June 21, 2010
What a night and day! It was crazy trying to pull that presentation and paper together at the last second like that! It feels so good to be done with it though! It feels weird now to have started our very last week here. This week is like "do everything you want to do" week. So we all got frozen yogurts and granitas and gelato and things like that. I made sure to pick up a jar of Nutella (the white chocolate and normal kind) for my family. Tuesday was cool - I've been able to keep up with my daily walks up to St. Peter's Church for the most part so that's been cool. Emily and I had dinner at Andrina's since she invited Maria Carla and me over. Gab and Tessa were going to a restaurant for dinner and since Emily didn't feel in the ristorante mood and since she doesn't have a host family to go home to, Andrina was totally cool to have her over too! "Tanto carina!" They kept calling us :) Andrina made a delicious soup of carrots, potatoes and squash as well as a chicken dish for the 3 of them and a fish dish for me (so considerate!) For dessert, we had a huge chunk of watermelon as well as chocolate that Emily and I couldn't stop snagging in the after dinner talk and chill reposso. Emily and I walked around Tuscania and talked for a while after dinner which was really nice. By the time I got back home, it was pretty late and I found that Maria Carla had stayed up for me - or tried to anyway…she fell asleep in front of the TV with Nirinia at her feet. I quickly got her to bed before curling up in bed myself. I totally forgot that we had planned to get up at dawn the next day!
For her photography class, Tessa was doing a project on people working and she was invited to come back up to the olive oil farm on their very first harvest day of the season. Emily, Gabrielle, and I wanted to see this too so we agreed to meet at the school at 5am. I woke up at 4:30 but my room was freezing so I kinda just curled up tighter in the fetal position and convinced myself that I'd get out of bed in 5 minutes. Haha!
I didn't walk up until 5:05! Oh snap! I pretty much just changed out of my pajamas, grabbed a water bottle and my bag and literally ran out of the house. I told the group not to wait for me if I was late so I skipped checking the school (it was already 5:15) and picked out a bunch of shortcuts. The entire time, I was thinking "oh my gosh - how fun! Here I ma off running through Tuscania's cobblestone streets at 5 in the morning!
The olive garden was actually across the country side and it felt so cool to be running after the sunrise! I actually made it to the farm in great timing. (thank goodness I was blessed with a sense of direction!) I mean, taking some other fork in the road would have totally put me an hour or 2 behind! The farm was SO pretty! I loved how the sun kind of painted the green leafy salad patches and plants with shimmers of gold, pink, and orange. I loved spending this morning - this very early morning - with friends and just being so in touch with nature and the earth. It just made everything better. Jim, the main farmer told us about this amazing cannoli place back in Tuscania that we should check out for breakfast. So, we promised him we'd see him back at his store in town and went on our way.
Our final in ancient Mediterranean civilizations was later that day so it was good to come back home, get cleaned up, and have a nice breakfast and tea as I studied. That study session soon became an accidental nap session but eh, va bene! For the amount of studying I did, I think the final went well, saying goodbye to our entertaining professor Carlo was a bit more difficult. I couldn't help but think that this would be the first of many difficult farewells. I've been starting to feel that my entire trip is coming full circle. Just with little things like hearing a song I heard on the radio before I left for Italy to finally sitting down and talking to the group of grandmas I always say Buona Sera to daily to making more gelato with Nenno. Dinner tonight was compliments of the Lorenzo d'Medici staff at this super high class restaurant named Palazzo Rannuchhi. The risotto ravioli and eggplant were all fantastic! The dessert I think was my favorite though - this wonderful, artistically done peach torte. The flavors were like little explosions of flavor in my mouth and let everything just melt and mingle better than VIPs at a red carpet party or something! Afterwards, the group wanted to go out for gelato and it was so sweet - Nenno told everyone about the new flavors I had made (Torrone: white chocolate, honey, almond, and biscotti, as well as several local regular favorites) and he actually let me SERVE the gelato to people! It was such a cool experience! See what I mean about coming full circle?
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