Keeping cool in Bologna

So now I'm in Bologna.  The month in Sicily with Libera Terra ended yesterday, and, after collecting last bits of research, packing up my stuff, reminding my housemates that if they want the basil plant to live they need to water it, and saying goodbye to everyone and their mother (literally: Leo called his mother on his cell phone so that I could say goodbye to her, too), I flew out of Palermo and up to Bologna.

Here I'm staying in a B&B and rambling around the city in a low-key, relaxed sort of way.  The tourist office gives out not only free maps, but an EXCELLENT (and also free!) guide book with descriptions of different themed walking tours, including one on green spaces.  So I took a long walk around to see the Parco della Montagnola, the Orto Botanico (botanic garden!), and the Giardini Margherita.   Along the way I ran into a book sale, where I very firmly reminded myself that I Do Not Need Another Book to Carry Home with Me before buying one anyway (Cosimicomiche, a book of physics/science-inspired, whimsical, clever short fiction by Italo Calvino, an author I really like.  Totally worth having to find room for it in my suitcase).  And then I passed a farmer's market and asked for a peach to eat right away--it was delicious, and the man cheerfully refused to let me pay him for it.  So I munched on it as I wandered up into Parco della Montagnola, where I sat on a bench by a fountain and read my book for a while.  The statuary around the fountain was a little puzzling.  There were a pair of lounging mermaids (not the usual delicate sort--if Athena were a mermaid, she would look like these),

a lion who was maybe supposed to look fierce (but mostly looked startled) crouched over a dead ox, another pair of lounging mermaids, another lion with a serpent twined around it, crouched over a dead horse, and, in the middle of the pond: three stone turtles.  I'm sure there must be some kind very profound symbolism there.  Or something.  There was also some excellent graffiitti:

I  had a conversation with an elderly Italian man who came by on his daily walk through the park.  He  used to be a doctor, and spent time in both France and California.  At the moment he's lonely because his daughter and grandkids are off at the beach and he has no one to talk to.  He called me Emilia, thanked me profusely for letting him share the bench and talk for a while, and said goodbye (complete with handshakes and cheek kisses and thankyous and have a good rest of the day) at least three times over the course of the conversation before he actually got up and left.

A little while later I walked about ten minutes down the road to the botanic garden of the University of Bologna, which was lovely, and took some pictures:

sat in the shade there for a while, as it was by then getting to be nearly midday and HOT.  And after that I walked across town, admiring (and appreciating) the portici that shade nearly all of the sidewalks in Bologna:

and on to the Giardini Margherita, where I had lunch at a little table overlooking a pond full of more (live!) turtles than I have ever seen in one place before.  And then, since it was still hot and humid, I spent most of the afternoon stretched out on the grass in the shade, napping and reading and flicking the occasional ant off the back of my neck.  There was even a bit of a breeze.  And then I took a leisurely walk back, and a shower.

I like Bologna a lot.  It feels very modern and active, full of rasta-haired, crunchy-granola university students, public parks, free concerts/movies in piazzas, and differentiated trash/recycling.

Tomorrow evening I'll be taking a bus overnight from here to Taize, the international monastery in France, where I'll spend a week before heading home via Florence.  Not B&B home.  Not apartment in San Giuseppe home.  Not Florence home.  Home home.  Really home.  Makes me smile just thinking about it.  : D

Under the sea

Ned, Joel (my two housemates), Nadia (one of our good friends at the office), Michele (mee-KELL-eh, Nadia’s boyfriend), and Mic (a friend of theirs from France whose name I never quite caught) and I spent last weekend on Ustica, a small island just north of Palermo, mostly famous among scuba divers.  Nadia knew of a small house to rent, complete with terazza, porch swing, and view of the sea:

Ned, Joel and I spent Saturday in Palermo, and met up with the others in the evening to take the hour-long boat ride out to the island, where we walked up lots of steps and hills and out into the “countryside” of the island (mind you, this was maybe a 15 minute walk tops, and that was because we ran into people they knew on the way) to our house and made dinner all together.  On Sunday morning we (minus Mic, who had a broken arm and went for a walk to the water instead) went to do immersione (“immersion”, ie, scuba diving!).  We went out on a boat with lots of other scuba divers.  Here is the scuba diving spot where the boat dropped anchor:

Joel, Nadia, and Michele all have scuba diving licenses, so they went out on an underwater guided tour sort of a thing.  Ned and I both had what is called a battesimo (a “baptism”).  This is something they do for people who are curious about diving but haven’t taken any lessons.  It isn’t even so much a first lesson in scuba diving as it is a way to experience it without needing to understand how it works.  After a brief introduction to underwater hand signals (everything’s okay!  something’s wrong. my ears/head hurts. I’m anxious. let’s go up/down,  and so on) and an explanation of what you’ll be doing, they help you put on all the scuba gear (wet suit, scuba boots, flippers, scuba mask, a belt with counterweights to keep you from constantly floating back up to the surface, and a vest that has the oxygen tank and other complicated bits of equipment).

Then you have your own personal guide who, after helping you get used to the sensation of being underwater and breathing, takes you around on a mini-tour of about 15-20 minutes about 7-8 meters (about 20-25 feet) under water (for comparison, Nadia, Michele and Joel, after the first-level course, have licenses for up to 20 meters, although guides occasionally take them as deep as 30).  Your guide holds onto the back of your scuba equipment (like a kitten), and takes care of steering, depth, and all the monitoring and adjusting of equipment along the way.  All you have to do is:

1. Breathe
2. Compensate (this is scuba diver vocabulary for release the pressure in your ears when it starts to build up, just like you do on an airplane)

You can also kick your flippers a bit, which comes naturally anyway.

It was awesome.

Point number 1 (breathing) doesn’t come quite as naturally as you would think.  The air from the tank is what they call on demand: meaning that there isn’t a bubble of air in front of your mouth; there’s a tube you hold in your mouth, and when you breath in, the air is there for you, but it’s ever-so-slightly more work than normal breathing.  It’s also drier than ordinary air.  You have to learn to take long, deep, calm breaths (which, incidentally, also helps to keep you calm underwater).  I found that I actually had to occasionally remind myself that I could breath.  It’s counter-intuitive when you’re underwater, and you start holding your breath without realizing it.

Initially, at the surface of the water, everything felt bulky and heavy and I hadn’t quite figured out an efficient way to tread water while wearing flippers and wound up doing a lot of unhelpful thrashing, but as soon as we got underwater, everything got a whole lot easier.  It was fun.  I saw a scarlet sea star, and a giant school of tiny little neon blue/purple fish, and some jellyfish, and lots of rocks and seaweed and assorted other fish of various sizes and colors.  There was an odd sort of detachment that I didn’t expect, because of the scuba mask and the way you move slowly (because every movement is amplified underwater, especially when you’re wearing flippers), and you swim with just your flippers, not your hands, which stay folded in front of you (except when trying to touch a fish, which inevitably doesn’t work, but is hard to resist).  It’s not like standing suspended underwater and moving wherever you like—you stay more or less prone, and mostly look at the sea floor or ahead of you, which meant that, visually at least, I wasn’t really aware of how far under water we were unless I made an effort to look up.  I don’t think I’ll take up scuba diving as a hobby, but I’m really glad I went.  It was very cool.  I don’t have any pictures of me in scuba gear, but I do have pictures of Ned:

I looked more or less the same, except smaller, and I think my flippers might have been a different color.

