Three posts at once, sorry!

Chianti Vineyard – Wine tasting

Saturday, we went to Ama. It is a farm/vineyard for Chianti Classico Wines and olive oil. These are northern Italy’s two main agricultural concentrations because of the terrain’s many hills. The hills cause water to not soak into the plant for long and dilute valuable nutrients and cause the sun to hit plants in different ways and cause grapes to have diverse flavors based on exposure to different nutrients. The same goes for the olive plants. The south is better for the vegetables of Italy. We tried three different wines. One was Come’era, which means how it was. This is made using old techniques with a many diverse grapes blended together. Chianti Classico is the other wine that we tried and it is made with a newer technique using only kind of grape. We also tried some thing else that we dipped biscotti in, it may have been Brandi though, because it was really strong. One other neat thing is that they use machines made of marble to preserve the flavor because machines made of stone can oxidize the grapes. They also store the wine in huge bins outside because again they want to preserve what is left of the old buildings and not make any additions. Hence, the wine goes outside. We did also get a lot about the history of this region, half way between Siena and Firenze and the fighting between territory and has always gone on.

Walking Tour of Siena

Sunday we went on a walking tour of Siena to see even more of every sight of the city that could be on a postcard. You can literally stop in pretty much location of the city and see the old brick buildings or Duomo from afar that could be the perfect desktop background. I think the take a picture button on my camera might need replaced after this trip. We learned more about some of the 17 contradas that compete in Siena’s famous Palio. By drawing, 10 of the 17 contradas (designated by different neighborhoods) will compete in the Palio. The Palio is a horse race on July 2^nd and another in August for 1 minutes and 20 seconds. These people go CRAZY for the Palio. The winner gets bragging rights for the whole year and wins a painting to put in their neighborhood museum. The painting is by a local artist and has three requirements; a horse, contradas and Mary has to be somewhere in the picture. P.S. they find a way to incorporate Mary in everything! She is even on street corners and in random windows. I also ate my first Italian pizza today. It had buffalo mozzarella cheese and was delicious. I’m hoping to only gain 5 pounds on this trip, haha. I may be successful or not gain any because we literally walk up mountains all day long. Love you all and tty soon J

First Days of Class

Yesterday was our first day of actually class. I am taking History of Emigration, History of Art and Italian. Everything is taught in Italian and today I had a little bit of trouble with History of Art but hopefully I will be able to get by. There are girls who have never spoken Italian until three weeks ago in this class, so that makes me feel a little better. In History of Emigration, I got to share that my grandpa is from St. Bartholomew outside of Naples and that my last name was actually (not so well) derived from iasiello. This class goes through the different periods of time and the reasons for emigration to different parts of the world. I guess they speak some Italian in Argentina, haha maybe that might have to go on the list of places to see next.

Since we do not have homework Angela, a girl who is leaving Thursday, took us around to some of her favorite spots of the city. She has really met a lot of random people and made connections. It was neat to see the city from the eyes of someone who has truly lived up her experience here.

Today at dinner Maura told us that she is sad to say goodbye to people and told us we will have to continue to call her after the program. She also went on to say how hard it was to let go of each of her children. It’s hard to try and console someone in another language especially when we are used to overly consoling someone’s hard feelings in our native language. I guess I felt rude because I couldn’t put in words my understanding for her. I just try to make faces to convey that I understand and feel sad for her.

P.S. Italians think that if you leave the house with wet hair, the sky is going to fall on you or something.