being serenaded with bob marley outside my dungeon window. i shall miss you, rome.

skills gained

-playing pool
-gutting fish
-pruning olive trees
-feeding animals
-collecting eggs
-fending off horny goats
-rolling cigarettes
-hitchhiking
-building volcanoes out of various materials
-speaking Italian
-speaking some Dutch
-drinking grappa for breakfast without grimacing
-how to braid a pony's tail
-driving tractors
-jumpstart a fiat
-corking and labelling wine by hand
-beer pong (unfortunately)
-slicing even tagliatelle
-cutting marble
-kill a chicken
-hunting wild asparagus
-carrying six bottles of wine at a time - three per hand
-making ricotta
-mowing lawns
-baking bread in woodfired oven
-using a forklift
-lighting bonfires
-serving meals to giant tables of hungry people
-cooking fresh artichokes
-the difference between pinzette and pancetta
-the words to "Can't Hurry Love" in Italian
-why the toilets have two flush buttons on them. I never knew why. Today I encountered a toilet that had the buttons labeled, 1 and 2. So now I know unless you want to advertise, just pick a button and be consistent.

but also i miss everyone too much and have a pending plane ticket. so, potentially, see you soon!

You probably all want an explanation.

Well it wasn't the first time I'd considered staying here in Italy, whether extending my trip or not having a flight booked home. But the past few days, staying at an amazing place with amazing people and continually hearing these enticing stories about people with expired visas and spontaneous itinerary changes.

I spent two days on walking tours which I swore I would never do with people who are now planning their weekend visits to Montreal for later this year. I'm wearing one of their jackets and shoes. I miss everyone at home so much but I'm already here you know?

Anyways, the hostel I'm at, one of the members of the bar staff and one of the tour group leaders had an overlapping birthday weekend and had closed off the downstairs for their private party. I was invited and had cake and kept hearing about how easy it was to get a job here and how they have a place I can stay.

Finally I said the magic words, "Why not?"

A round of applause, cheers, I stumble upstairs in tears to skype my dad and not only inform him I will not be landing tomorrow but essentially run the whole thing past him.

----------

Tomorrow when the offices are open I head to the airport to check in on my missed flight situation and then start the job thing.

I'm not at all one hundred percent certain. There were points today I was literally walking towards the train station to get on the bus to come home. But I'm here, I have minus one hundred dollars, I threw out all my clothes yesterday to make room for packing souvenirs, but I sincerely doubt I'll be regretting this.

St Peter's Basilica

TEAM WIN/e

Rome is, once again, just frustrating gorgeous. I remember once going on a trip with my family to some cutesy ol'-fashioned doily-ed cottagey region and by the end of it we were all nauseated by how goddamn QUAINT everything was. This is how it is in Europe. They can't help it.

I grab a coffee at the hostel bar and then wander off. My touristing days have taught me that you don't need a map, you can really just follow all the other groups of tourists and find all the biggest landmarks. In an afternoon I find the Colosseum, the Trevi Fountain, the Pantheon and I'm done.

I head down to the bar armed with my computer prepared to write a little update and google stuff about Gladiator to make it make sense, when the bartender who greeted me earlier spots me. "Paris!'
"No, um, Montreal..."
But there's a situation. It's pub quiz night and one of the teams needs their third member. I am pulled over to Team Win - two girls from the states. "Are you smart?" one asks.

Name three David Bowie albums. Recognize a movie still from North by Northwest. What medium is Frank Gehry known for. The other two girls are law students and we win by landslide. The prize - other than eternal glory - is a bottle of wine. "WHO WANTS A TASTE OF VICTORY?"

I get to speak to the people who work here and it's fascinating. Most of them were just like me, coming to Italy just for a crazy different thing to do and then a lot of them just ended up staying here. Some of them even have expired Visas to worry about but just don't care.

The night goes on and someone suggests we swing by the twenty four hour muffin shop down the street. How can I say no?

fontana trevi

oh hey angelina jolie

Johnny Depp and Angelina Jolie and their respective families are in Venice as we speak, filming for an upcoming movie. Today on the vaporetto I caught a glimpse of them shooting and this is my attempt at being paparazzi.