They dropped us back on land for lunch, and in the afternoon I read in the shade and went for a walk down to a swimming spot with sunny rocks to lounge on.  There was also a prehistoric village nearby.

After dinner we watched the final game of the soccer world cup at a bar near our house, and Monday morning we took a early boat back to Palermo.

Flashback

I was digging through old files on my computer today, and found this fragment, from back in October of this year (last year, I guess it is at this point).  I think I meant to post it here as part of something longer and never got around to writing the rest of it.  But it made me laugh, so I shall post it as is:

~ ~ ~

Today we were on the bus on the way home from class, and we saw a man walk by with the top half of a (naked, life-size) female clothing dummy (like a giant Barbie) tucked under his arm.  And then not long after, here comes another man with the other half (a pair of legs).  So that was interesting.  Sadly, none of us had a camera handy.

Speaking of Italian...

I have apparently acquired a Florentine accent.

I can’t actually hear it, but at least five different people in the last month (the guy at the bus station in Modena, various people at Ca’ Penelope in Maranello, the signora in the apartment below us here in San Giuseppe Jato) have told me so, and the Tuscan journalist who was here doing an article on Libera Terra a few days ago said, (within ten minutes of meeting me, without any prompting, and I swear I hadn’t mentioned it yet) “So, you studied in Florence then?”

In a country where people habitually spend the first five minutes of any conversation working out where you grew up based on your accent, it means, in some sense, that I am officially “from” Florence.  I couldn’t be more proud.

And then, to keep me humble, there is Micciché, who goes into gales of (good-natured) laughter whenever I attempt to “speak” Sicilian, and who told me this morning that I am the official American representative of the group, since I am the only one of the three resident American students who still has a bit of an American accent.  Granted, this is not an entirely fair comparison, as Ned spent a year in high school and two years college in Bologna, taking all of his classes at the university.  In fact, the first time I talked to him on the phone, I thought he WAS Italian, despite the fact that I knew he was American.

In other news, after nearly a year of living in Italy, I am happy to report that I can finally reliably remember the difference between the following (bear in mind that the difference in pronunciation between l and gl in the middle of a word is subtle):

- table (tavolo)

- little table (tavolino)

- tablecloth (tovaglia)

- napkin (tovagliolo)

Part of the problem (aside from the way table can actually be either masculine or feminine depending on the context, as well as  all the tavo vs. tova, and the fact that napkin sounds like tablecloth but is a different gender) was that I always thought napkin ought to be la tovaglina, [the little tablecloth] which, alas, it isn’t.  But at least, given a few moments to think, I no longer ask someone to please pass me the tablecloth.

Not to worry, however, since I continue to entertain everyone with occasional lingual mishaps.  Yesterday Francesco was explaining to us the process that turns the grain the co-ops harvest into a package of pasta.  This involves a pastificio (a pasta making factory).  Wanting to make sure I had the system down right, I asked, “So, Libera Terra Mediterraneo buys the grain from the co-ops, and then sends it to the pasticceria [pastry shop] to be made into pasta?”

And on Saturday morning I asked Micciché if “these eggs [uova] were a different kind than the others we’d been working with?”.  This made him chuckle, as we were standing in a field of grapes [uva].

This field of grapes (aka vigneto, vineyard), actually:

It's Micciché's vineyard, and we spent Saturday morning (from about 6 am until noon) helping him with the "green harvest", which means pulling/pruning off all of the grapes before they're ready.  The cantine (where wine is made) can't handle all the grapes grown every year, which means that after a while they close, and won't buy any more.  However, the government will pay a certain number of farmers to pull all the grapes off anyway and leave them on the ground, if they can't be sold to the cantina.  We spent a good bit of the morning (and lunch afterwards) getting Micciché to (re)explain (for the umpteenth time) the logic of this, since it doesn't seem to be about the health of the vineyard, although that might be a factor.  And still don't really understand.  Will get back to you if we figure it out, although Micciché's conclusion seems to be that it's just una politica sbagliata (which loosely translates as dumb politics).  But, hey, if the government is willing to pay him for it, he is willing to pull off all the grapes.

While we're at it, here's the view from Micciché's vineyard:

And, lastly, Ned, Micciché and Joel in the vineyard:

A Room with a View

[From Saturday]

Well.  That was exciting.

But first, some background.  I am currently in Sicily, in a small town called San Giuseppe Jato, just outside of Palermo.  I’m working with Libera Terra, learning how they use land and sustainable farming as a tool in the struggle against the Mafia.  There was a law passed relatively recently in Italy which requires all land confiscated by the government from Mafia members, if not needed for government purposes (fire stations, government offices, and the like), to be used for the public good: things like parks, volunteer group headquarters, drug rehabilitation programs, and cooperatives.  The Libera Terra cooperatives are one such program, using the land for organic agriculture to produce pasta, wine, olive oil, preserves, and a whole lot more (all sold under the Libera Terra logo throughout Italy, and I think also abroad).  At the same time, and just as importantly, the process also provides jobs in areas where reliable work is difficult to find, and rehabilitates land that has often been completely abandoned since it was confiscated, making it productive and attractive again.  Libera Terra literally means “Free Earth” (free in the sense of “liberated”) and the idea is that these farms (and the brave, stubborn, hard-working members of the cooperatives who run them) go beyond simply taking away resources from the Mafia: they contribute in a positive, concrete way to the communities around them.  They are powerful, working examples of an alternative economy to that dominated by the Mafia.

I’ll be spending a month here: the first half in the Libera Terra office doing research on the program and its history, the second half in the fields getting my hands dirty and getting to know the people who work and volunteer there.  I’m sharing an apartment with two other Italian-speaking American students: Ned, who’s writing his thesis on Libera Terra, and Joel, who will be arriving shortly to do we’re not quite sure what—photography, and maybe some journalism?  We’re up on a third floor (that’s actually the fourth floor, by American numbering), in this enormous, endearing, not-quite-fully renovated, rambling apartment with balconies on both ends and a spectacular panorama.  Here is the view from our front balcony (click to enlarge):

You will understand why we’ve been eating outside on the balcony whenever possible.
And here is my room:

And the view out my window:

But I was going to tell you about today.  Today was laundry day (by hand, as we don’t have a washing machine but do have a nice assortment of sinks on the balcony).  I washed my clothes in the morning, rigged up a clothesline out on the back balcony, and then went for a walk in the afternoon.  As I got back to the apartment building, I got a call from Ned, who had managed to lock himself out on the back balcony while hanging out his laundry (wind blew the door shut).  This meant I was also locked out, as I’d left the key with him.  We only have one set of keys at the moment, so we’ve taken to leaving them in the lock on the inside of the door, and the last person out takes the keys too.  I rang the bell for our downstairs neighbors (Salvatore’s brother and family), to see if they had a copy of the key.  They didn’t, but could at least let me in the front door of the building.

