bon voyage/ buon viaggio!

Los Angeles, California, USA

After Sophie and I spent our last morning in Zurich watching cartoon network in german, we took the speediest and most efficient and perfect and clean public transit (trams and a speedy boat taxi) to the lake, where we swam to a tall waterslide and jumped off a high dive with some very cool looking middle schoolers who were crowding the docks and the beaches like sea lions on the santa cruz wharf. Being around middle-schoolers gave me a weird sort of middle school anxiety again; i got the feeling that I myself was in middle school and was supposed to try to act really cool then i pulled myself out of the lake and onto the wooden dock and looked down at the boys who came up to maybe my waist and I realized they are swiss thirteen year olds... and I am twenty two, a fact that sometimes slips my mind. Age is only a number in a lot of ways.

Anyway, we completed our final day with two terrific jumps off the high dive, complete with screams and flailing, the perfect end to our trip that could very well be entitled "jumping off european things" or something of the sort. We spent a lot of time in water, that is, when we weren't working on farms or eating like big fat queens. That night at Astrid and Brad's house we thought about drinking from their array of fancy liqueurs but were all feeling too sick from having seriously overloaded on swiss chocolate for "dinner" (it was accompanied by a light salad). So we lied around in the candle-light bedroom, listening to the song "summer lovin'" from Grease which is officially Sophie and my favorite movie, we must have watched it ten times this summer and sang all the songs on the train and while we were laboring away at the hay bales trying to make the time pass...anyways, we listened to summer lovin' while we looked at the photos of our journey, which was particularly poignant when we got to the photos of us walking through an old italian graveyard as John Travolta and Olivia Newton John sang "summer fun, somethin's begun..."

The next morning we woke up early and said our goodbyes and then twenty five sleepless hours, two mini bottles of wine, two soggy pasta dishes, six cups of orange juice and a few classic chick flicks later we arrived in LA. My amazing fantastic momma had prepared the most delicious carrot cake in the world from scratch because she thought it would be a nice american treat, not knowing it is Sophie's favorite cake. Then mom made us tamales, another thing we had missed, and we put on some scabies cream one last time (this one smelled like sulfur) and passed out immediately. A perfect end to a perfect summer.

Fin.

Epilogue:

Sophie left the next day, but only after getting some everything bagels with herb cream cheese, eating japanese food, getting her photos developed, and of course, watching Grease one more time. It is always bitter-sweet watching Grease because it is so great and John Travolta is so cute and charming and such a fantastic dancer and then we remember he's a scientologist and our dreams are shattered, again... it's still very difficult for us to come to terms with that fact. Now I am having a weird sort of separation anxiety from Sophie. I've been literally no further than 50 feet from her this whole summer, every hour of every day so it was strange dropping her off at the airport. But it was a wonderful honeymoon and i will see her in two days and then we will go back to our regular friendly marriage.

The culture shock coming back was there, but not as badly as when i studied abroad. THe big cars and the sloppy clothes were definitely noticeable, and it is still very strange to hear people speaking american and knowing that they can understand me when i talk so i can't just talk about someone's silly haircut while I am standing next to them. Eating a taco was better than I had imagined, but I miss speaking italian so badly even though it's only been a few days. It's all very bittersweet, as endings always are. I think for us it was the perfect time to come back, any shorter and we would have felt cheated out of the full experience, but any longer and we might have become worn out from the nonstop travel adventures. It's hard not having a home base. But what a perfect two month journey it was.

ARRIVADERCI!

France and Switzerland

Zurich, Switzerland

We spent the last week in a chateau in france that is owned by Katie's wealthy family friends. It is one of their 4 houses, and it is in a small town in provence called Les Beaumettes.

I want to write down everything we did but it is about a week old so it is not as inspired as it could be, so I will write bullet points

- the night we got in our train was late so the rental car place closed and as we were about to sleep on the ground outside, i magically began to speak french and we found our way to the holiday inn who called a cheap hostel and we bartered with them and got to stay in a small apartment for 60 euros for 4 people, so 15 each. Being as we were almost broke, this was exciting. and free water.

- when we finally found the house, there was an enormous wasp nest, maybe 2 feet wide, that meant we spent a few hours walking around the house wrapped in mosquito nets trying to exterminate two huge wasps each the size of my thumb. I finally killed one, it was bittersweet.

- huge travelfamily dinners, gnocchi lessons (they had a gnocchi pass machinetta in the kitchen so we made some really really good gnocchi) and pasta dinners, baguettes and sausages with fennel and brie, we had a mexican fiesta in which we all dressed up, and you could definitely call some of our outfits offensive, but then again.. nobody else was there.. so, if a tree falls in the forest and there is no one around to hear it... is a chola outfit really offensive?

- we went to a fantastic series of farmers markets and flea markets that were loaded with amazing spices, honeys, soaps, patte's (sp?) fruits and vegetables, little old men wearing berets, old spoons and old maps and old posters and lanterns and a little green park in the town with a river running through it that had a bunch of big waterwheels. I lied on my back in the park eating a salmon and spinach quiche and listened to a father and son play a violin guitar duet of carmen, and other things. We dipped our toes in the river and ate lemon meringue pie. We purchased a lot of knick knacky treasures and i got another spoon for my collection from two men named bernard and robert.

- my friend Jessie's mission was to eat as many almond croissants as her heart desired, and i think she must have had about 7 or 8? maybe a few were other flavors.

