Captions

Thfirst picture is all the wwoofers eating lunch outside with the farm, I forget the order, but you will also see some photos of lanciano, which we visited the other day. You will also see our picnic in the fields on the day of liberation, April 25 th. the three of us are z, dil, and drew. The man with th boy is Simon, an English family friend who has an English language school in town, and the boy is Moreno. One photo is the sun coming up over the farm, and the other was taken while waiting for the train to go to the festival. Another picture is the actual festival, as you see it's a saint covered in snakes. One photo is Zabeth eating, and also her kwi eggs, and the garden bed she made? Then the Hungarian BBQ.

Monday

Its a slightly overcast day here in fossacesia, more specifically the localita we live in is called piano favaro. The morning started as usual with horse clean up, then drew and I came in for coffee and bread and jelly. Breakfast conversations follow, normally regarding what chores need to be done. This morning was clean up from Saturday nights dinner. It didn't happen yesterday because the hungarian crew came over yesterday again for lunch. We cooked the kebabs remaining from Saturday, and had bread and salad. Zabeth, the kids, dillon, drew, and peter, the english speaking Hungarian all played soccer after lunch. We played in the main horse arena, using wheel barrels as our goal. Recently we have also figured out how wonderful of a place the arena is for frisbee, once the poop is clean. Back to today, Zabeth washed out around 50 beer bottles from the weekend because they are saved and used for canning the harvest of pomodori. I made bread, but stalled and took a nap while giving the bread time to rise. For lunch we had lentils in pasta. After lunch things slow down, we had coffee and watched Lorena play pick up sticks. Zabeth is asleep like a log.

Hungary for dinner

So the new job around here today was a complete shuffle of living space and rooms. Wednesday night two people showed up and joined the crowd. They are Germans and their business is building ikea stores. they are building a new store in Chieti, the capital of the province we live in now. These two German fellows have the contract, but all of their construction workers, subcontracted, are from Hungary. The German guy who is the boss, schteven, is incredible. For instance, instead of getting all the workers hotels he rents them a farmhouse in the countryside! This last weekend the work was getting the lower part of the next door house ready for the German and 6 other hungarians. Once that was done and they arrived things were kosher. Last night though, schteven had another eight workers show up from Hungary, he had rented another agriturismo over the Internet, but once he showed up it was not quite what the website advertised. In response he asked Carlo what the odds were of renting some more property here at the farm. Whatever the odds, they probably weren't as good as the money schteven offered, because this morning we were all informed that we would now be living in the living room, as Carlos sister would takes our room, and more workers would move into the upper part of her house! This morning we packed up and moved in... Or out... Who even knows.... To the living room. Around five the rest of the workers showed up and settled in the house next door. Aside from trying to nap five feet away form the kitchen sink, and changing clothes in the computer room, we really can't complain. As I said the boss is excellent, and for dinner tonight he bought about 5o sausages, lamb, salad, potatoes, beer, 10 liters of wine, bread, and formaggi, and everything else you can imagine. We lit two outdoor fires and cooked all the meat over an open flame. The moon is full and the table is covered in candle light and food. Everyone is happy, STUFFED! And speaking multiple languages.

Hope for humanity

Yesterday Zabeth and I went to town for some chores. One thing on our list was to put minutes on the cell phone. Immediately we found a megastore that dealt all major brands and other sound equipment. The lady at the counter showed us what we needed to do and how much time we could add for 25 dollars. Then she walked us to the register to pay, I forked over my card and was only charged 15. I didn't say anything until we left,nut Zabeth noticed too that the price was low. I was concerned that we had just been had,nthey take payment but nothing happens on our phone account. Worse yet I gave them my credit card so they could feasibly charge more after we left.nthe next hour I was moderately consumed by the notion. Then we received a text saying thanks for purchasing credit, so we felt relief. Then ten minutes later the lady who waited on us called and said that she undercharged us, it seemed she lost the figure in the translation. Went from being vulnerable in a foreign country, to being responsible for this nice lady losing her company ten dollars. She asked us to come back? Seeing as how we went from the had to the haver,mew could have easily avoided the situation forever, but understanding the angst we felt all morning until she called, we dutifully walked back to the store and gave her the rest of her money.

Warming

We decided yesterday that we're going to be leaving here on the morning of the tenth. One week. It's a little short of our month that we planned on being here, but it's also close enough. Yesterday dillon made bread during the morning, and Zabeth made three excellent pizzas for dinner. One with wild greens, one with potatoes, and one with tomatoes. Carlo said it was the best American made pizza he had ever tasted. There are some people moved in next door, staying for a month. They are a foreign working group here to open a new Ikea in the town of Chieti. They are lucky that the company puts them in a from house near the ocean, rather than the motel. It's fairly interesting because mass produced furniture is the antithesis of Carlo, himself a master carpenter crafting small prices in his homemade workshop. Irony. This morning we got an early start on shoveling up horse poop, so that by noon as it warmed up we were fairly done. We took a walk to the store, then sat under an olive tree and drank a Peroni, and ate a block of Parmesan.

Festivo serpentine

This hours day we planned to take the day off and travel to cuculo, for the snake festival. It's held first Thursday every may, until this year. It has now switched to the first of may, but luckily we found out late last night and ADAPTED accordingly. Game plan was 440 wake up, train hat 510 to pescara. Pescara to cuculo at 620, fun and snakes all day. We arrived on time, but there is no 5 am train on holidays, such as may day! Luckily here was one at 8 30, so we hunkered down on the beach and watched the sun rise. Then napped, chilled, thawed, and walked back to la stazione. We barely made the pescara connection, a special train running only for the festival. We made cocullo at 1130, great timing. It's a mountain town about two hours away, with 280 inhabitants. Te patron saint is domenica, guard against toothache and snake bites, and today is a celebration of him. It is a mass famously ending in a bell rung with teeth, and hen they parade a statue of the saint down the main street. The statue is covered in snakes! So it's a big party, with street vendors, period music and costumes, meat, sweets, junk. We left at 440 and got back to Ffossacesia @ 8 thirty, now we're home and pooped, goodnight.