Meanwhile, Ned called Micciché, who was on his way to Palermo, but turned around to come rescue us.  So there we were: Ned sitting out on the back balcony with the laundry, me sitting in the stairwell outside our front door.  I attempted to pick the lock with my hairclip, which would have been cool if it worked, but, alas, didn’t.  My international student ID card, a 5-euro-cent coin and a pen were equally unsuccessful.  So I sat on the landing and listened to Ned trying to get the balcony door open using various tools and advice passed up to him from the balcony below.  This seemed to involve a lot of banging.  I found out afterwards that he was using a rubber mallet to wedge a block of wood between the two doors enough to get his hand inside—but the door handle turned out to be jammed, and the block of wood managed to put enough pressure on the door in such a way that the glass cracked.  At that point he consulted with Miciché (still driving back from Palermo), who told him (to Ned’s delight) to go ahead and just break the glass to get in.  Ned relayed this via the balcony to Domenica (the daughter of the family below), who went back through their apartment and called up the stairwell to warn me, so that I wouldn’t be alarmed by the sound of glass breaking.  So that’s what we did, and Domenica and her mother, whose name I don’t know yet, came upstairs (in true Italian mother fashion) to make sure we knew how to clean up glass shards without injuring ourselves.

So that was the adventure for the day.  On Monday we’re going to get a second set of keys made.

Cornetto vegetale

[From Friday]

This is what I had for breakfast today:

The bulb-shaped fruit is essentially a giant fig.  You peel back the outer layer, and then eat the inside, which is a pale beige color with numerous tiny dark seeds, has a consistency something like pumpkin guts crossed with strawberry jam, and resembles nothing so much as a sea urchin turned outside-in.  But—and you’ll just have to trust me on this, since they’re too delicate to travel long distances—the taste!  Madonna mia.  Suffice it to say that the taste is enough to override any and all qualms you might have had about eating something that looks like a sea urchin.  The taste is reminiscent of regular figs, but milder and more delicate—I don’t remember whether I’ve ever had a fresh fig before, but I imagine drying them intensifies the taste.  Think of the difference between a fresh apricot and a dried one.  These giant figs are just sweet enough without being overly so, and surprisingly filling.  One of these and a mug of tea is easily a full breakfast.  They also work nicely as dessert.

Salvatore Micciché, our landlord-cum-adoptive-uncle, invited us over to his house the other night, where we met his wife (who’s name I really should remember, but don’t.  I’ve me a lot of people in the past week) and got a tour of the house (which they built themselves).  We wound up sitting around their kitchen table over the giant figs (from a tree in their yard) followed by coffee ice cream followed by limoncello, talking until well after midnight, at which point it was all I could do not to fall asleep into my limoncello glass.  They sent us home with bundles of salvia, mint, and rosemary, several bottles of fresh spring water from their well (the tap water here is too-something to drink, maybe too chalky?), and, to my delight, a bag of the giant figs.  We’re going to make them an apple pie at some point as a thank you gift, although if this keeps up, it may need to be six apple pies and some homemade bread and a jar of honey.

June

Hello again!

Since I last wrote, I have:

1) Said goodbye to my host family (Emilia is off to Brazil for the summer) and the rest of the JYA Florence crew as we one by one finished our exams and took off for home or summer travel.  There was a week or so where you couldn't set foot in the Sede without running into someone heading out the door teary-eyed on her way to the airport.  Poor Monica and Giovanna must have gone through I don't know how many boxes of tissues.  At least most of us will see each other again in the fall, but after a year together, it was still hard to say goodbye.

2) Spent one last Friday morning at La Talea, harvesting string beans.  Antonio gave me a poster of my favorite map of Florence as a good-bye gift, and I got a little teary-eyed walking down the drive-way for the last time (although I'm sure I'll be back to visit sooner or later).  It wasn't until I got home that I noticed I had a string bean stuck to my shirt.

Also, here are (at long last) some pictures of La Talea:

3) Taken my math final exam at the University of Florence.  It was... challenging.  The course was a difficult one (graduate level, and I hadn't seen roughly half the prerequisite material before hand--someone remind me why I thought that was a good idea?), and I studied like crazy for it and still wound up postponing it a week.  But in the end it went well, and was even satisfying.  Half the victory was staying calm on the way there, and the fact that I did the exam at all (did I mention it was oral?).

4) Spent 10 days wwoofing on a farm/agriturismo called Ca' Penelope in Maranello (where Ferrari is based), which is near-ish to Bologna, in the Emilia-Romagna region of Italy.  And I wish it could have been longer.  When I went wwoofing in January, I had fun, and enjoyed the family I worked with, but I never really got as close with them as I did with Vale, Fabrizia, Atos, Lorna, and Nanase at Ca' Penelope.  This time I really felt like part of the crew, and if I didn't already have plans for the rest of the summer, I would have gladly stayed another month or two there instead.  More on that shortly.

5) Miraculously fit all of my stuff into various bags and suitcases which will live under Emilia's stairs for the summer, and relocated myself to Sicily, where I am spending the next month working with and learning about a program called Libera Terra, which organizes cooperative, organic farms on land confiscated from the Mafia.  More on that soon as well.

And somehow it is already nearly July.  Bizarre...

Finite fields and escapist chickens.

So, yesterday I managed to completely forget that it was Friday until about noon, at which point I was lounging on a sunny stone wall studying finite field extensions (of the mathematical variety) and occasionally glancing up to admire the Tuscan countryside extending off into the distance below me, also full of finite fields (of the dirt variety).  Right about when my sunny spot on the wall was getting a little too hot for comfort, I abruptly remembered that it WAS  Friday, and that I ought to have been off working in fields at La Talea all morning.  Oops.  Antonio laughed when I told him.

But that was how I wound up working at the farm this morning (Saturday) instead of yesterday.  My job today was to clear out a section of bietola (a variety of edible Italian greens) that was being taken over by this clingy, slender weed-tendril-plant thing.  It's not a huge deal for the bietola, but the bietola are right next to a row of tomato seedlings, where it could potentially do major damage.

I was cutting off that section of bietola at the base (it'll grow back), and carting the whole tangle over to the chickens, who were absolutely delighted.  On my second trip over to the chicken pen, I was surprised to discover a chicken wandering around on the outside of the pen.  She made a vague attempt to run away, but managed to run herself directly into a corner instead, and then, when I took a step forward, she bolted--and got herself wedged in the space between my the side of my shoe and the fence.  So I picked her up, and, not knowing what else to do, put her back in again, by the simple expedient of dropping her over the fence.  She didn't seem terribly perturbed.