- we drove to the coast off Marseilles and took a ferry to this small island called ISLE VERT (google image this and be so jealous) crystal clear this time more green water, jumping off rocks, swimming around like nymphs, this is pretty much our routine by now. It took a few little hikes to get around and it was very very hot, and we got some amazing photos which i should post the link to sometime.

- We visited aixen provence and maybe ate the best mousse i could have ever imagined.

- the gardeners name was jaque and he was round and very sweet and came around every day or so to see how we were doing

- i slept in my own bedroom in a bed that was far too big for me, inside a mosquito net and i felt very elegant.

we took the train to zurich which was ridiculously expensive we all almost cried a little, but it was a very nice train and loaded with really good looking personnel, which made the ride more enjoyable. The view from france to switzerland is incredible; green and lakes and cute pointy roofs and villages nestled in hillsides. When we got to zurich we found my cousin astrid and went to a kebab place and ate and then the rain began to pour, as it apparently does randomly in switzerland, and we took the bus home and watched notting hill and fell asleep.

The next day, yesterday, we explored zurich a little. This city is BEAUTIFUL and perfect and very well planned. For example, we rented bicycles for free and rode them around through the little pointy roof streets that are covered with trees (almost no trash on the streets) and then we got to the river that runs through the middle of the city and people were swimming in it. Every other city i know, you don't swim in the river that runs right through the middle because it is filthy, but this one is alpine melt water with a few leaves floating in it. All along the banks were beautiful twenty something people lounging around in the sun. We found a spot to put our towels and then went to jump off a small bridge into the water. Then the current dragged us downstream and it was like we were getting a little tour of the city by way of water. When we were about to pass under the big bridge, and a few young guys were jumping off it, so we got out and climbed up four flights of stairs, walked across the bridge, which was covered in cars, in our bathingsuits, climbed over the railing, and stood there maybe 10 to 12 meters up trying to get ourselves to jump off. Finally, we counted to three, but SCREAMING at the top of our lungs because otherwise i wouldn't have found the courage, which only came from the adrenaline i got from screaming one two three, and then we jumped off, Jessie, Sophie and I all went down screaming while a crowd watched and katie took photos and video. When our heads poked out of the water there was a crowd of people applauding, and my arm hurt from having slapped the water at a bad angle, but it was so exciting! We are all very proud of ourselves for that.

Now Sophie and I are going to rent bicycles and bike to the picturesque lake!

I could live in switzerland.

insomnia

Esino Lario, Italia

I am at uncle Max's house above lake como in the northernmost bit of italy. They call them the pre alps, they are still staggering mountains to me, but nowhere near what you'd see going through to switzerland. It is 4 am and i can't sleep because sophie and i were both wearing soccer pants that are made of windbreaker material so every time one of us moves our legs the noise wakes me up, and i am also still very itchy from scabies and really not happy about that.

Good news is that i have been dancing a lot recently. Tonight we went to a little festival the town was having at it's tiny piazza where an italian band was playing waltzes and cha cha cha's and i taught my cousin alex how to dance kindof by leading him awkwardly around the floor and counting the steps outloud. But it was lovely. Before that our last night in Calabria we went to another festival (august is festival month in Italia) and we watched crazy italians of all ages dance the tarantella like maniacs. The accordion was going so fast, and the mandolin too, and i just started feeling it in my feet and dragged antonello on the dance floor and we were hopping around back and forth and bumping into everyone else and my calves got so sore after about 5 minutes of the dance, this one song by the way lasted about 30 minutes! Earlier that night sophie and i had done our obligatory full moon skinny dip in the secluded area in the perfect sea again, and that was a great way to say goodbye to the calabrian sea, and we were swimming a couple hundred meters out in the ocean while the sun dipped below the horizon and then we swam back and went to the festival all wet. Not exactly la bella figura but definitely worth it.

This time i didn't leave anything behiind in calabria, besides a little pandemonium that had erupted after I had been pretty disgustingly sexually harassed on the way to the tomato fields. Luckily he didn't touch me and I was smart enough and got away safely, but when i told my seriously protective and chivalrous and wonderfully bubbly hospitable male friends we'd made, they made it their job to track down exactly who he is, where he is from, his car, his girlfriend (i feel very sorry for you), spread word all over town and luckily didn't beat him up while I was there because I expressed a serious concern for my own safety if he were to retaliate against sophie and I for some reason, and i just think violence escalates violence and really was discouraging that. But I am almost positive that at least Antonello did on Friday night after we left, mostly because he kept swearing that he would the minute we left, saying things like "one punch in the face and kick in the ass and he'll learn some respect". I think that's just how they deal with things there. He is lucky that i hadn't made friends with any mafiosi, because he might be dead or close to it at this point. Like I said, everything there seems exaggerated and a little extreme.
I don't want to talk about this anymore and please don't talk to me about it unless i bring it up.

We left calabria on a really good note, after eating and dancing at the festival, saying goodbye to antonello and inhaling some really good cappuccinos at the train station, we took a flight up the coast of Italia and landed in Milan. Upon collecting our baggage, we discovered that someone/something had peed on sophie's backpack, or maybe had spilled a jar full of dead rat juice all over her backpack and she had to wear it and then ride on the bus smelling literally the worst smell i have ever smelled in my life. A cross between pungent pee and rotting corpse. So when we finally found Katie after an hour of waiting, and finally got to the station and then took a taxi up the hairpin turn roads to the tiny mountain town, she showered and we drank and ate with my family and then fell asleep like babies in this gorgeous huge yellow and stone house overlooking the lake.

