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
Saturday, July 25, 2009
Thursday, July 23, 2009
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.
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.
Thursday, July 9, 2009
Broke
Perugia, Umbria, Italia (city with a big chocolate factory!)
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.
Wednesday, July 8, 2009
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.
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.
Saturday, July 4, 2009
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.
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.
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