Venice

Venice is for lovers. It's such a beautiful romantic city, people seem surprised I am traveling alone. And you know what, for the first time here, I am getting that longing feeling, as I watch all the other touristy couples. I just wish I had someone, someone to scream at in public for getting us lost. Or someone to buy me a horrifically overpriced fugly mask and then take even fuglier photos of it in front of a random landmark. Or someone to help me struggle with the babystroller up over the millions of cobblestone bridges. Someone to keep shrugging everytime I asked them where they wanted to eat. Someone to give me loud, pompous and inaccurate historical information viewpoints on architecture during the sunset at St Marks. That's amore.

____________

Venice is like Disneyland, it's so touristy and unreal. The tall narrow streets look like an opera backdrop.

The locals have a name for me here. "PARIS HILTON!"

The hostel is magical and by magical I mean it took me a good hour to find it in the maze of streets, lugging my suitcase in the 30+ midday heat. I even had BACK SWEAT. But it's in a beautiful old Venetian building with terraces and chandeliers and all old original fixtures and a big pool table (billardo anyone?). Every night is like a slumber party as we all converge in the common area and sip cartons of grown up juice at cocktail hour and discuss conservative cultures, Gossip Girl, and recipes.

In the evenings we accidentally discover the nightlife. Walking past a restaurant one night the waiter calls us inside, "Here, you drink for free!" Well buenas noches. Prosecco, Campari, grappa. Here in Venice their local drink is Spritz. It's pretty lame. We meet the richest man in town on the way to the discotheque. Italians dance funny.

Today was beautiful. I managed to see the sunrise. Me and five other cheap travellers at the hostel decide to split a gondola ride six ways. We decide not to bargain, our only deciding factor was determining how hunky the gondolier was. Daniele has been in the business most of his life, and as we glide through the canals we pass by his younger brother and his father, also working the boats. I ask if I can try rowing us - after all I've been getting fully RIPPED in my months of farm work - but he says no.

From there I take the vaporetto to Murano, the glass island and get to watch a glass blowing demonstration. On the way back I hop out at the San Michele stop. The Island of the Dead is the cemetery of Venice, and has tons of old crumbly graves. I'm the only tourist I can see for a while and I'm not even sure if vistors are permitted so I catch the next vaporetto back to the island.
I walk past a wedding leaving a church- it must be a famous family because the piazza is blocked off by Italian swat teams. I pass through an alley of them and they applaud. I get lost and find a teeny piazza with some little kids playing soccer and I end up setting down my purse and getting creamed by them for nearly an hour.

Here are some creepy puppets. Culture.

florence

My final day of manual labour was yesterday. Today begins the brief part of my vacation that is actually vacation time.

I'm sharing a room with two Turkish girls who are very understanding and help talk me through justifying buying a dress even though everything here is ridiculously overpriced. You need to wear clothes, it's just like breathing, it's a necessary part of life.

Everything is just so beautiful. Europeans. They just make everything good. We have Mount Royal park, I've been to Central Park oh but Florence has the Boboli Gardens and YEAH OKAY WE GET IT EUROPE, you're fantastic and historic and beautiful, way to go.

I had originally planned to nonchalantly follow around tour groups at an inconspicious distance however technology has once again outsmarted us. They all wear little ear devices and the leader speaks quietly into some sort of magicphone that only THEY can hear.

Even though I refuse to ask for directions and ensure that I take out my camera only when nobody is looking, I still am somehow immediately recognized as a tourist by the extremely vocal locals. Thanks to my blonde hair and my new sunburn, they all call me "California."

"Do pigs bite?"

"No, no, Pato almost never bites."

"Oh, okay."

Pato: GRRUUMMMBLLEEEEE!???





p.s. yes i have gained seventeen pounds in two months.

animali

This is Paolo the peacock. He's lonely and trying to pick up the chicken in front of him. She's really not into it though.