Favorite Time of Day

Briatico, Calabria, Italia

At sunset time, this little old lady named Vittoria (or la nonna Vittoria as we know her) comes over to the farmhouse where we are staying to feed the chickens. She is small and bent over, has frizzy hair that is dyed light brown, and is always dressed very elegantly, skirt and blouse. She is a very smiley lady and she really loves animals, so when she walks into the chicken and goose pen she is beaming, holding a plastic bag full of food scraps from lunch, and hobbling down the pathway. She talks really lovingly to the chickens and then throws the food down and tells them to go eat. She confronts the ones who aren't eating and tries to get them to eat (much like she does when we don't feel like eating anymore) and she fills up their waterbowl. I have never seen anyone behave so tenderly towards chickens. It is my favorite time of day. Yesterday i took a photo of her throwing the food down, she waited until i counted to three and then flung the food down, again with a huge smile.

The other day we were eating lunch at her house and there was this chicken wandering around by our feet. She told me her name was Gabriella and then hand fed her watermelon, while talking to her and telling her she loved her. I couldn't contain my laughter because this chicken looks so silly, but their relationship is so serious and she has such a serious human name. The chickens little head flap is falling over her eyes so she looks like she has a comb over, and her one eye is always glaring out from under her red head flap (the other one is well covered).

Also that same day we watched Vittoria's 85 year old sister, whose name i forgot, eat an entire melon by herself after lunch. Well she cut me off a small piece but then went at that melon for about 20 minutes.

While I am talking about old ladies, i guess i should mention Antonello's mom. She is about 80, had three teeth (to my knowledge) and always seems to be yelling about something, even though she's not mad. The other day i talked about wanting to make pesto and i asked her if she liked pesto and she screamed "PESTO!! NO!!!!!! NO PESTO!" and then turned around and walked inside the house, muttering curses about pesto. This is a common occurance, this random screaming fit. But she is not angry, i think that is just how she communicates.
She has given birth to 17 children. That means she has spent the majority of at least 30 years of her life being pregnant and breastfeeding infants. This I cannot wrap my head around.

spicy south

Briatico, Calabria, Italia

We arrived 2 days ago in Briatico, Calabria, a small barely paved beach town where it is never not hot and the water is as perfect as any travel brochure of the carribean. It seems like a really poor place, a lot of the houses are really run down and a lot of the old people don't have teeth. But everyone we've met is extremely happy, laughs a lot, is really into family, is exraordinarily generous and very hospitable and willing to go out of their way to show us a good time. The work here is easy. We work however much we want, whenever we want, and it involved taking care of tomatoes or cutting twigs of oregano and putting them into bags.

The food is lots of spicy, lots of tomatoes and pasta pasta pasta. Our new friend antonello (large frame, huge smile, dark skin and greasy jet black hair, number 10 of 17 siblings) drives us to secret beach spots that only he is allowed to go to because he knows people who know people, takes us to meet his family, buys us gelato and beer and anything we want, and screams at the top of his lungs to techno music as we wind around the hair-pin turns on the cliff above the sea. He showed us a lot of pictures of him slaughtering a pig and making salami WHILE we were eating that very same salami from that very same pig. He laughed in my face when i told him i was a vegetarian. But he is pretty much always laughing, if he's not cursing or talking on the phone to one of his ten brothers about how he is driving in the car with two beautiful girls from california. He is a lot of fun, a real gem who we are very lucky to have found. Tonight we are making pesto from basil from our garden and pine nuts from his yard.

Fragneto Monforte and the battle of the old things

Fragneto Monforte, Campania, Italia

Sophie and I spent the last week in a tiny town called Fragneto Monforte which is almost entirely inhabitied by my family it seems. We stayed with my zia Elena, and visited all my other aunts almost daily. All of my relatives there are a bunch of little old ladies, and then one little old man. They love us and kiss us and pinch our faces and kiss our faces and feed us and feed us and then overfeed us and then really won't let us stop eating and literally will pile our plates full of food even when we protest vehemently. That is love. But the food is so good, it is a hard spot to be in.

I went to my uncle Pompeo's house, who lives right next door to aunt elena's house, and they are in a feud. They are on different sides of the family and are not speaking, so pompeo would call his niece who lives two houses down who then would call us to deliver his message and then my aunt elena would grumble about it. Anyways, we walked the 10 steps to pompeos house and then he showed us all around his house and showed us all of his very old things that have been in our family for hundreds of years. Some of them since the 1600's and he had a big vase from ancient rome sitting really nonchalantly in the corner. The house was where my great grandfather lived, and it was so incredibly ancient and full of ancient things that it was just like a small but really legitimate museum, but even better because every artifact came with a story that was about a member of my family. He had a dresser that belonged to my grandmother's grandmother, Filomena, when she was young, and he had an old dictionary that belonged to my great grandfather, and the archway that used to be in front of their old house, and tiles mouned on the wall that were painted brilliant colors that used to be tiles from the terrace that my family lived in. He walked really fast for an 80 something year old, and then he made us eat a lot of chocolate. He has a family tree that traces our family back to the 1700s and earlier and some of our family members had the titles "the magnificent" after their names. It was a really beautiful and kind of unbelievable tour.

Then we went home and elena asked how was pompeo's house and I told her only that he has a lot of old things and she said "I have a lot of old things!" and proceeded to show us around her house and talked about how old each and every thing of hers was. Apparently, in Fragneto, all of the houses are antiques full of antiques. She showed me a cookbook full of recipes that was written in te 1400s. That is so crazy! Someone was writing that cookbook that I was holding while columbus was sailing across the sea or while dante was writing his inferno and while people still believed in fairies. And there I was reading how to cook a pheasant in the year 2009.

