Italy Part 2!

So here we are, two blog posts in two days!
See I told you I would update more frequently now.

Plus I have a lot of catching up to do.

Last post I ended with a story of how we almost didn't get inside the house and had to sleep outside right? Yes right.

Alright so we made it through the wilderness.
Oh yes we made it through.
(5 points to anyone who can guess which song I'm quoting there)

We made it inside the house and we were all starving.
Oh I forgot that part in the last post! We hadn't eaten dinner yet when we arrived around 8pm and had stopped at the Penny market in the big town on the way in and spent very little on a ton of food. The only problem was that all of it needed to be cooked. So we were pretty excited when we actually got into the house and could make ourselves dinner.

Luckily in my group of friends there are a couple of us (myself included) who like to cook and cook for people. We aren't half bad either if I do say so myself. So for most of this trip we came back to the house and made ourselves dinner at night because we are all college students who don't have that much money to spend on extravagant dinners out.

Anyhoodles, there was a funny blunder in the grocery shopping by one of my friends. When we were at the penny market we all kind of split up to grab different stuff and one of my friends comes up and shows us these two big bottles of "wine" that are only 1 euro a piece. Now I didn't look at them carefully because I trusted him to be able to determine wine from other things. So we bought it and when we got back to the house we realized he had made a little mistake. Yes it did say "red wine" in italian on the bottle, but that other little italian word next to the red wine meant vinegar. Yes we had bought 2 big bottles of red wine vinegar. We were lucky in two aspects though: 1. They were only 1 euro each so it wasn't like they were expensive and 2. The guy who had made the mistake was the first one to try it and figure out that it wasn't wine, but vinegar. Though I don't really know how he couldn't have smelled it before he drank it and figured out it was vinegar. That was a stench.

The next day, when everyone in my group woke up abominably early. Seriously, these people are all my age or younger, you would think they would know how to sleep in and wouldn't wake up at like 7:30 in the morning and TALK LOUDLY. If any of you know my sleeping patterns you know that unless there is something pressing and important to do, I will sleep for a long time. So when my friends finally came in around 9 AM to get me to COOK POTATOES for breakfast because apparently no one can do them like I can, I was a little annoyed.

I bet your wondering how I cook my potatoes that wowed my friends so much. I must admit they are delicious but very very simple to make. And before this occurrence I had already taught them how to make them about 5 times. What kind of potatoes do I make? Roasted potatoes. With Garlic. And Salt. You cut them up, mince some garlic, put 'em on a tray with olive oil and throw them in the oven for a little while. VOILA! Roasted potatoes!
Really... (by the way I'm shaking my head as I type this)

Anyways sorry about that little rant there.

After breakfast, which was pretty delicious, we got in the cars and drove down to Gragnola. This little town about 10 minutes down the mountain that actually is big enough to have some stores and a post office. We went down to look around and then go to this pizza place that Maya's grandmother said was really good. The town was gorgeous with a river and random open rooms full of furniture. And seriously after a little while of walking around it seemed like the little old men came out of the woodwork to talk to us. They didn't even care that we spoke no italian. They just wanted to talk.

Here are some pictures.

The river

I don't know that random italian behind them.

The girl with the lovely face is my roommate Molly.
we found this little set up wandering down a lane. Decided to pose.
River walking with Molly, Megan and Danielle!

