Students share holiday gaffes, winter traditions

The Indiana Daily Student sent reporters out to ask students about their most chaotic holiday memories. To get through exam season, enjoy holiday gaffes ranging from cow feces, trouble with Italian taxi drivers and several icy tailspins along with a few heartwarming winter traditions.

Lost in the Italian countryside

Ronak Monga, Calvin Josenhans and Andrew Miller

Auguste Fried, a sophomore, traveled to the rolling hills of Tuscany to visit his girlfriend studying abroad over Thanksgiving break. He spared no expense for the trip and booked a reservation at a nice restaurant outside of Florence.

The restaurant turned out to be much further from the city than he, or his taxi driver, thought.

“For some reason, like, this guy doesn’t use Google Maps,” Fried said. “We just got completely lost, and we ended up on some dirt road.”

Fried thought the driver could be kidnapping him. The road got so bumpy to where the bottom of the car began scraping the road. At that point, the driver said he was done, that he wouldn’t go any further.

“My girlfriend was like, ‘let's just call the restaurant,’” he said. “And I was like, ‘I don’t even think the restaurant’s real anymore.”

He called the restaurant, and the man answering the phone didn’t speak English. So Fried gave his phone over to the driver, who figured it out.

The restaurant was worth the ordeal and the exorbitant money, at least.

“It was ridiculously good,” Fried said.

A Christmas Eve emergency

Ursula Stickelmaier, Deshna Venkatachalam, Grace Romine and Brenna Polovina

Junior Arissa Likens recalled a time she was at her family’s Christmas Eve party during early childhood. To escape the adult holiday hubbub, Likens and her cousin went into a bedroom. While jumping on the bed, Likens felt a playful push from her cousin. She lost her balance, falling and hitting her head on the nightstand.

“I busted my head on Christmas Eve,” Likens said.

Her family, comprised of several nurses and medical professionals, remained calm and knew she needed stitches. Likens was delivered an early Christmas present: a visit to the emergency room Christmas Eve night.

Holiday race

Marty Blader and Henry Holloway

Junior Suki Gill and her family incorporate a competitive edge to the holiday season with a race. Each year, everyone in her family that is able to, from younger cousins to her 80-year-old grandpa, takes part in the race. The winner gets the first spot in line to get food and picks the dessert.

The race began two to three years ago when her younger cousins were racing in the backyard, and some of the parents decided to band together to make their own race. Everyone quickly became involved in the same race.

“Usually when families get together everyone is separated like grandparents will be doing something else, kids and parents will be doing something else, but this is the one time that everyone is having fun because it’s something silly,” Gill said.

Last Thanksgiving Gill’s 80-year-old grandfather won the race. This year the race will be held on Christmas because more of her family will be there coming from Indiana, Illinois, Ohio and Canada this holiday season. She said she is excited for them to witness the race for the first time. If the weather allows, Gill said they might do a sledding race if it's too cold and snowy.

Piles of cow poop

Ronak Monga, Calvin Josenhans and Andrew Miller

Every Thanksgiving, junior Anthony Grewe plays football with his cousins right by the many cows at their farm.

“They try to clear out the stool as much as they can,” he said. “But usually it doesn’t go as well as we all think, and there’s always just someone who falls in it.”

This year, his 7-year-old cousin went for a run. He fell face first into the poop. Not an uncommon site at the farm at Thanksgiving, Grewe said.

‘We decided not to tell our grandma’

Mia Hilkowitz, Alayna Wilkening and Jiya Shah

IU senior Jun-Hao Lei was in third grade when his father had an unexpected thrill ride. Lei recalled how his father’s car spun out on an icy highway, though Lei wasn’t in the car at the time. Lei, who was living in Taiwan at the time, said his father was very calm when he told the rest of the family.

“We decided not to tell our grandma,” Lei said. “I’m not sure about my mom’s reaction, because I wasn’t there when she heard it, but she probably did worry and stuff. But I don’t think neither of our siblings got a huge reaction.”

Morgan Wilson, another IU senior, and their family also ran into icy roads when trying to go Christmas tree shopping.

“Our car just, like, stopped going up the hill and like did a full 180 back down the hill,” Wilson said. “I think we ended up leaning against trees a little bit on the side of the road.”

Wilson remembers looking out the side of the car and seeing the lots of trees and the forest right next to the car. Shocked, Wilson’s dad simply said, “we’ll go the other way.”

The family continued their drive and successfully got their tree.

No hill, no problem

Carolyn Marshall, Natalie Fitzgibbons, Ella Curlin

Claire Reising, an undecided freshman, smiled when asked about her holiday memories growing up in her hometown Richmond, Indiana.

“It’s not very interesting,” she said.

Reising shared how at the age of 14, she, her younger sister, older brother and neighbors would take turns driving in their grandpa’s beat up Ford pick-up truck. While one drove, the others would take turns sitting on a sled with a penguin design attached to the truck with only a rope and a wooden stick. As they hung onto the stick they would be pulled around the yard like skiing behind a boat.

With a big hay field in their front yard, Reising was left with plenty of room for driving and sledding. Reising, her siblings and her neighbors would use this whenever it snowed over the holidays, sledding without need for any slopes.

Who needs keys to lock a car when you have snow?

Carolyn Marshall, Natalie Fitzgibbons, Ella Curlin

IU game design major and sophomore Sam Styer remembers being stuck outside a locked car in 20-degree weather at the age of 3 with his mom even though they had the key to it.

After walking outside of a tuxedo store to pick up a tuxedo for his aunt and uncle's wedding, Styer and his mom realized all the doors to his mom’s minivan were frozen shut by the windy, cold climate of Northern Illinois in December.

“I remember jumping and feeling like I was getting carried by the wind a bit,” he said.

It took up to an hour until his dad came to the rescue.

Grinchmas

Isabella Vesperini, Adelyn Rabbitt, Natalia Nelson

Every year, a member of IU senior Katie Minasola’s family dons Santa Claus’s red hat and fluffy beard and bestows a small gift upon the children at their annual Christmas party. But last year, the jolly fellow was nowhere to be found.

When Minasola’s 40-year-old cousin discreetly excused himself from the festivities, no one expected him to return as the character that he did.

The children gathered around the living room, anxiously waiting for Santa to show, when Minasola’s 40-year-old cousin slammed the front door open, head-to-toe in a furry green suit.

“I didn’t even know he owned that,” Minasola said. “I don’t know where he got it from.”

The Grinch proceeded to chase people around the Christmas tree.

Christmas present allergy

Isabella Vesperini, Adelyn Rabbitt, Natalia Nelson

Freshman Bridget Gose was overjoyed when she received a fluffy Cavalier Poodle mix four days before Christmas as her present in seventh grade. Her whole family was allergic to dogs, but thought the Cavapoo’s hypoallergenic fur wouldn’t be a problem.

They named her Bell.

“Because it was like Christmas Bells,” Gose said.

But then, Gose’s lips started swelling up. Her eyes were bloodshot from itching them so much. Her mom and brother were sneezing.

“We can’t live with this,” Gose said.

So they had to rehome Bell. Gose said Bell’s new home was with one of her family friends.

“It’s okay,” Gose said. “We still get to see her.”