This is Boing, Stella and Gianni, the mule, pony and donkey.


This is that same trollop of a chicken sharing banana peels with Pato the pig. Drama.....

fattoria didattica

What's really fun about this farm is that it's a fattoria didattica, which they say means a teaching farm. So it's like a school trip farm. Every other day we get a class of students ranging in ages from two to twelve come to see the animals, learn a little, make something like bread or cheese or candles and get yelled at by their psychotic teachers.

Federica runs the show and is fantastic. I've earned the role of her assistant. I prepare the espresso for the teachers, feed the mule so he stays still as she talks about him, use my shepherdess skills to keep the kids from straying, hold up the pig's feet so they can count the toes and translate various terms into French and English.

I'm pretty sure this makes ME the hunky farmhand. And the circle of life is complete.

I'm far from the hunky type though. Definitely more of the clumsy type. Yesterday going to take the slops to the pigs I fell flat on my back, and when setting up the benches in the classroom area I clipped two kids and broke a leg off one (of the benches.)

For some reason the kids seem to love me. Federica introduces me like a freakshow character - the girl all the way from CANADA who does not speak our language! Children are actually great to teach you a language. Unlike adults, they will not cut you any slack. No speaking slowly or using simple recognizable terms. They just repeat and repeat and repeat, louder and louder. For this I learned how to request a pink tiara on the drawing made of myself in a princess dress, and how to explain where chicken eggs come out of.

The kids are really fun to be around too. Most of them are city slickers like me, but unlike me are absolutely fearless. They begin charging towards the peacock the moment they spot it, grubby little fingers outstretched. Federica gets them to march in a circle chanting, 'PIOVE VAI, SOLE VIENI" on a potentially cloudy day and it's too cute for words. They're not quite sure what to make of me hanging around - I'm clearly not old enough to be their teacher but I'm definitely taller than them. The little Romeos hand me fistfuls of wild daises and rosemary.

It's also quite an honour to be finally included on the other side of these field trips. No longer one of the students, the adults enlist me as an ally.
Marco lingers behind to pet Olivia, one of the dogs, as the rest of the kids head over to the sheep. The teacher begins forcibly tugging on his arm.
"But I want to play with the dog!!" he wails.
"You can't right now!" she screeches.
"WHY?"
"Because it's her dog," she raises her eyebrows pointedly at me, "And she needs him right now."
I stand to attention. "Yes, sorry, it's my dog, and I really really need him. Right now."

Even by Italian mothers themselves I've been told it's not just a stereotype - they are truly one of a kind (read: suffocating, overbearing). Usually the kids here have their lunches and snacks provided by the school. So on field trip day the kids come stumbling off the bus with army rucksacks stuffed with panino after panino. The mothers who accompany the class on the trip keep their eight year old sons on their lap the entire time. Assuredly, none of them will leave home until at least thirty four.

As soon as the schoolbuses pull out, Federica locks the door on the classroom, refusing to let me clean up. She heads off to Pisa and I have my aperitivo and nearly fall asleep out in the late afternoon sun.

I found this pretty little plant outside my window. The leaves look like teeny little cuori, no?

One of the best things about working on the farm is that there's not much to be done on the rainy days. Woke up this morning to a thunderstorm, now I get to go back to bed to wait until it dies down.

forza forza

Today on the farm, I finished burning the olive branches fairly early in the day. I was surprised because I didn't think I was good at lighting fires. I had to convince my last "family" that it was a good thing that it took me forty five minutes, two newspapers, a wheelbarrow and a half of tinder and twenty three years of stubbornness to get the stove going. Nobody wants to marry a pyromaniac.

In the lazy hot afternoon I was getting twitchy. For some reason, all the stores in the little nearby town close on Wednesdays, so I couldn't even go get ingredients to bake anything. Finally, I decided to go to Pisa.