After a lot of kissing and eating and overeating and napping and putting on scabies cream over and over and doing our laundry, we drove down the narrow 1oo meter street, aka 'across town' with my cousin mariarca and then got on the train heading south to Calabria. But not before getting treated to a gelato at the train station by a man named Francesco (every other man here is named that) who apparently had made the pizzas that we had ordered ad zia ilda's house two nights prior, and knew my entire family by name.

Paradise

Napoli, Campania, Italia

This place feels like paradise. Even if it weren't juxtaposed with that other not so great farm experience, i think it still would feel perfect. Every day we wake up, eat melons and drink espresso, then go on a tour of the city, weaving in and out of vespas with three people on them and blazing through red lights like they are polite suggestions. Then we end up at our destination: The spanish quarters which are in the old center of naples which are narrow streets with bridges of laundry hanging overheard very much like a film set, or the ruins of pompeii which are stunning, the ashes buried a metropolis and now that it's excavated we wandered through the streets and went into little houses and into a whore house and into people's gardens and pretended that it was 2000 years ago and that if i turned the corner i might run into jesus (who, according to me, hung out in pompeii), or we end up at the old fishing section of napoli, red and yellow and balconies with lots of little old men on little old boats yelling and if you didn't understand what they were saying you would think they are arguing but in fact they are just reminiscing about something or telling jokes, or we ended up at vesuvius today and lucio picked up a lava rock for sophie off the side of the road. Also they sell lava sculpted into designs, one was sculpted into a marijuana leaf and painted green with the words 'legalize' underneath it, so clever i almost bought it. Wait. No I didn't. We also visited positano, google image this too if you've never seen it, i forgot if i already wrote about it but it is beautiful.

Then we come home and eat a huge lunch in the backyard in the shade of two big apricot trees on the grass next to about 50 turtles who eat better than we did on the last farm. Some of our finest lunches have included gnocchi alla sorrentina which we had today, pasta con le vongole, pizza direct from napolis finest pizzerias, prociutto and melone, always fruit and salads and wine and acqua con gas (good for the digestion, which is something that is very important to italians, they love talking about digestion. Here are some other things they say are good for digestion: caffé, lemon skins, liqueurs which are called digestivos, black liquorice, warm water instead of cold. I find this hilarious.)

Then we usually nap or go out on another excursion. then come home for dinner where we feast again on amazing food home cooked by my aunt Marilena who really knows how to do italian food. Insalata caprese, potato cake with cheese and ham, artichoke hearts, grilled bell peppers and roasted tomatoes with string beans, pasta sempre al dente, and always great salads, wines and fruits and then desserts and THEN the digestivos that she makes from scratch. There is limoncello, apple liqueur, one made from loquat seeds called nespola, noccillo which is made from walnuts and cloves and tastes warm and christmas like, and grappa which burns me less now than it used to. We eat all of our meals over long periods of time, lots of fast italian which goes over my head but also lots of joking and storytelling and (lovingly) forcefeeding on the part of lucio, who thinks that a compliment on something means 'i want four of those immediately'.

Stupidly, i left my bathingsuit at the last farm, where it is probably getting ripped to shreds by evil children and chickens and scabies, so i have been searching for a new one this whole time. Unfortunately, the style here is to really only cover a small portion of the butt crack and leave it at that, which doesn't really work for me at all. Also, they all have weird frills and beads and sequins and oh they also cost 100 euro. Just when I was about to give up hope, Lucio saw a store and we went in and i tried on 4 of them and found one that worked. It is black and has a bunch of beats and multi colored thread and also mini mirrors embroidered into the breast part- that way you can see yourself in them when you're looking at them, woo hoo! I figured i might as well embrace the tacky bathing suit thing and have some fun with it. Also, it fits and also it cost ten euro. Fantastico! I am starting to wish it was more ridiculous, tassles and maybe some happy faces or some designs on the butt part too. Oh well.

I think, i hope, that we have killed all the scabies. We burned them in the suns heat and also at a sulfuric volcano and also washed everything a billion times and i think i bleached my skin off today in the shower with a pesticide. So i hope that will be the end of them.

buona notte

thank god we are finally in Naples

Casa Larocca, Napoli, Italia

we spent the last two weeks at a goat farm that was more bad than good. I will take the risk of sounding complainy and write some highlights and lowlights from the fiastra goat farm.

- we slept on the ground outside in the rain and thunderstorms and lightning without a flashlight, until the cat destroyed our tent and ripped it to shreds, then we slept in the cats room with the cats
- the sheets were not changed and we got scabies
- they had a tv and dvd player and a lot of good movies. Sophie and I watched grease 3 or 4 times. That movie is my new favorite.
- we herded goats for about 2 hours on hte first day around the lake which was beautiful and funny and funand i ate some wild blackberries, but then we never saw the goats again. Instead we weeded and for 2 days straight we lugged huge bales of hay around in the 100 degree heat until we were blistered everywhere.
- one time each sophie and i rubbed olive oil on the goat cheeses that were in the cold brick cheese room downstairs. It was very rustic and beautiful.
- we woke up at 5 every day and took naps in the afternoon which were usually interrupted by one of the kids trying to forcefeed the cat in our room.
- the lake was beautiful, turquoise, warm, and so lovely. we swam in it every day after work. THe scenery was all very sound of music.
- the 4 year old girl Gioia went into my room and took my birth control pills out and strew them all over somewhere we still don't know. the mom refused to pay me in full for them and said it was my fault for not putting them away.
- we pretty much ate only zucchini and rice and bread and jam for the whole time.