I told Antonio later that one of the chickens had gotten out, thinking he'd want to know.  "Oh?" he said.  "Yeah," I said "I put her back, but I have no idea how she got out."  "Well," he said, "Generally they either fly or get under the fence somewhere."  It turns out that the chickens escaping is the norm lately.  They don't go anywhere once they get out: they have no idea what to do about the fact that they've escaped, and food and company are on the inside of the fence.  Antonio apparently makes a loop round the outside of the pen every morning, collecting chickens and tossing them back in again.

Today I also finally remember to bring my camera with me, so there will be pictures of the farm as soon as I upload them.

The Pineapple over the Arno

First, some back story:

In the mid 1500s, when the Medici became official grand dukes of Florence (as opposed to just "ordinary citizens" who happened to control everything that went on in the city, a system which worked surprisingly well for many years), Cosimo I (who was not the first Medici duke, but was the first really important one, and the first one (Medici duke, that is) named Cosimo) moved his family from the Palazzo where they were living to Palazzo Vecchio, the seat of the government.  He was trying to make a (rather heavy-handed) point about who was in charge.  It was a short-lived point, however, because the government palazzo was never designed to be a residence, and despite modifications remained inconvenient, cold, and drafty.  Either Cosimo changed his mind, or else his wife the grand duchess (Eleonora of the matrimonial sheep, for those of you who have been reading since the fall) changed it for him, because they relocated to Palazzo Pitti across the river (which Eleonora purchased with her own funds), complete with a nice yard (that would be Boboli Gardens).

However, to keep things convenient and properly grand-ducal, they also arranged to have their own personal raised passageway built, running from Palazzo Pitti, through the balcony of their preferred church, across the top of Ponte Vecchio, through the Uffizi (government offices at the time), and on into Palazzo Vecchio.  Thus they could get from home to church to work and back without needing to mingle with the common folk.  A far cry from Cosimo the Elder way back in the early 1400s, who, despite being wealthy and powerful, refused to dress in fancy clothing and rode a mule (if anything) through the streets of Florence.  (Photo is from an Uffizi website: http://www.nuoviuffizi.it/complesso/storia/)

Getting to walk across it has been on my long-term to do list since September.  Rare tours of the Corridoio Vasariano do supposedly exist, but it is notoriously difficult (and probably pricey) to get hold of one, so when Giovanna told us a friend of hers had gotten hold of some free tickets to a Caravaggio exhibit that included a walk across the Corridoio, and did anyone want to go?, I jumped at the chance.

The opening of the exhibit included a speech in the courtyard of Palazzo Pitti, during which we mingled and chatted with the Italians, who, in typical Italian fashion, mingled and chatted with each other instead of paying attention to the speech.  There was also a reception buffet, which provided a perfect Exhibit A of How Italians Do Not Believe in Lines.  Basically as soon as we all applauded for the speech (nobody had a clue what had been said, but everyone applauded anyway), the buffet table was mobbed, and you were lucky if you got so much as a grape.

Sofi managed to snag a pineapple.

This was because, after the mob dispersed, all that was left were the empty trays, a lot of crumbs, and six or seven pineapples.  The pineapples were only still there because they were whole, and therefore difficult to snack on.  Not for lack of trying, mind you: one of the guys in our group (friend of a Smithie) hacked open a pineapple (with a pocket knife?) and wound up distributing slices of it to the small group of elderly Italians who had gathered round eagerly, all smiles at the prospect of pineapple and willing to wait patiently for it.  But in the end it was more trouble than it was worth, so the other seven pineapples remained whole, and Sofi asked if she could have one.  She could, and did.

Thus it was that a pineapple accompanied us through the Caravaggio exhibit and across the Corridoio Vasariano into the Uffizi  I think it may be the first pineapple to have ever made that journey, making it not only uniquely cultured among pineapples, but also more fortunate than most human tourists. The guard at the entrance to the Corrodoio laughed when she saw it--I think we made her evening.  The guard at the Uffizi, however, found it less entertaining.  As we entered the gallery, he stopped Sofi and said: "Signorina, l'ananas va in borsa."  (Miss, the pineapple has to go in the purse).  I don't know how anyone can say that with a straight face.  Maybe he was worried it would scratch the art.

The Corridoio was very cool.  We saw the Medici's balcony in the church, and many, many self-portraits by different artists from different time periods, and views of Florence and the Arno.  Mostly it was pretty cool just to be there, walking where the Medici walked and where most people don't ever get to go.

I'm told the pineapple was also quite tasty.

More pictures of the corridor are in this album:

Maggio a Firenze

Cae Mabon: Part the Second. In which many people sing many songs and some people go walking the rain.

I realized a few days after I wrote the first Wales post that I neglected to mention WHY I was going to all this trouble to get to Wales in the first place: there was a singing workshop run by Patty and Larry of Village Harmony, a singing group that Sarah (roommate Sarah) introduced me to.  They are awesome, and sing lots of traditional kinds of music from various countries, including South Africa, Corsica, Bulgaria, and the U.S. (shape note, Appalachian folk song, 30's gospel), to name a few.  I'm on the mailing list, and got an announcement back in the fall about how there was going to be a workshop in Wales at this place called Cae Mabon involving hobbit houses and learning how to sing all these different styles of music (and even some dancing).  I jumped up and down a bit, and then emailed my friends about it, and Gwen and Maggie and I all wound up being able to go.  So I've been looking forward to this since about October.

Anyway, back to Wales...
(apologies to those of you who also get Gwen's emails--some of this will be a repeat of what she said)

First of all, the scenery.  Wales was so very Wales-ish.  What I mean by that is that I always imagined Wales to be very damp and mossy and green and mountainous, and it was all of that.  Maggie tells me that this isn't true of all of Wales, but Northern Wales at least is delightfully full of mossy damp green forests on misty mountains dotted with ruined castles and gray lakes.

And then there was the food, which was AMAZING.  Among the most to-die-for meals I have ever had, which is saying something given that I've spent the past nine months in Italy.  And it was all vegetarian.  Now, I'm not vegetarian, but I will happily eat vegetarian food, and I definitely can appreciate people who can make really good vegetarian food.  Since we were in the UK, there was lots of tea--also in part because there was a issue with the water filter, and boiled (and thus hot) water is not very interesting unless you put something in it.

And then there were the hobbit houses, which you've seen pictures of, and I think they speak for themselves, so I won't go on in detail about them.  Also the composting "loo with a view" and it's rainwater collection system for handwashing, the woodstove heated hot tub, and the dragon-shaped nook/bench/fireplace, which I somehow neglected to take a picture of.