I washed my face, grabbed my camera and some euro and marched proudly down to the bus stop only to discover that also the outgoing buses were closed on Wednesdays. Having gone so far already (personal hygiene FOR NOTHING?) I decided that I would take the advice given to me that Europe was very accepting towards hitchikers and tried to autostop.
It took me a good hour to even get up the courage to stick out my thumb but the first time I spotted the first sexually-non-threatening driver and held out my hand - on my way to Pisa.

Upon arrival I managed to make some friends while having an aperitivo. They were genuine Italians and I convinced them they wanted to see the tower. The streets of Pisa are reminiscent of any large, touristy city, like Paris or New York, maybe even Montreal, on smaller scale of course, but the same overpriced convenience stores, stands on the streets selling 10 euro Chanel belts, people holding maps and being in the way. I managed to blend in, I think, thanks to my guides, Antonio and Guido (I'm not even kidding).

We find the tower and I ask them for the history lesson. "It's old."
"How old?"
"Older than that building next to it."


We peruse the pushy vendors and they buy me a bracelet. As I put it on I realize it's nearly time for the last bus back to Fauglia. I have to dash through the frustratingly narrow streets, nearly knocking over a family of three on their bike. I literally run out of my shoes and frantically grab them in my hand and continue barefoot. I'm sure some part of this day must be illegal and I keep trying to remember the useful phrases from my guidebook. "Posso avere un avvocato che parli inglese?" "Questo medicinale e per uso personale."

I run literally straight onto the bus and make it back in time to yell at the sheep until they go back in their stall. The peacock is on the roof ; I give up.

hee haw

My final moments in Mondaino were thank god much less tearful than before. This is because I am instructed to return as soon as possible - before I come back to Canada, and before my other predetermined trip in the fall. A few family members even hide in their rooms firmly stating this is NOT a goodbye.

I make it in one piece to my next location, Fauglia, which is a little town outside of Pisa. No I did not see the tower and I honestly don't plan to.

A beautiful farm wedged in the middle of this little town, it's a glorious old estate which they have been adding onto for about ten years. I get my very own apartment with a KING SIZE BED and there's sometimes working wifi and a better equipped kitchen than I could imagine. I follow Federica around in the morning to feed the animals. Goose eggs are giant. They have a pony, a mule and a donkey. The mule is named Boing. She opens the sheep gate and lights up a Camel and tells me to try leading them out to pasture. I summon up everything I learned from Babe (as you should in most life situations anyways) and eventually they mosey out to the field. They also have a peacock.

In the evening I eat some sort of white blossom off of a tree, breaded and fried and either dusted with sugar or eaten alongside onions. I still am not sure if this was some sort of initiation.

They have bees and produce their own honey, as well as olive oil and different dried herbs and spices. Oh, also I made cheese today, making bread tomorrow.

roughin it

lists

I am in the process of making two lists.
One = SKILLS GAINED
Two = INJURIES OBTAINED

This picture belongs on the latter list, obviously. Other entries include:

- numerous cuts on lower legs from being stupid and wearing shortpants
- blisters on fingers from wire work in the vineyard
- constant hangover from continual drinking
- broken heart due to hunky farmhand, chivalrous neighbourboys and the general male population of Italy
- bruises on forehead thanks to doorways being built so long ago when people were short
- mystery bug bite on stomach. maybe spider. probably tick.
- scorch mark on wrist from olive branch bonfire

Everyone keeps being super nice and saying I'm a good writer. I really don't think that's the case. Instead, it's that I'm blessed with all the amazing subject matter. If I were at home writing about Starbucksing and complaining about the weather, I don't think it would be as entertaining.

-----------------

Also I hear Julia Roberts is coming out with a movie about my travels. eat pray love or whatever. Bitch.

Labour Day Dinner Night

The Italians - among several other countries and cultures - celebrate their Labour Day not in September but on the first of May. It's a big deal, everything shuts down for three days solid. The Friday evening prior, everyone goes Y2K-styles mental buying up the last of the milk and bread in the stores.

Emiliano and Basil crack their first beers at eleven thirty in the morning to begin the food preparations. After they break for lunch, Victoria and I steal a portion of the kitchen table to make bread and a pie, respectively. The little girls of the family friends from Holland come in and recite in perfect English their list of names for the baby bunnies.

