who was also watching the game. Most of the 90-minute game was spent trying to pry P off the poor woman, who was being subjected to aggressive caressing by a six-month old. Time and again, P would start attacking the woman’s hair.

Has she inherited our fascination with blondies? It’s very little evidence to go on, but interesting to note nonetheless.

Once in a while, when we’re outside and the sunlight is hitting her at just the right angle, P’s brown hair shimmers with shades of red, undoubtedly inherited from A, who had white blond hair as a baby. And when I see P in those moments, I think to myself, “Boo-reh.”

 Radishes!

I’ve already written a fair amount about my least favorite American holiday. So it’s only fair that I dedicate as much blog space to my favorite one: Thanksgiving.

What’s there not to love? The whole holiday is about food (and that whole being thankful thing). I love it all: the Brussel sprouts, the green beans, the various pies, mashed potatoes, the stuffing (oh, the stuffing), and of course, the turkey.

Thoughts of Thanksgiving are always associated with food and family. The special recipes that are passed down through the generations, everyone’s special place at the table, and the kitschy keepsakes that decorate the table are stuff of family lore.

Now that I’m a mom myself, I can’t wait until P has enough hand-eye coordination to help me in the kitchen. But even those Thanksgivings that can’t be spent with family are memorable.

One of the most unforgettable Thanksgivings I ever spent was during my study abroad year in Venice. Italians are fascinated with all things American (although the details are a bit blurry…every Fourth of July my father-in-law asks if we’re eating turkey). So I figured that it would be really cool for my Italian roommates to experience a completely American holiday.

At the time, I was living in a house with four other Italians—all of them male. Not one spoke English, since our study abroad program was adamant that we live with locals to really experience the language and culture. It was, to say the least, fun.

I prepped them in advance, telling them that we’d be having a big American-style meal with turkey and all. Like in the movies, they asked? Oh yes. Just like the movies.

When I thought up this grandiose idea, this Italian Thanksgiving, I didn’t realize just how easy Americans have it: frozen Butterballs in every grocery store, canned pumpkin, already prepared pie crusts, etc. Once I actually started looking for all the ingredients, I saw that it was going to be a bit more of a challenge than I anticipated.

At a store that catered to ex-pats, I found some cranberry sauce (I believe it was the jelly kind, the one that leaves the form of the can imprinted on the sauce) and a turkey baster. At home, my roomies immediately dubbed the baster my “instrument of pleasure.” Really, what did you expect with four guys in their 20s who’d never seen a turkey baster before?

At the grocery store, I soon found out that Italians don’t eat whole turkeys. Nor do they have canned pumpkin. (To be honest, I had balked at paying a gazillion lire for the canned turkey in the ex-pat store.)

I bought a whole pumpkin and some cookies that most resembled graham crackers. Thankfully, all the sides were easy enough to find—and I headed home with bagfuls of potatoes and green beans. The turkey situation was solved by stammering an order to a grumpy butcher near our apartment. He asked me three times if I wanted a whole turkey (un tacchino intero signorina? E’ sicura?) before finally shrugging and telling me it would be ready Thursday morning.

I received my fair share of stares as I lugged home a whole turkey up and down the bridges in Venice.

I believe my roomies thought I was insane as I started whipping the meal together. What 19 year-old makes an entire Thanksgiving meal, from scratch (as in really from scratch) no less? Apparently, a very homesick one.

But once I started cooking, the rhythm of it took me back home to California. I rubbed the bird inside and out with olive oil and seasoned it, stuffed it with a mixture of old bread and veggies, and basted it to death. I called my parents at home to figure out how long I had to bake the thing—all this was done before Google was invented. I roasted the pumpkin, scooped out the pulp, made a makeshift crumb, and put together a pie. I only made two side dishes, justifying the low number by telling myself that Italians had no idea how many side dishes were actually served at Thanksgiving.

There were seven of us at the meal: me, my four roomies, an American friend also studying in Venice, and the cute lifeguard I was seeing at the time. The meal was a resounding success: the Italians loved the American-ness of the whole thing, and the two Americans in the bunch felt a little less homesick. The wine flowed freely, and the evening ended with a rowdy stroll through the streets of Venice.

And the turkey baster? I left it for the roomies. They long ago moved out of our cute apartment in Campo S. Barnaba, but the “instrument of pleasure” has puzzled a long line of Italian students in the past 15 years.