Last, but certainly not least (on the contrary!): the people and the music.  When you get 20-odd singers with a penchant for folk music together for a weekend, they just don't stop singing.  You can't make them.  Aside from the workshop sessions themselves, we sang while clearing up after meals, while standing in line for lunch, while in the loo or in line for it, while sitting in the hot tub, etc, etc.  The polite struggles over who would do the dishes were, in this case, about more than just people being thoughtful and polite: some of the best singing went on over dish washing, and if you managed to score so much as a dry dish towel to work with, you had an excuse to get in on it.  Some of it was music we'd learned in the workshops (it is not often that absent-minded humming is likely to provoke four-part harmony from the people wandering by), but we also taught each other other songs as well, songs people had picked up from other workshops, festivals, relatives, friends, and choirs.  Various members of the group had sung with each other in different configurations before, so there was just enough overlap to be able to teach not just the melody but the parts to many of the songs.  Looking back later, I realized that a lot of the styles of music we were learning in the workshop have been passed on orally for a long, long time (one of the them is so unsuited to western-style written notation that people have come up with two or three different alternative notations in an attempt to write it down--and it's still easier to learn by ear)--and that was exactly what we were doing informally on the side.

Which is not to say that we spent every waking minute singing.  We also talked, and it was a really lovely group of people to get to know.  I wished it could have gone on all week, instead of just a weekend--at least in part because I was coming back to final exams, but also because it was just that much fun.  In the workshop sessions, I loved learning not just the notes, words, and dances to the songs, but also the feel of each kind of singing.  The style of it.  The way your body should feel, the way the music should sound.  The soul of it.  Clearly, we couldn't actually get the exact sound of, say, a South African choir or a trio from the Balkans, but we did learn to change the way we, as a group, sounded--and got some pretty darn good approximations.  Or at the very least a noticeable difference in sound that was going in the right direction.

On Saturday afternoon during the long break, Maggie, Gwen and I and two of the other singers went for a hike up and down and along the mountains around the lake to an old Welsh watch tower.  The day was gray and damp and mossy again, and we wound up seeing lots of wild goats and climbing the old stone watchtower in the rain to look out through the window at the top over the misty, damp Welsh valley below, while Maggie explained to us about watchtowers and strategic defense and Welsh history.  And then we hiked back to sing some more cool songs.  And Sunday morning it was even gloriously sunny, and we moved lunch outside (a process that involved a great deal of confusion and people wandering around with stray furniture.  We'd already moved the tables outside to make room for singing  inside, and there was some confusion as to whether we needed to move the tables back in or the chairs out or some of both, and did we need another bench and where should I put this chair, hurry-up-it's-heavy?).  And there were fudge brownies for dessert.

Oh--and on the way home, I got to spend 24 hours in Dublin with Gwen and her mathematical aunt.

Couldn't have asked for a better weekend.

Slightly sheepish, but content. And well-shod.

So, um...

I bought three pairs of boots today.

Yes, that's right, three.  But the third pair doesn't actually count, because they were a) rain boots and, b) only 10 euro (about $12).  While I was out doing boot price research this morning, I ran into a shoe store having a closing sale, and when I found this pair of elegant rain boots (I bet you thought such a thing didn't exist!  In Italy they manage to make even rain boots look elegant), and not only that, but IN MY SIZE (Another oxymoron, that.  I grew up assuming rain boots were supposed to be several sizes too big.  I thought they just came that way), and you never find decent rain boots here for less than 20 or 25 euro...  And we just had two straight weeks of rain, which convinced me that I really do like having dry feet.  Although, watch, now that I have rain boots, it won't so much as drizzle.

So really I bought two pairs of boots today.  What happened was that I finally got organized/brave enough to go seriously boot shopping, and found a pair of black boots that I liked:

 The problem was that in the process, the woman at the store had me try on this other pair--beige suede (two qualities I was decidedly NOT--I thought--looking for in a boot, since it means "shows dirt well" + "hard to clean"), but ohhhhh I liked them.  Fit my foot like a glove, really comfy, soft as anything, and looked great.  So I bought neither, and went home to think it over for 24 hours, did some checking round other shoe stores, talked to Sofi and Ellie (who both thought I should go for it and get both), and went back today to buy both of them.  They're good quality (and made of real leather) at a surprisingly good price.  And next year (when I'll hopefully have a campus job and be earning money again) I can go back to being frugal and sensible and all that.  Here's the second pair:

As long as I'm on the subject, shopping for clothing of any kind in Italy is an interesting cultural difference.  To begin with, setting up display windows is an art here.  But then there's the whole concept of how you go about shopping.  Italians, when they go shopping, know exactly what they want, and not only enjoy being helped, but expect it.  When you enter an Italian store (which is usually smaller than its U.S. equivalent, to begin with), the salesperson, who is usually the owner or else a family member, will come forward to meet you, smiling and sincerely ready to assist you.  "Mi dica," he/she will say  (the formal, polite version of "Tell me,").  You are expected to know what you want (black boots, size 35, for example), and then you sit and they bring you things to try on.  It's intimidating until you get used to it and learn how the system works.  Touristy places, out of necessity, have gotten used to this strange American practice of "browsing" (when you see a sign on an Italian store that reads "Free Entry", it's not that stores normally charge you to enter.  They just mean that you may come in and just look around and they'll let you be while you do, if you're sure that's really what you want to do and if you're sure you really won't be offended by being left alone).

The place I found my boots is at the other end of the scale--far off the touristy track, frequented by Italian mothers and their children.  The woman who owns the shop not only brought me shoes to try on, but also put them on my feet for me, and showed me how best to fold my jeans into them, and then bustled off downstairs to find others as my requests got more specific.  And when a pair didn't quite fit right, she bustled off again and returned with a little insert sole thingy to make them fit perfectly, chatting away all the while, pointing out the different features and materials and just generally being friendly.  And the whole time she used the formal "Lei" when she spoke to me, which is fairly standard between customers/shopkeepers (I was using the formal Lei with her as well), but still always makes me feel like an official Adult, because you don't use the formal with children, even children you don't know.  It was actually a lot of fun.

Later she sent me along down to the "adult" section of the store a few doors down (this was the "kids" section, but also carried some adult sizes), and when I got there, having learned how all this worked, I marched in, said politely "Buona sera," and told him right off the bat that I was looking for leather boots, black, low or no heels, size 35.  I expected him to laugh at such a detailed request, but he didn't even blink; he just took a minute to memorize the details, then smiled, nodded, and invited me to sit down and make myself comfortable while he went to see what he could do, because, I had to understand, they didn't have many boots left this time of year, but maybe he could find something, yes, we'd have to see what we could do.  I swear Italian storekeepers thrive on challenges.  The more persnickety the request, the better.

Anyway, that's how I wound up coming home with 2 (okay, 3) new pairs of boots today.  And then I played dress up for a while.  The fun thing about boots is that you can pull off (very Italian) outfits like this one:

Cae Mabon: Part the First. In which three Smithies successfully arrive at (or at least near) Mt. Snowden and eat Welsh cakes on a train.

Two weekends ago I went to Wales.

"Went" does not really properly convey the process of getting from Florence to a little place called Cae Mabon in the middle of the mountains of Northern Wales.   My travel plan looked like this:

Thursday afternoon:
Bus from my math class to the nearest train station.
Train from Florence to Pisa (just over an hour).  Check in to hostel for the night.