The family is so poor that they are just barely scraping by, so i felt badly asking for food variety, or private time, the dad works from 5 am to midnight and the mom has 5 crazy kids to take care of and on top of it they are trying to do everything all organic. we were there to volunteer and to have a social and cultural exchange, but there was no exchance because they had no time to spare and no time to teach us anything new. We had to work on the things he didn't have time to do, like hay and weeding, and unfortunately that meant that we did a lot of the grunt work that took less skill. It wasn't out of their malintentions that we had a bad experience, it was the lack of time and space they had to care about what kind of an experience we were having. I wish we got to learn about goat cheese. I just learned that it can be very very pungent and flies love the smell.

AH i am glad to leave that place behind and never go back!!

one thing that was great was truffle hunting. WE met this older, maybe mid 60s man at a restaurant. He was sitting near us and not talking but just looking so i said hi and after talking for a while with him we eventually decided to go truffle hunting with him in the forest. He does that for a living!! His name is felice which means happy.
He picked us up on sunday morning at 8. I felt a little bit weird about going with him because i found him strange and then stefano, the farmer, didn't say anything to relax me. He just said, oh he is a strange man. i really wanted to go truffle hunting,n so q tried to subdue the feeling that i was going to get murdered that day and Sophie and i got in the car. I immediately started scanning the car for a possible murder weapon and when i found none i felt a little more relaxed.
Felice barely spoke, and when he did he didn't look me in the eye. HE has very awkward social mannerisms and kept looking at me like he was going to eat me. Then he said that we are parking at a place that is not very beautiful but it is a good place to park. I asked him where, and he said, in the cemetery in the middle of the forest. Then we parked there and he went into the trunk and got out this huge ice pick style gardening tool, perfect for a murder in the middle of the forest, and i really felt at this moment that i was going to get murdered. Granted, i expect to get murdered more than most people probably do, but that is always only a crazy fear. This was tangible. I was staying far behind him as we hiked through the forest and trying to figure out ways to escape.
Well instead of killing us, he took us on a lovely series of short hikes in the middle of the forest with his 3 little truffle finding dogs and we discovered maybe 20 truffles and drove through tiny tiny forest towns with the narrowest streets and he bought us cappuccinos. Not only that, but he brought us 3 bananas and cake and was very pleasant through all of his awkwardness. Then at the end he drove us home and gave us 7 of the maybe 20 or so truffles that we found.

We took the truffles with us in Sophie's purse on the train to naples and the whole car was filled with their smell. Then we gave them to my aunt Marilena when we got to her house in naples. It was probably 150 dollars worth of truffle mushrooms and she grated them all over some buttery pasta. We have been eating like queens, my aunt is the best cook, and we have been sleeping a lot. We are like big fat sleepy queens. This is a lovely break from the farm work, especially the hay days, when one of the days we came home and no one had saved any food for us, this is the exact opposite. No one feels at peace until we are stuffed with primi, secondi, salad, fruit and wine and bread and then a sweet and then a digestivo.

Which is exactly the state I am in right now. Stuffed with wonderful food after a day out with my cousin Simone and his very sweet friend Rolando and Sophie in Positano which is one of the many places here in italy that looks more beautiful in person than the postcards of it. It is a bunch of beautiful colorful houses squished onto the sides of lush green staggering cliffs over the ocean, with lots of bouganvillia (sp?) and lemons lemons limoncello lemon cake and lots of lemon paraphernalia everywhere. I tried to buy a bathingsuit because sadly i left my really nice really well fitting one at the fiastra goat farm and all the ones here only cover maybe 5 square inches of my butt, no matter what size i try. So i don't know what to do about that.

thanks to this queenlike treatment, i think my scabies are gone. Also, my uncle who is a gynecologist fixed the birth control pills problem for free in 5 minutes, such a magician. and he got us the scabies cream and we did maybe 5 loads of laundry and steamed the scabies out of everything we couldn't put in the washing machine. I could do with never having scabies again. Luckily the words thing about it is the name and the idea.

Broke

Perugia, Umbria, Italia (city with a big chocolate factory!)

Sophie and I are broke.

Good thing in 24 hours we will be at a goat farm, without internet, phone, and also without the ability to spend any money because we will be in the boonies. The lakeside boonies.

Lello

Outside of Siena, Toscana, Italia

I just woke up from a long night sleep and cuddle with the cutest cat. I am inside a smallish tuscan farmhouse turned house by a crazy 45 year old motorcycling hippy named Lello. SHaggy hair, open shirt, no pants, big smile. We've been here for two days now and it is a really great set up. All different colored walls with relics from his life, motorcycle posters, a huge clay jar, pillows from nicaragua, probably 50 iron or bronze keys from abandoned farmhouses on the wall, 50 cowbells, . shells, babushka dolls, spoons, a big map... a dream house, really, it has this very sexy vibe to it. It has a really nice shower, big with lots of different colored tiles and see through glass and a seat.
He took me on a motorcycle ride through the countryside on his harley to go get fruit from a fruit stand. We went on the highway so fast my shirt was flapping off, my helmet was falling back, i think i might have been choking him, and tears were flying out of my eyes into my ears. We did the same thing last night but I was much calmer, looking at the full moon which was ORANGE hanging down on the bottom of the sky.
The first day we arrived, we put rum in a watermelon and squeezed it out into cups to drink. Then we listened to disco music for maybe 8 hours straight which was exactly what Sophie and I wanted. We were elated. Last night we had a big dinner altogether and we ate ravioli, another kind of penne pasta, lots of different cheeses, amazing bread, gelato, grappa, limoncello and a walnut liqueur that he made from scratch.