One more little anecdote before this part is over because I have been writing this for a long time and there is still a lot to tell, but I can't be bothered to right it all down right now. It would taaaaake about forever.
Now is the story of how we met our 40 year old italian friend Christiano: While we were in Gragnola and after we had taken these lovely pictures above we decided to go find that pizza place. It was around lunch time and so when we went in we were told that they were only serving pasta at the moment and only two different kinds of pasta. We came out and were like ok let's just come back tonight when they are serving pizza. As we were milling around outside the pizza place and mostly playing with this little dog we nick named "fivi" the owners of the dog came out to talk to us. They told us the reason why the pizza place wasn't serving pizza was because they were still getting wood for the ovens. We thought this was reasonable and kept talking to this man and his mother. The man was Christiano and it was pretty funny talking to him because he spoke some english, but only a couple words and phrases learned from the internet. We asked him how to say some things in Italian and he was very jolly.
When the little old men of the town came out of the wood work to talk to us Christiano was there as well and all the old men were telling Christiano that he should pick one of us girls to marry, but all Christiano would say is that he liked being single and didn't want to marry anyone. We ended up seeing him a couple other times when we stopped in Gragnola on the way back up to her grandma's village.
Oh and little tidbit about my funny friend's. My roommate called Gragnola granola the entire time we were there. Also there was another town we passed with a really long name that started with a P that she just called Pandamonium. It was pretty good.

Alright enough for this post.
French word for today: les champignons= mushrooms

Is back in black

Salut!

It's been a while and I have excuses, but the point is that now I have internet in my apartment and I will be posting more regularly.

Now where to start because there has been a lot that has happened.
I think I will do this in installments because all that's been going on recently has been school and more school.

So this post will be about my trip to Italy!

The last week in September we had a break between when our PLP (preparatory language program) ended and the actual school year began. I have a friend whose grandmother lives half the year in a house in Tuscany and she invited me and my group of friends to make the trek down to spend the week there.

It was a pretty intense trip especially since there were 9 of us and we rented two cars to drive down. Just driving there was an adventure, only one of the cars had directions (don't ask me why) and the car with directions totally and utterly failed at caravanning. So we ending up taking a few scenic tours of some places in the complete opposite direction of where we were going not only in France, but in Italy too! We finally gave up after a while on the other car's ability to guide us and bought a map and followed it.

Finally after many a long hour in the car, we made it to her grandmother's house. It was like something out of a movie.
First of all it was on top of a mountain in the middle of the Tuscan country side.
Second, it was in this tiny tiny village of about 50 people that was I don't know how old. Seriously, it had a turret.

I have a funny story about that little plaza right outside the turret.
When we finally got to the village in Fivizzano (that's the name of the area not the village) my friend Maya still had to go and talk to this woman to get the key to her grandparents house since they had recently gone back to San Francisco for the second half of the year. Well as you might have guessed Maria, the woman we were supposed to get the key from, was no where to be found. We even had this woman from the village help us even though we spoke no italian, whatsoever and of course she spoke nothing but italian.

Here is an illustration of just how small this village is, the woman who just happened to see us walking by trying to find Maria's house came out and showed us where it was. When Maria didn't answer she showed us to the village bar, where Maria usually is, but still no Maria. So she took us over to Maria's mother's house because sometimes Maria watches T.V. with her mother at night. All of these places were no more than 2-5 min walks away from each other if that.
I hope I have now convinced you of how truely teeny tiny this village was and is.

Anyways so after all this walking around with this woman and awkwardly trying to understand anything she was telling us, we still hadn't found Maria and had no idea where the key to the house was. After this realization half of our group proceeded to look for an alternate way into her grandmother's house (let me put a disclaimer here that NOTHING illegal was done on this trip... that we are aware of). The other half proceeded to gear up for sleeping outside for the night on the plaza next to the turret. It was quite a beautiful night actually, if a little cold, with a clear sky and you could see the entire milky way. Gorgeous.

Luckily for us though just as we were almost finished gearing up one of the others came up to the cars and told us we were saved! Maya's grandmother's neighbor was home and opened the front gate for us and we found the key under the mat in front of the house door! No sleeping outside for us!
Honestly sleeping outside wouldn't have been bad, but it was the end of september and I don't know if you know, but the end of September on the mediterranean means it's still Summer weather so none of us brought anything remotely warm enough to wear to sleep outside.

So we have a lot of history with that plaza up there. We almost spent the night on it!

Alright it's pretty late here and I have class in the morning so I will continue this Italy story tomorrow and let you read this portion while it's still daytime where you are!

A Bientot!

French word for today
le couloir: Hallway