Day #49 in Orvieto

April 12, 2013 – Friday

Yesterday I wrote about how it was going to be 70 degrees today… wrong. So wrong. It was like 50 and a little windy, but it was still a great day to work on the farm! At 8:30 we met Roberta and she brought us out of Orvieto to her farm/garden. We split up into groups – one group was hoeing, another was weeding strawberries, and another was fixing up a shed. Ashley and I were working with the onion plants for most of the day. For a while we were “fluffing up the dirt (not sure what it’s really called, but we were fluffing dirt) on rows of onion plants. After that, we went back to put ashes on the rows of onions. It took forever! Although it was a little bit chillier than we had hoped, it wasn’t too cold and it was nice to spend the entire day outside. Roberta brought us white pizza (apparently white pizza is just bread here, because there wasn’t any cheese or sauce!) at 11am and we all ate like 5 slices each since we thought that was our lunch. But it was actually just a snack because only a few hours later, she made us a huge lentil pasta dish, along with her own canned zucchinis, and then bruschetta with her own tomatoes. They were seriously the best tomatoes I’ve ever had. We were so stuffed by the end of the meal and Roberta continued to apoligize for the “simple meal.” She then brought us coffee and a “simple” cake, which was obviously delicious and topped with her own homemade marmalade. We spent over two hours eating lunch (well, second lunch) and listening to Hannah talk about her first semester in Orvieto. After lunch, we finished up our work and she drove us back to Orvieto around 4:30! It sounded like she wanted us to come back, so I think we will definitely go back! Here are a few pictures: 

I was actually a lot happier than I look here...

After the farm, we returned to the monastery to hang out before everyone else returned from their pilgrimage around dinnertime. I had a some (a lot) of essays to write so I worked on those, did some laundry, etc. I’m excited for this weekend because I don’t have anything planned. Well I’ll actually be studying for my big test on Wednesday but other than that, this weekend will be pretty relaxing!

It was so great when the rest of our group returned from their trip. It was a frenzy of hugs and frantic storytelling because there was so much that happened during the past 3 days apart from each other! Dinner at Locanda was even better because there was so much to talk about. After dinner, we had Internet time and I was there for a little while before I talked to my parents on my cell phone (toy cell phone). It was great to talk to them! I also had to talk to my sister about the season finale of Pretty Little Liars, because I randomly watched it yesterday while I was at the library – so there was a lot to talk about because it was intense.

Tomorrow morning we’ll probably go to the market, although I’m going to try to not buy $10 of dried strawberries this week. Although it’s so temping because they’re delicious!