Things that I have fed his cat who acts like a dog and begs for food from under the table:
- a tomato with olive oil
- tuna
- pasta
- basil leaf
- garlic
- bread
- a cherry

all of which she enjoyed immensely. Her name is Beatrice and it is taking all I have to not steal her.

I am not sad to leave, but definitely could do for a little more time with this man. His italian english switches are really good for practice, he's hilarious, affectionate, and really smart and he mumbles obscenities about ridiculous things... example, one time he was talking about how he used to be a baker and he quit, and he started saying in italian ' fuck off flour! fuck off sugar! I dont want anything to do with you anymore, you big shit dick!'

Sophie and my italian are coming along quite nicely.
Now we're off to Perugia to eat some chocolate and stay in a tiny apartment with a DJ! music all around, finally.

Going Home

Tuesday I left San Vincenzo for Siena. It wasn't even bittersweet for me it was just a transition. I feel like I am at a pretty steady high right not and not much can break that. On the train ride I got such crazy butterflies like I was reuniting with a long lost love or something. I couldn't focus.

When we arrived, we went to our hostel, which i had no idea where it was i just sort of found it with my little feelers, which i think are rather finely tuned, then i went to see Antonella, Mario and Laura.
The walk there felt like this weird mix between dream and reality. I guess that is sort of a theme of my trip. I have had so many dreams about coming back to Siena and going to see my host parents and walking that long walk from the center to our house, that it is almost more familiar to my dream self to be in Siena, and at the same time it felt like I had never left. To see those big cobblestones under my feet, and to see all the shops that I walked past every single day, and even to recognize a handful of people just walking around, was so natural and so completely un-strange, it felt like I had never left.

Antonella was my host cousin, i suppose. She lived downstairs from me, was so beautiful and vivacious and laughed a lot and i felt like we had a really easy understanding of each other. Despite the language barrier, which was a lot stronger then, it was just the most natural friendship. She wasn't there so I left her a note and then had to muster up the courage to righ my host parents' doorbell. I was worried that they would not like to be surprised by me, they are very set in their habits and it is a stressful time for them right now but I thought i might not get to see them otherwise so i rang and laura answered 'chi è?' like she always does and i said sono Sophia and she just rang me in without saying anything like she had expected me. After we'd talked for a while mario came home. THEY ARE SO GREAT!! so loving, such cute tuscan accents, so happy to see me. Mario kept weirdly commenting on my appearance. He stopped and looked at me for a while and asked me if I changed my nose, then pointed out that my hair is lighter and my skin is darker and then said I look more beautiful than ever before, and said that a lot. He is a funny balance between father and flirtacious italian man. I felt so complete after talking to them.
When I left i was walking down the street so elated, even an hour with them really quelled all the missing and other odd feelings I had had, and then i hear 'sophia!!' and I turn around and they are both standing on the balcony waving frantically. Laura used to do that every day when I left for school. I love it. I kept walking and turned around a couple more times and they were still waving. Eventually I had to stop looking back and make that goodbye final. But it felt really good.

Siena is just as I remembered. Amazing coffee, dark stone windy buildings that I magically can find my way through, beautiful men and women that look stoic and perfect like they just stepped off the pages of vogue but then will go out of their way to hold a door open for you or give you the best pastry. Sophie and I ate wild boar and pappa and ravioli for dinner at this trattoria behind the piazza and the tower and heard the crows screaming and the horns blaring and the cannons sounding as the palio celebrations began. That was even two days before the palio. It is really all this city cares about. I saw my friend Giovanni who makes gelato that he sells at his own gelateria. I was so excited to see him. He is the sweetest man and he just looks like he is always glowing and I had a little crush on him for certain. I was thinking he might not remember me but when he saw me walk up his face lit up like it always did and then we kissed a bunch the italian way and he showed me all his new flavors. Then he introduced me to his wife who is shortish and stout and very smiley and nice and i began to plot ways to eliminate her. I don't even know what else to say about that.

The palio was emotional. The city was buzzing and still is. All the dark stone buildings are adorned with the brilliant colors of each contrada. We went into the piazza and then found a nice position and then watched midaeval people parading around with drums and cannons, big flags on horseback, oxen, funny outfits, knights in shining armor, funny little hats. For hours people paraded around the piazza as it filled up. Then we all had to pee but weren't allowed to leave for another three hours. They called the lineup over and over (the whole piazza of thousands and thousands of people was completely and totally silent) and we had to wait for the dragon contrada to get it together and get their horse in line, for about an hour, and the tension was so high and then all of a sudden the started running and everyone started screaming. My contrada, l'istrice who is the giant porcupine was third at the beginning but then finished second to last. Whatever. The horses were so incredibly fast the race was over in a flash, three times around the piazza.The tartuca won, that is the turtle contrada, and they won by a long shot. And now everyone else took most of their flags down and is really sad, while the tartuca people are parading around all day and all night with their flags and drums and horns and outfits and they sing constantly and probably will all year. It is a very emotional thing and I don't know that I captured that because I am not feeling very emotional right now because my head is itchy and i haven't had a shower in 4 days or so because we have been so busy.