Out in the yard Phelan is constructing a volcano.
It's made up of grass, twigs, wire, fabric, flowers. There is to be aluminum airplanes suspended around it. Rolf is googling ways to create smoke or fire without igniting the entire thing. The boys take the two little girls out for gelato while they pick up more beers and this time they let me have one too (Yes because I complained for not being taken out for gelato and was jealous).

As is gets later we set the table out on the deck, scattering a bagful of IKEA tealights around. Everyone rotates running inside and getting sweaters. I can't. I made the cocky foolish mistake earlier in the evening of saying, "Pfft, of course I'm not cold, I'm CANADIAN" and have to mask my shivers as tremors of pleasure from the delicious house wine.

The girls from Holland fight over putting on Michael Jackson or the soundtrack from Grease, the final guest arrives and the boys bring out the food.

Again, the Italians fooled me. I was thinking after the two rounds of bruschetta and insalata a mare and pasta, we was all done. Oh no, Fresh fish off the grill, three different types, risotto con asperigi, vongole. They don't let you serve yourself either. Even when I politely mime vomiting as they as if I want more, I receive more.

I bring out espresso and the pie and the fresh plates and forks. They all eat with their fingers anyways. There is a hilarious conversation involving another language mixup between massages and sausages. Between eight adults we finish fourteen bottles of wine and then they break out the mead.

I triumphantly remain one of the three last men standing and we pile up the dishes and whipser in the kitchen. Over the last sips of wine we talk about the big festa in October when I have been instructed to return. I escort the two gentlemen to their cars and watch the sun rise over the hills, the family's greyhound and pointer circling my feet attentively. Time to feed the chickens.

mating season

So if I was a smart person, I would have done some research before coming here and maybe I would have discovered that I was arriving to a farm during prime mating season. Oh yes, the birds and the bees and the chickens and the goats and the ducks...

This could also explain the onslaught of overamorous neighbour boys coming past the house on the daily, courting me with everything from promises of homemade tortellini farci con funghi porcini to cigarettes and beer. I don't mean to sound conceited. Really, I even find myself head over heels twitterpated every time I'm greeted with, "Ciao, bella." (Which is what everyone says, to everyone.)

Back to the farm. One of the rabbit families had grown too big for its hutch so we moved them into a larger wire cage. I was cleaning out their old hutch when Suzie said thoughtfully, "I think she's ready to be pregnant again."
I watched, frozen in horror and alarm as she lifted up Momma Rabbit by the ears and dropped her into Daddy Rabbit's hutch. No lobster dinner, no candles and music, not even the classic, "hey, uh, you wanna come upstairs and watch a dvd?" I was too disturbed to peel my eyes away but I wish I had. Suzie watches patiently and explains she prefers them to at least try three times.
Momma Rabbit is unceremoniously moved back to her hutch. I quickly run and cut up as much fresh grass and thistle for the poor woman and then exit the scene asap.


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The next apartment I will be living in doesn't have internet access like it does here, so this coming week I probably won't have much opportunity to email and update.

just somo fotos

bravo brava bravissimo

italian metal hair band.

I am invited to a concert in Cattolica. In the car on the way over with Vivi and her boyfriend and brothers:
"ElisabetTH." Vivi's boyfriend is very proud of his pronounciation of my name.
"Si?"
"You will be in love with gwitar player. All girls love him. He is playboy."

They learned their songs in English but phonetically. As soon as I walked in the bar the lead singer grabbed my purse and swung it around his neck like a hula hoop. Throughout the evening I had people asking me, "Did they say that right? What did they just say?"
"Um... fires of hell?"

We make plans for their North American tour. I may have offered up several of your couches for them to crash on along their travels. Hope that's alright. Just watch out for that shirtless guitarist, he's a heartbreaker.

thats amore

I get a chance to work in the vineyard yesterday, weeding and cleaning around the plants. There so many amazing things in nature. They grow salvia (sage) around the grapevines to disinfect them from various fungi. They also grow rosebushes at the top of each row, which happen to be susceptible to a different sort of disease the grapevines are are prone to too - however the rose bushes are more sensitive to it and will show the first signs long before the disease has deeply spread amongst the grapevines. Like a little alarm system.