Friday:
- 5:05 am shuttle to the Pisa airport (where, incidentally, I ran into the wonderful couple who rented out a room to my Dad when he was here.  Turns out they were on the same flight to Dublin!)

- Flight from Pisa to Dublin.

- Hang around for several hours in Dublin airport, meet up with Gwen.

- Flight from Dublin to Birmingham

- Air rail (one of those raised tram thingies.  This one had triumphant music playing inside that made it seem much more impressive than it actually was.  Also made us feel like we ought to be in a commercial: "AIR RAIL: Fast.  Convenient.  Safe."  Also, there was a button at the platform so that, should you arrive in the wee hours of the morning, you could--that's right--call your VERY OWN personal air rail to come and pick you up within minutes.  I was impressed.) from the Birmingham Airport to the Birmingham Airport Train Station.

- Elevator down to the track.  And back up again.  And back down again.  (This was partly because we needed lunch and a bathroom, but I also enjoyed the GIANT elevator buttons and the voice-over that politely reminded you not only what floor you were getting on at, but also where you were going).

- Train from Birmingham to Shrewsbury (in which we ate surprisingly good train station food involving hummus.  Also the snack cart did in fact go by, just like in Harry Potter, only sans Chocolate Frogs.  Only it wasn't actually that exciting.  I'm not sure what I was expecting, but it was really just an ordinary metal rolling cart like they have on airplanes, with soda and chips.  We didn't buy something off the cart after all, since we'd just eaten lunch and weren't particularly hungry).

- Meet up with Maggie at train station and hasty dash to catch second train, from Shrewsbury to Bangor (in which we talked and ate the Welsh cakes Maggie brought, only without tea because this time the cart didn't go by).

At this point we were supposed to meet up with someone named Casper so we could all share a taxi, only we had no idea what he looked like or even how old he was, so we stood awkwardly around trying to make eye contact with people without actually doing so in case they weren't him.  After a while Maggie made a sign that said CASPER, and we stood around awkwardly with that for a while.  We even asked one guy who looked kind of lost.  Then we gave up and found a taxi, and thank goodness Maggie knows how to pronounce Welsh names and knew the trick about postal codes, because otherwise we never would have been able to explain to the driver (who had a lovely Welsh accent but, it turned out, didn't actually speak any Welsh) where it was we wanted to go.

He drove us up winding mountain roads, and dropped us off at the sign for Cae Mabon, and we thanked him and went hiking merrily down the long driveway through the woods, under an arch with the Green Man on it, down another hill,  along past beehives and a bee sculpture, through a gate, and down another hill before finally emerging in the midst Cae Mabon's cluster of what can only be described as Hobbit Houses, where we were warmly welcomed, introduced to our hobbit house and hobbit housemate (who was not a hobbit but a friendly young Welsh-Irish woman named Orla, who is spending the summer going from one singing workshop to the next as preparation to starting a new choir--yes, that's right, she got to do this as part of her JOB!), and fed dinner.


And the amazing thing is that it all went off without a hitch, aside from missing Casper.  (Apparently he had asked several short blond women if they were me without success before it got too awkward and he gave up and took a taxi.  The funny thing is that we did see each other at the station, but by then he didn't want to ask anyone else, and we hadn't worked out how to go about asking people yet, so no one said anything, and then he disappeared).  And that was just the way there.  The way back involved a different set of train stations and a ferry from Holyhead to Dublin, and a double-decker bus.  I had (I kid you not) a spreadsheet printed out with all the connections and reservation numbers and times so that I could keep everything straight.

(Part the Second to follow.)  In the meantime, here are some more pictures:

aba de lo di lo de la de...

Ice Cream and Opera House Acoustics

I came home this afternoon to find my lamp on my desk. What's so strange about that?, you might ask. Lots of lamps sit on desks. Except that this one is a floor lamp.

"Emilia," I called down the stairs, "Is there a reason my lamp is on my desk?"

"Yes," she said, "I was cleaning the floor earlier."

"Oh," I said, "Thank you. Can I put it back now?"

Which of course was fine. But it was still entertaining. Added an element of surprise to my day.

My essay for Opera (the one I was researching in the National Library for over the weekend) is coming along. I have four of eight pages, and it's due tomorrow, but I have most of the day free to work on it. It's on the history of the architecture (acoustics, arrangement of seats, lighting, etc) of opera houses, using one particular Florentine theater (Teatro della Pergola) as a focus and example. It's interesting. But I would still rather go play in the sunshine than write it, which is why it got put off until the last minute.

It occurred to me that all of my paper topics this year have been... um... unusual? So far I've written papers on: straw hats, parties in the 1400s, a fresco of a saintly bishop, a disappearing physicist, zucchini (although that's technically a translation and not an essay), and now the one about opera houses. Although I guess I have a tendency to write essays about odd things anyway. Past paper topics have included an alley, school gardening at the end of the 19th century, and thrackles (a particular kind of mathematical doodle). And my very first research paper in 5th grade was about circuses.

Apropos of abosolutely nothing, I had a very excellent pairing of peanut and chocolate ice cream this afternoon. It was like a Reeses peanut butter cup, only in a cone. Or rather, in a coppa cialda, which is a cup-shaped cone. It is something I have been wishing existed for years (the ice cream never gets properly down inside regular cones, even the flat-bottomed ones), and discovered a few weeks ago in my now favorite gelateria near the Sede.

I don't remember what the original point of this post was when I sat down to write it, and it's late, so I think I will leave this as is and go to bed. Buona notte!

Make Way for Ducklings

Today was a good day for birdwatching.

I had to spend four and a half hours in the library this morning, essentially because I haven't done enough research for my final paper that's due on Wednesday.  And it's the National Library of Italy (there are actually two of them--one here and one in Rome; every time a book is published in Italy, a copy of it has to be sent to each of them), which means extra security, and it's only open until one on Saturdays, and given the standard convoluted bureaucracy of Italian libraries in general, I arranged to get there when it opened at 8:15.  In looking at the website ahead of time, I was stunned to discover that they do, in fact, let you check out books. Clicking on the link revealed further details.  Yes, absolutely you may check out books!  With some exceptions, of course.  They are as follows:

- anything published before 1935
- anything published in the last five years
- all volumes belonging to historic or special collections
- periodicals and serial publications
- government publications
- publications "a dispense"
- publications with attachments
- publications with declared limited print runs
- novels and books about hobbies
- commercial catalogues
- exposition catalogues
- musical publications
- librettos for operas
- publications with particular historic or editorial characteristics
- miscellaneous things collected into a volume; pamphlets of fewer than 50 pages
- publications with tables and illustrations outside of the text
- publications with photographs or illustrations, if there are many of them in ratio to the text
- dictionaries, encyclopedias, atlas, maps, guides, and prints
- works not printed on paper
- volumes larger than 28 cm or smaller than 15 cm
- publications inventoried as "minor material"
- all volumes that have undergone restoration
- works located in the reading rooms and indexes present in the information office
- works in precarious condition that may not be photocopied.
- any material that for some reason is shouldn't be removed from the library
- doctoral research thesis

Honestly, it probably would have been more efficient to post a list of the books that you ARE allowed to check out.  There are probably about five of them.