Yesterday i went with Sophie, Jessica (who changed her plans and met up with us impromptu) and Antonella to this river outside siena with big rocks and waterfalls. It was so lovely. I ate a strawberry that tasted like a gummy bear and then jumped around from huge rock to huge rock and swam with little fish and swam under a waterfall where one of the guys we were with thought it would be a good idea to kiss me at that point, and I was very not into it, so I swam away and then he stayed near me for the rest of the time saying and doing every single stereotypical thing an italian man would to to try to convince you to kiss him. He explained to me the phrase 'carpe diem' as if I didn't know, quotedl Lorenzo dei Medici, talked about how we are in the most beautiful place in all of tuscany and no one can see and it doesn't matter that he has a girlfriend because 'here in italia things are different' and told me i was beautiful blah blah whatever then he literally poked me a lot on my side, like that was his last resort. haha.
I went back with the others and we found these rocks that you can rub together and they make clay and we rubbed the clay all over ourselves. Antonella insisted that I paint a moustache and unibrow on her, I drew a little picture on jessica's back, and as for me I just smeared the clay all over my body so i was completely purple brown- then when it dried it turned white. It was like a beauty mask. Then we basked on the warm rocks like lizards, hiked back then piled all seven of us in the little car and drove through the forest holding the leash for the dog out the window as he ran next to the car. HE was so tired after that he fell straight asleep in the car. We ate a huge tuscan dinner at this restaurant in the foothills over looking the countryside in this TINY midaeval town of less than a thousand people. We had all sorts of meats and cheese appetizers, gnocchi, pasta, amazing mushrooms, wine and wine and wine and bread and tiramisù and panna cotta and strawberry tart and port and all of us were talking loudly and laughing at the table in english/italian or whatever we could muster. IT was a great day.

The piazza del campo (google image this please) reminds me of disneyland at night in the best of ways. I had a melony drink there with some friends last night and almost lost myself looking at the huge fortress like buildings from the 1400s all illuminated at night, and the huge tower and again with the cobblestones.

My italian is coming along quite nicely. It is almost as good as it has ever been! I can finally talk with a degree of fluidity that i have never had before, and i feel like my personality is finally well understood when I talk.

success.

Running through a field of sunflowers...

...is not as great as it sounds. They are stiff and prickly, their little thorns scratched me up. I made my sunflower run the other day with Sophie and Hulda. It was more of a sunflower tread, walking lightly through the stalks that were as tall as we were, and the field went on for acres and acres, pure yellow. It was not the most comfortable thing, but we looked really good (which is the most important thing). We all look good in yellow. phew.

The Von Trapp Family

San Vincenzo, ancora

More ways this family reminds me of the Von Trapp Family from the Sound of music:
- The mom whistles for the kids really loudly to call them
- the kids are always running around doing errands
- the older kids take care of the younger ones
- they break out into song at the dinner table. The mamma always has really ridiculous songs in her head. The other night it was Tellietubbies and that went on for a very long time. When one person starts, the whole family all joins in to sing along.

Other notable things!

When I came here the moon was a tiny sliver, and last night it looked just like a lemon slice. I like the idea of measuring my time here by the moon, because i always forget what day it is and dont have a phone or a calendar.

My relationship with bugs is improving. For example, i ate a peach that had an earwig in it once i flicked the earwig out. But today there was this really beautiful bug on me and it looked like it had multicolored tiles on its back, and i thought i would let it crawl on me a bit because i am getting more comfortable with them, then it slowed down and looked around and then bent its little knees and dragged its little butt on my leg and excreted a lot of goo. This put me a couple of steps back. I have never been horrible with bugs, but i am appreciating them more.

I am eating so many fresh fruits and vegetables every day I feel like I am going to live forever.

Tomorrow we leave the Von Trapp family for Siena! It feels like I am going home, but in a dream, where home looks and smells different and has different colors, but you still know it is the same place.

Harvest Day

still San Vincenzo; Livorno, Toscana, Italia

Today i woke up to the chorus of birds that sing in the morning, at 645, and then harvested beets and red onions and lettuce all morning. It feels really natural and quite beautiful to develop such an intimate relationship with the earth. Everything that I do here, the weeding and planting and harvesting and running around and enjoying the natural resources, it is all a very tender back and forth and it is making me feel even more present than i've ever been.

On another note, we sang ninties pop songs in the fields and while we were harvesting and cleaning the produce. It really enhanced the experience, we were all laughing so hard at each of our respective Britney renditions. However, I think I must have wasted a cumulative total of 3 hours of my life trying to remember the words to Independent Women by Destiny's Child. (shoes on my feet - I BOUGHT IT, the house I live in - I BOUGHT IT- the ride I'm rockin' - I BOUGHT IT... in case you were curious... and believe me when I finally sang those words to Sophie it felt like the sweetest of all victories) Things can get a little slow sometimes...

What's so red as strawberries in the summertime?