After this one of their friends took me out to Urbino. I think this is a famous city. It's populated by mainly art school students. We sit in the piazza and have a conversation that is part Italian, part French, part English and part mime. I am told the pizza place we go to is the best in Italy. I have already learned by now that every pizza place is apparently the best place in Italy. After a sip of grappa I head back to the farm. Since the city is so full of students, there is a curfew in place by the abbhored carabineiri, and as we drive away all the lights in the windows are out.

------------------------------

Today Suzie and I work in the olive trees. For once, I find something I am surprisingly good at. I have to climb up the middle of the trees with a handsaw and prune the branches, starting from the clustered centres and eventually balancing on the outer branches and thinning out the newer sprouting twigs. I took this photo of Suzie gathering the discards while you can kind of see my shadow - that's my foot dangling. Another one of their neighbours came by walking his dog to see if I would like to go for a walk.

------------------------

Also I am apparently a muse. This is only one of a series. I sat still for half an hour not expecting to see such remarkable results.

I'm feeling fantastic out here. I can't wait to come back and share all the things I forget to write down. It's been beyond belief how much good it has done to be completely removed from a situation and exist in essentially the entire opposite. I've even stopped mentally adding "TAKE THAT" to the end of every new amazing fact or occurrance or skill I've acquired when taking a mental catalogue.

Another one of their friends is cooking dinner sometime this week for the manager of the men's Italian soccer team and said he would bring me along. (At least this is what I gathered. I pretty much heard the words 'Italian Men's Soccer Team' and started nodding and stopped listening.)

At the same time I love to think, "HOW, SIR, DO YOU LIKE THEM APPLES."

outdoor shower

This is the outdoor shower. It's all set with handmade mosaics. Below is the view from when you are taking your shower.

The view is obviously much more panoramic than that. They just built that deck last month and in a matter of days the vines will really start growing and create a canopy above it. Soon we'll have dinners out there. This Friday their good friend from Holland is coming and there is to be a festa with a big barbeque.

After a long day in the sweltering hot weather weeding and hoeing and building a hut for the baby ducks, it's beyond incredible to take a shower outside and hear the sheeps honking (trust me) and the sun going down and the neighbour strolling past with their dog...

i hope this picture isn't too PG 13 or anything, i thought it was alright. if you are offended i am sorry and can take it down.

another evening out, i'm on a continous buzz in this country. italians - europeans - or maybe just the people i've been meeting are as fantastic as people say they are. they love life, they love their friends and they love to be loud. after incredible pizza at a massive restaurant with three of the most coked out playboy waiters i have ever experienced (got a phone number from one, one sat on my lap, one tried to goodnight kiss with tongue) we meet up for beers on the same terrace as before. I ask Iris to coach me a few words in Italian and raise my glass and say YOU ARE THE BEST PEOPLE EVER. The entire terrace erupts in cheers and it's like a season finale or something as they all attempt to sing the Canadian national anthem in my honour.

mondaino

it is literally perfect here.

I spend a rainy morning in the family's cantina with Phelan (the father) helping stack the wine downstairs in the cellar. The building was built in the 13th century, with the most recent renovations done in the 17th century, complete with the cane roofing with plaster applied ontop. Their wines are fantastic - they all prefer the white which leaves plenty of red for me. In the car ride back to the farm he puts on a cd and is pleased to bits that I not only recognize but adore Van Morrison.

Suzie cooks a fabulous dinner and we all drink and eat and talk, drifting into the living room afterwards to continue sharing stories about our families. Iris asks if I'd like to go out. We head out on the town of Mondaino to the piazza and have espresso con sambucca. Their son Basil joins a bit later and I get to meet all their friends including the town crazmo. Endless beers and everyone rolls their own cigarettes. Some people understand French so I can talk about more than just the days of the week, SCORE.