I gave up hope of checking anything out, and planned to arrive at 8:15 and spend the morning reading.  I got there a little early, so I sat on the wall by the Arno, munching on a rice cake, admiring the bright blue sky, and watching a heron fish for breakfast:

It was a good thing my morning started off so cheerfully.  I went to sign up for a library card, armed with my passport and an official looking letter of introduction from Smith.  I knew that there was more than one kind of card, so I asked if the card to read books was the same as the card to check them out.  I don't remember now what he said, but I took it to be a yes, or at least that he knew I need to do both and would make the appropriate arrangements.  While waiting for my card to print (after he sloooowly typed in my information with one finger), he explained to me the rules and hours (check-out is only open from 11-1, and if you miss the once-hourly submission of requests to read or check out a book, you have to wait an hour for the next one; if you request a book to read, you CAN'T decide to check it out the same day, you have to wait until the next day, and so on...).

My next stop (after making the entry security thing beep repeatedly until the guard showed me how to swipe my card first--he also pointed me in the right direction afterwards, since I probably looked overwhelmed and lost) was the front desk, where I asked a librarian whether the books on my list could be checked out or not.  Not, predictably.  Also, it was a moot point, as the card the man at the desk had given me only allowed me to read books, not check them out.  Also, one of the books was up in the Music Room, which requires yet another distinct library card.

But the Music Room I'd been to before on a field trip, so I made my way up there and--with great relief--recognized the librarian who given us the tour.  Better yet, when I told her I was from the smith class, she recognized me, and welcomed me cheerfully in, and arranged for the music room library card, and found my book for me, and generally restored my faith in Italian librarians (I had a rather disastrous trip to the University's art history library yesterday, involving a completely unhelpful librarian, and, with a few exceptions, my experiences with the librarians in the research section of the Oblate have not been positive, although the ones in the modern novels and movies section are quite friendly).

So that was a successful trip.  And then when I got home, I poked my head out my window and discovered DUCKLINGS in our torrent!

A torrent is an artificial river bed/canal sort of thing that fills up when it rains a lot, and there is one that runs under my window.  At the moment it's only a few inches deep in the middle, and dry on the edges, and a duck had decided that it was a good place to bring her ducklings (perhaps to practice?).  I think I counted 12 or 13, all paddling around, nibbling at the algae underwater, and exploring the dry bits at the edge as the whole crew migrated slowly downstream and out of sight.  Later, as I was making lunch, I heard urgent quacking through the open window, accompanied by a chorus of anguished peeping.  I leaned out the window to see what was the matter.  Mother duck, while leading her ducklings back upstream, had hopped up a little ledge where the level of the torrent bed rises a bit, and the ducklings were stuck.  The ledge is all of about two inches high, but it might as well have been the Great Wall of China for all they knew.  Finally one duckling, either particularly clever or just lucky, worked out that it could scramble up the (slightly angled) cement wall at the side of the torrent and hop onto the next level from there.  All of the other ducklings proceeded to throw themselves at the wall, scrambling up it to great (and unnecessary) heights of two feet or so and falling back down again, until one by one they managed to land on the ledge instead.  And then they picked themselves up, and the whole brood set off up stream again.  And I went back to making my lunch.

Well, this is a new one.

Giovanna just walked into the library where I was working on homework and gifted me a little baggie of cold sauteèd vegetable greens.  Possibly spinach.  But literally about two tablespoons worth.  Here, she said, we made these for dinner last night and there were leftovers--they're organic!  Oh, I said.  Um.  Thank you?

I'm used to people bringing me sad-looking plants (Emily, my plant is dying, can you fix it?), and sending me articles about nice garden projects, but this is a new one.  I mean, I do enjoy sauteéd vegetable greens (really, I do, especially with olive oil, garlic, and a bit of salt, preferably hot out of the pan and not overcooked), and these are good, or as good as cold sauteèd spinach ever is (not very) but really, should anyone make spectacular sauteèd kale or something tonight, please refrain from sticking some in an envelope and mailing it to me.  It might cause problems with customs.

Springtime, for Smithies, in Barcelona...

Rachel, Maggie, Gwen and I just spent our spring break together in Barcelona.  Gwen and Maggie and I arrived on Thursday (and Rachel arrived Saturday) to SPRING, complete with blue sky, sunshine, and pleasantly cool temperatures in the morning that warmed up to hot, short-sleeve weather by mid-afternoon.  We rented an apartment for the week, so we had our own space and our own kitchen, and discovered that between the four of us we cook really good meals.  On Friday morning I woke up around 7:45 to the sound of someone playing Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme on the accordion.  The week was off to a good start. 

Somehow, for the three days until Rachel (aka walking GPS) arrived, I got put in charge of navigation.  [I will now pause until those of you who have ever tried to go anywhere with me quit laughing and get back into your chairs.]  And I did pretty well, too, thank you very much.  Mostly.  Except for maybe Friday morning, when I meant for us to arrive at Placa Espana (and from there to the Museu Nacional d'Art de Catalunya), lead us confidently and accurately at least half-way there, and then wound up at the port instead (ie, the wrong end of a very long boulevard).  My first clue that I'd messed up was the enormous cruise ship poking up over the top of the building.  For a minute I thought Oh look, how nice, a boat, until I pictured the map in my head, and realized that there shouldn't BE any body of water large enough to float a boat that big anywhere near Placa Espana.  I sheepishly admitted this to my friends, and at that point it was nearly lunch time, since we'd already taken several detours to peruse markets and admire palm trees, so we found a bench, ate the lunch we brought, and explored the port, as long as we were there.

I recalculated our route, and we wound along towards the art museum, detouring (intentionally) along the way to scenic viewpoints and playgrounds.  By the time we got to the museum, got up the many steps and escalators (yes, outdoor escalators) to the top, sat and listened to the guitar player there for a while, and finally arrived triumphantly at the entrance, the museum had closed.  Literally five minutes before we got there.  So we felt a little silly, but not too disappointed, because the 4+ hour ramble to get there was beautiful, and we enjoyed everything along the way.  And, since the approach to the Catalan art museum is one of the most green and gorgeous I have every seen, we wandered around it a bit more, and then wandered through the grounds of the 1992 Olympics on the hill behind it, and then found a small, shady grove with benches to nap on for ten minutes or so.  We did finally make it to the art museum the next day, and caught the fountains dancing to classical music on our way out.