San Vincenzo: Livorno, Toscana, Italia

Things here are so strikingly beautiful! I am about to over-write. Sophie and I woke yesterday in our big bed in our accidental hostel ( we got transferred to a different one because I forgot they operate on military time here and said we were arriving at 9 when I should have said 2100, but it turned out way better this way because in the new hostel I didn't feel like I was going to get murdered) and went exploring Rome. I promptly decided I was in love with it and wanted to move there (another of my fleeting impulòsive desires but still a nice thought) Mostly because there are a billion fountains, all of which spout the freshest and most tasty potable water. I liked drinking out of a lions mouth, that's enough to make me want to up and move. That and the cannoli I ate really took me to a new level in terms of food.
Anyway, Sophie and I made out way to the train station and got on our train. She fell asleep immediately and I took pictures of me smiling next to her drooling. Im excited because I took them on her camera which is film so she will have some funny surprises when she gets it developed. We left rome and the scenery got more and more lovely. Yellow and white and brick houses nestled in fields of wildflowers, herds of sheep in green pastures, turquoise water fields of sunflowers all saluting the sun, post-cards of tuscany, but better.
When we arrived in San Vincenzo I was really excited that I could see the shore from the train station, about half a mile away. The mamma of the farm that we were to stay at met us at the train station. I was a little nervous because her emails had been really curt, but I realized this is only because they pay for the internet by the second. She is the traditional, even stereotypical italian mamma. Big lady, jet black hair, melon breasts, thick untamed eyebrows, always laughing and smiling and whistling to herself, very affectionate, and an amazing cook. She took us to the farm and we were greeted by the sweetest skinny little german shepherd puppy named Cesere who loves to jump up on people and play frisbee, and a 9 year old and 13 year old, niccolo and tommaso. She brought the 5 kids out and introduced them all to us, it was very von trapp family, there are 5 of them in total. I asked where was the nearest place we could buy some food and she (ida, la mamma) laughed and went into the kitchen and returned with a loaf of bread she had baked that morning, gorgonzola, and a huge hunk of some other cheese, olive oil from their farm, and huge meaty tomatoes from their neighbors' farm. We feasted and then walked through the vineyards, through the sunflower fields, through a little stretch of forest.
After almost a half an hour of walking, we emerged from the forest right onto a small, empty, isolated beach at about 6 pm. Of course, we plunged in naked because we could. The mediterranean is so mild in every way. The 'waves' were lightly lapping against the shore and the temperature of the water felt like the same temperature as our skin, we could barely feel the water around us. I felt like I was drunk on the sunset and kept swimming towards it like a maniac, as if I would eventually catch up with it and bathe in it or drink it in. If we spoke it was only to reaffirm that we werent dreaming or to proclaim how amazing this was. I'm glad Sophie was there with me because my words cant really do it justice so I am glad someone else but me knows. We decided to go back there every day.
When the sun set behind Corsica, we got out and walked home. The air dried us pretty quickly, and we were walking fast because we were worried we were going to miss dinner. It was nine o clock at that point, and earlier that day when I asked Ida when dinner was, she laughed and said "una bella domanda" so I knew i shouldn't worry too much about time. When we got back at 945 the whole family was just sitting down. I am trying to not be vegetarian here, so i did not turn down the steak- it was really too much though. I masticated it like i was some kind of dinosaur and could only swallow half of it, the rest of it i spat out and gave to the puppy. Not that it wasn't good, i just needed to warm up to meat-eating before someone makes me eat a half a cow. We ate and drank and talked late into the night, and then i passed out instantly, exhausted from the sea and sun and steak.
This morning we woke at 645 to begin working. We made little cappuccinos, ate fresh baked bread with homemade cherry marmalade on the chairs outside, and went into the fields to plant some leeks! We spent 6 hours planting leeks, taking breaks every two hours or so to enjoy some of the fruit in the orchards. Peach trees dripping with peaches, apricots that tasted like nothing I have ever had. To those of you who do not like apricots, I wish you could taste these. They are very sweet and crunchy and BIG and tender. I am going to get some more later tonight.
I am sore from the leek planting. We planted 2440 leeks, and our little two fingers, our backs, and wrists all feel it. I have to say, i am not going to go into this too much, but i really understood all the woman\womb references to the earth in literature and poetry etc. after that.
When we were done we went into the rows of strawberries and picked and ate for quite some time. They are completely organic, but they seem almost radioactive. They are so small and brilliant, almost neon, they look like small little red-orange lightbulbs pretending to be strawberries. I have never seen a red like that. Never tasted a red like that! My fingers are stained red and now I am rubbing them all over the keys at the internet point in this cute little one-street beach town, while a impromptu jass band parades down the narrow, cobblestoned street.

Siamo arrivate!

Ciao!

I have maybe three minutes to write before we run to the train station and hop on a train to San Vincenzo. We are in rome right now. Sophie and I arrived last night after a long long journey of many noteworthy things. List form.

1o hours in the air to dusseldorf
2 FAT blonde german twin babies (Jonas and Titus) that i shamelessly laughed at for about an hour. THey were eating cereal like it was their job.
1 pair of very huge very brownish-red breasts that perfectly matched her brownish red EU passport
2 offensively bad soggy pasta dishes served on the plane
2 drinks before me and the german girl next to me got drunk and fell asleep
3 hour layover in dusseldorf
2 hour nap on the plane to rome
3 lovely welcome conversations from different sexy italian men (one who said "Welcome to the Rome!" which I liked)
1 tired but happy Sophie
2 cones of gelato (mango and strawberry, and rocher and stracciatella)
1 hostel mishap so we had to take a long walk to another hostel called Sleeping Beauty, which was really nice and has green shutters and a view of a lovely courtyard with plants and balconies and the buildings are all a nice yellow brown
40 fireworks!!!
2 amazing morning cappucinos
2 pizzas for lunch
1 cannoli yet to be eaten
1000000 cobblestones
80 degrees
1 confusing and exciting bank transaction
28 euros for 2 train tickets to San Vincenzo for our first farm!
1 free concert in the park

and we're off!