Fruit Groves & Italian Lessons in the Fields. Italy at its finest!

Italy was awesome! And so not a typical "Italy" vacation...which is why I loved it. Instead, I chose to take a bit of an "off-the-beaten path" approach and spend all my time on an organic farm, learning Italian, relaxing, eating wholesome, fantastic meals straight from the garden, and sleeping in a tent. Italy, huh? Yep, you got it.

My first day in port, I took the train to Rome and spent the whole day seeing it again. I was lucky to have lived in Italy one summer in college & backpacked through again several years later, so all of the big sightseeing spots were covered. I did, however, aim to seem them again with more "mature" eyes, so a day was spent seeing as much as my 2 feet allowed. We covered the city from one end to the other, which was nice. Now I feel fully refreshed w/ Rome and Mom can be happy that I "enjoyed the sights" as her email instructed me to do.

It was so fun to meet up w/ an old friend, Giovanni, and after 9 years of not seeing him! We met years ago in Pisa and have kept in touch since. 9 years melted away instantaneously as we spent about 2 hrs. wandering around the Colosseum and eating gelato together. I dearly love old friends!

Rome is always amazing to me, but I was ready to go the next morning. Casey & I were up early to catch a couple of trains to the small town called Sora, where our farm stay was located.

We got there and I felt like I immediately shifted into "Stephanie" gear.
We camped out in the fruit groves, under a plum tree that we ate off of everyday, played w/ donkeys, rabbits, and pigs. The family spoke very little English, which was awesome b/c as we worked in the fields with Giuseppe, we had our own impromptu Italian lessons. There was lots of relaxing, reading, late night vino sessions, and wonderful food.

Several other volunteers were working there for long stints and had a rhythm of their own that we fell into. Our first night, we had a party under the moon at a 300 yr old farmhouse w/ no electricity . 2 Austrian guys are living there to start a farm of their own. They totally live off the land w/ the natural rhythms of the sun/moon to guide their day. Showers constructed of bamboo and handmade clay ovens are just 2 cool ways they make an old farmhouse in the Italian countryside work for them. (needless to say, I'm equally impressed & jealous.)

I spent 3 nights on this farm and loved it all. I worked in the fields, drank amazing hand pressed family wine & spumoni (sparkling wine) from the grapes in their fields, visited with a local cheese monger and got a huge hunk of his fresh goat's cheese, went running in the countryside, enjoyed lingering Italian meals in the night and basically got my groove back.

Here is Casey's version of our story.

While working on the ship is fantastic, coming back from 4 days of at the farm was really overwhelming for me. 750 students plus gobs of faculty/staff that wanted to know details of our time, repeating story after story, listening to everyone's travel tails, I was
spent by 10:00. As Dad always says, " I was out of words"! I had to put off
telling many of my stories until the next day b/c I was exhausted from just
the interaction required for so many people! ha. Unexpected but so real at the time.

Speaking of stories:
When I got off the train in Naples and was catching a bus from the station to the port, I was pick-pocketed. (Naples is notorious for this!) Now...I would like to consider myself a pretty apt traveler. I feel like I'm always in control and never would be susceptible to such mishap, but I was. It was on a crowded bus and shady Italian men were crowded all around me. I had my hand tightly on my purse and for 2.2 seconds reached to give the bus driver directions to the boat, reached back and my purse was unzipped. It all happened rather quickly and before I knew it, the bus doors were closing and a man stepped off right at that time. Without consciously deciding to do so, I pulled the doors apart and chased after him. I pushed him and hit him w/ a bag of cereal boxes and drew attention to us. After a bit more pushing and me yelling "Give it back", he threw it at me and walked off. I won! and got my wallet back, plus debit card, which I was the most worried about.

I was very proud of myself and now feel like I can put "Can defend myself from being pick-pocketed" on my resume!

Croatia is next!!