We saw lots of Gaudi architecture, and I fell in love with it.  I expected to, but it was more than just the visual whimsical-ness and appeal of the architecture itself: the mosaics, the stained glass, the sculpture-y curves, the spiral staircases, the natural light, and all the honey-colored wood and shades of blue at Casa Batlò (which was my favorite).  What I didn't realize was that he wasn't just an architect; he was something of an engineer and an inventor.  He thought about the practicality and comfort of everything: the brass doorhandles were molded to fit his (and therefore most people's) hand naturally, and the doors and walls had shuttering vents built in that you could open or close to allow or block the flow of warm/cold air.  In the central air/light well at Casa Batlò, he made the tiles at the top a gradually more vivid shade of blue than those lower down, so that when it is lit up by bright sunlight, the shades of blue appears consistent from top to bottom.  It was simultaneously whimsical, mathematical, and incredibly satisfying not just to my eye, but also to touch (the banisters were also shaped to naturally fit your hand).

The whole week was filled with street preformers: a very talented accordion player who drifted from one improvised, melancholy melody to the next, and originally fooled us into thinking he was a distant church organ; a flamenco dancer on a piece of plywood, making it up as he went along, accompanied by a friend drumming on a plywood box.  We also kept running into other Smithies, since at least half the JYA Florence crew wound up spending at least of few days of their break in Barcelona.  On Friday evening, after tapas for dinner with Camilla and Allison (two other Florence Smithies), we stumbled on a Good Friday procession, complete with giant religious floats carried on the shoulders of about 12 people under the curtain around the base; the floats rocked gently side to side as they moved veeeeerry sloooowly down the street, making the candles flicker and the fringe sway.

On Easter we woke up to pouring rain (after a gloriously sunny Good Friday: isn't that kind of backwards?), and, after sitting in on a bit of the mass (in Catalan) in what we had by then started to think of as "our" Cathedral (because it was so close to our apartment), we spent the grey, rainy morning in the Catalan history museum, which was an interactive ramble through Catalan history from prehistoric times up through the present--and also free, since it was the first sunday of the month.   Always a plus.  When we left the museum, the clouds had cleared up completely, and we were able to have our Easter picnic in Parc Guell (Gaudi's park) after all--along with about half of Barcelona.  Apparently it's the thing to do.  We spent a few blissful hours lounging on the grass in the sun and dappled shade, with a picnic that included:

- Sandwiches (build your own with ingredients of your choice from: bread, salami, thinly sliced onions, unidentified but delicious cheese, fresh avocado, olive oil, salt, pepper, oregano, mushrooms, and tomatoes)
- Strawberries, oranges, rice cakes and strawberry jam, marshmallow peeps, Easter Snails (candied jelly, not actual snails), water, and a bottle of fruit juice we picked up on the way.

After which naps were in order.

We packed it up just in time.  As we were starting to wander the rest of the park, Rachel noticed an increasingly ominous bank of deep, deep blue-black clouds rolling in FAST out of nowhere, so we climbed quickly up to see the view from the highest point, and then beat a hasty retreat back down and out of the park, accompanied by about half of Barcelona.  We didn't quite make it to the metro stop before the sky opened up, so the metro was packed with hoards of soggy but cheerful picnickers.

It was  a good spring break.

Pictures are here:

Barcelona

Planting Potatoes

I'm officially legal!

Yes, after six months in Florence, we have finally been given our permessi di soggiorno (permissions to stay), the document (now, in the age of technology, it's actually a snazzy electronic card) which informs anyone who needs to know that yes, we our allowed to stay in Florence longer than two months.  Or is it three?  I can't remember.  Regardless, we were supposed to have them by the end of December.  On the other hand, last year it took so long that they never got them at all.

And you have to realize that this is with American students who not only speak decent Italian but were guided through the process by Italians who know how the system works--we get preferential treatment, and it still took six months.  Standing there in a room full of mostly immigrant families, I kept thinking about what it would be like to try to go through this process while dealing with a language barrier and discrimination on top of complicated Italian bureaucracy.  Monica started chatting with an elderly woman from Sri Lanka, who, it turned out, had gotten there at 5:30 am to get in line for a number (they don't start calling numbers until about 8:30), because she had to get to work afterwards, and we, arriving at 8:15 or so, had been bumped in front of her and had the first numbers.  By the time we discovered this, we were almost done and she was next, but we still felt awful.

I spent the rest of the morning trying to figure out what classes I'm taking next semester (Smith, alla italiana, didn't put up the course catalog until a week before course registration), trying not very successfully to get some homework done, and worrying about the work I need to get done this semester and my plans for the summer, etc, etc.  By the afternoon, I'd had way too much time to sit and brood, and it was time to go and do something more productive with the second half of my day.  Planting potatoes, for example.

Usually, when you say something like "I'm planting zucchini", what you really mean is that you're planting zucchini seeds.  But when you say you're planting potatoes, that is precisely what you're doing.  On Friday afternoon at La Talea, Davide (one of the guys from Peru who works there) and I sat on overturned plastic buckets with a burlap sack full of sprouting potatoes between us, filling another pair of buckets with chunks of potato while talking about the difference between Italian and Peruvian cuisine, potato-planting methods (he never seen anyone cut up seed potatoes before--he said at home they would just plant the potatoes whole, sometimes even more than one in one spot, if they're small or have few sprouts) our families, and our studies.  He gave up studying communications technology to come work in Italy, he said, because he wouldn't have been able to find a job in Peru.  His brother, on the other hand, is studying communications technology here in Italy--I wonder if Davide's farm work helps to pay for his brother's education?  I didn't ask, but it made me wonder, because his (Davide's) Italian is very good, nearly fluent, so I don't think the language would be a barrier to studying here.

The next step is to lay out the potato chunks in long rows, cut side down, sprout side up, at the right spacing.  The right spacing happens to be the length of my foot, which was handy, because I could simply walk down the row, one foot in front of the other, laying a potato half between each step.

Later, Laura (who is married to Antonio, who runs La Talea) joined us, and as she and I set out long lines of potatoes in the dirt and Davide followed along behind covering them up, the conversation ranged from health care and politics to the importance of voting (Antonio apparently doesn't vote, as a form of protest, while Laura can't imagine not voting, even when it's difficult to choose because she doesn't see her views in any of candidates), architecture, the history of Florence (have I mentioned that Florence abolished the death penalty in 1786?  And the rest of what would later become Italy followed suit not long after), mountain-climbing schools in Peru, and the usefulness of hope.

Lastly, the chickens have arrived!!!  Since I first started at the farm in November, there has been an empty chicken coop and a story that at some point, there would be chickens to live there.  I think they belonged to one of the neighbors, who used to come over to get vegetable scraps to feed them, and brought Antonio eggs in return.  Now they have moved to the farm (perhaps to save the neighbor all the walking back and forth?) and have become Antonio's chickens; no eggs yet, but I'll keep you posted.

I know I still haven't caught you all up properly on winter traveling, but trying to do that was getting a little intimidating, and if I wait to write about what's going on now until I've caught up on January and February, I'll wind up not writing anything at all, and meanwhile the list of things to write about isn't getting any shorter...