One of their friends wins big on the slot machine, buys a case of beer and we all head over to his apartment down the lane. About a dozen amazing people around the table, someone breaks out grissini and marinated aubergine and pomodori secchi and Stevie Wonder on the stereo. There is a trapeze but I decline. Iris parts a bit earlier but I stay on with Basil. The friend breaks out the dregs of his liquor cabinet and we demolish it. We end up trekking all the way back home to the farm literally in time for me to feed the chickens.

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Today Basil and Iris take me out wild asparagi hunting. They have trained eagle eyes and are surefooted as billy goats out in the forest. I discover I am pure crap at it. I manage to get tangled up in the bush, stabbed by a rogue porcupine quill and positively drenched in the rain but find six straggly stalks. "Look guys!" I come stumbling over to where they wait at the sheep enclosure. They turn to face me, their arms overflowing with bushels of asparagus and laugh goodnaturedly.

I clean myself up and come upstairs to see Basil and Phelan making tagliatelle and taglialini. Basil informs me one of his friends from last night called several times and wants to cook dinner for me tonight.

My last morning at the Basile farm was very embarassing. I was trying to distract myself by re-debriefing the next girl on how to put things in the dishwasher and my voice kept cracking. I brought my bags downstairs and then Yellow by Coldplay came on the radio and I started to get watery eyes, and then the hunky farmhand showed up at the door and the waterworks began. I couldn't even speak. My heart was broken when little Fede refused to give me a kiss goodbye.

So then it was a bus to Paganico, another bus to Grosseto, and then the trainfest.

hey guys. i miss you. how are things going back home? what's new? hey um HOW COME NOBODY TOLD ME THERE WAS A VOLCANO?? I only listen to the radio station that plays prank calls here in Italy, so I didn't hear anything about it, I guess the family assumed I knew. But I didn't, and then proceeded to look like a complete tool while travelling to my next farm.

The first train of what COULD have been a smooth six hour, three connection trip, was delayed two hours. A large line was gathering at the ticket counter. As I waited the sign clicked again and now it was two hours and forty minutes. I asked the lady ahead of me if they often had delays like this. She said, "No, no, this is because of the volcano." I laughed hysterically. "Always the volcano right when you need to hurry, eh?"

So I spent fourteen hours in transit. Waiting and sitting on the trains all day long made me grumpy and lethargic. I had phoned the lady for the next farm ahead of time and informed her of the delays. She told me her daughter would be downtown studying and would come get me. I tried to stand around waiting and looking cool outside the train station when two girls about my age came running over. "Liza?" Close enough.

Iris is a year ahead of me, and although her parents were born in England she and her brother were born here in Italy and speak perfectly fluent Italian and perfectly fluent English with adorable British accents. She asks if I feel like maybe grabbing something to eat. Within minutes they take me to an amazing terrace right in the centre of the beachside town, where they both work and therefore know everyone there. Big juicy beers, something that I call quesadilla but they have a different name for here, and tons of really hilarious friends. I have more great conversations naming the days of the week and different types of alcohol. We stay until the bar closes and then scooch our chairs and table outside to continue on until the wee hours of the morning.

I couldn't appreciate the farm as I stumbled in last night but this morning it was incredible waking up and having no clue how I landed in the middle of a movie set. I swear, this place is breathtaking. When you envision a British family starting a farm in Italy you have these romantic ideas about bright colourful houses and lots of animals lounging around and vines everywhere and this is it. The parents Suzie and Phelan are both artists as well so it's even more surreal with an outdoor Roman bath laid with handmade mosaic overlooking the freshly built wooden deck.

Here I feed the animals. Yes, it was as disastrous as you can imagine. The goats got frisky and Suzie ended up having to beat them away with a stick. The sheep. Jesus.

"Watch that one," Suzie is watching me from a distance, "He gets a bit biffy."

Mr 'Biffy' isn't pleased with the speed I try to scatter their food and I learn about his namesake firsthand.

