Last night we hosted an "Italian Election Party" at Paul's house. Our Italian roommate Chiara was in charge, and Chance and I helped plan. At first it was just going to be a usual house potluck, but somehow it turned into a rather large soiree. It was great fun ... here's Berlusconi greeting you at the door.

What's an Italian party without food? We let everyone feast on the beautiful potluck of pasta, lemon cake, salad, bread, risotto ... and then the games began!

Here's Chiara passing around the pot from which everyone had to draw their coalition affiliation - Right (boooo) or Left (yay).

Then we made everyone take a quiz in order to elect their candidates. The questions were things like "does Italy celebrate the 4th of July?" and "who is the most likely type of person to join the Retired Peoples' Party?" The winners had to don Berlusconi and Prodi masks and make speeches in order to be confirmed.

Coalitions were rewarded and penalized according to how the different regions in Italy performed in exit polls. We colored in a giant map of Italy with Red and Blue states! (Guess which state Chiara is from...)

We also made them compete at Pictionary using clues they wrote themselves (they had to be "Italian-sounding."

Everyone had fun guessing clues like "Gladiator," "corruption," "Gucci" and "Hannibal and the elephants." See them all lined up with their little coalition nametags? Such good citizens of Paul's house ...

The prizes were contained in these mysterious paper bags ... Oscar Meyer bologna for Prodi and a Playboy magazine for Berlusconi, who says he was inspired by it when he was young. Ah, politics ...