The chicken stink and I am afraid of their giant momma rabbit who is VERY protective of her children. I can't stop laughing at the ducks and the pigs are actually the least frightening for now. One of their three dogs and one of their two cats are very friendly and fight to climb on my lap whenever I sit down.

I can't believe it's only been a month ago I left.

principina de mare

il nite

Spending so much time out in the sun working in shortpants and worksocks, I had developed a glaringly obvious lower shin to knee tanline. They call it my "Canadian socks" cause my feet are so white. Nonetheless, I can't really go out without wearing a dress. On the drive into town we spot a deer - two points! But nearly hit a wild rabbit. Minus one.

Cinigiano has a BAR and a PUB. The pub has draft beer but the bar has a pool table. The locals are disappointingly unfazed by my presence. I stand out not as an exotic foreigner but the way anyone in a town of 300 stands out if they aren't directly related to someone. After nearly a month here even I can recognize people and ask the bartender how his daughter is doing at school. It's really cosy.

Everyone wears leather jackets and chainsmokes weak cigarettes. I would tell you what the price of a beer is but apparently it's an affront to the manhood of the male accompanying you if you pay for your own. Maybe I didn't start up any feminist arguments there.

Two rounds at the bar and two rounds at the pub and next thing you know we've got a Romanian, an Albanian, an Italian and a Canadian in a Mercedes going to Grosetto ("...and then the bartender says, you can't put your monkey there!") Grosetto is the nearest big city. In this nice weather in the evenings everyone is outside smoking and kind of being douchebags cause they stand in the middle of the sidewalks. Il nite (the nightclub) doesn't look too tempting I guess so we go to the bowling alley, obviously. And play pool, obviously.

I've played more pool in the past three weeks than I have in my whole life and I'm actually getting not bad at it. I even won a few rounds. I went around saying what I thought meant "I am the ultimate pool player!" but 'ultimo' actually means 'last.'

The bathrooms are a great obstacle course. They are different and therefore WEIRD and WRONG. A beautiful showroom of various porcelain fixtures. We get the age old paradox - is it a toilet, bidet, urinal or sink? (Why do Europeans adore buttwashing so much? Bidets everywhere.) At this point I have definitely peed in probably a sink or a bidet and I don't want to know where I washed my hands.

At the end of the night I seem to have mistaken my birra for Linguistic Skills Serum and begin speaking "fluent" Italian with my amici. Pointing out the colour of people's shirts, naming different types of sauces, you know, current events.

I leave here this Wednesday for a farm outside of Bologna, something involving pottery I think. After that I go to Pisa, on a farm that has MINI PIGS.

retractions & policemens

just a little quick note.

Reading over these I am so ashamed of the grammar/spelling errors, the general way it's written. I am usually the obnoxious friend who chuckles condescendingly as she pulls out her red pen for everything from legal documents to handmade get-well cards.

So I just wanted to clear up. Language barrier or not, I am not usually this poor a speller. I literally have mere seconds at a time in between stuffing my face with cheese and being the worst ambassador ever to try to get the internets working.


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Today in la cantina (the winery) we were bottling and labelling for a big shipment. While we were there, the cabineiri showed up. This is like the police I think. This elderly pink faced man came in, very neatly groomed and tons of medals and stripes pinned to his coat, complete with tasseled epaulets. He discussed something very briefly and seriously with my 'boss' and then saw me. He asked my boss who the strange beautiful* young lady was, clumsily cleaning corks. My boss tried to explain the exchange program but the old man stopped listening past "Canadian."
"Eh...TORONTO!He said excitedly. "CALGARY! Cities." He looked like a proud little kid handing you wilted dandelions. I nodded. Yes, those are in Canada.

It turns out the reason he came by was because a strange car was seen driving down the road earlier that day. Welcome to Cinigiano , population 300.



* i definitely heard and understood the word bella. and i only mention it because i take compliments where ever i can get them.

No biggie...

but sometimes they let me take a spin in the family lanborghini.

oh yes.

ohhhh yessss.

that's mario warmin' it up for me.

holla.