It's been a very long time ago since I've written on my blog. I suppose this could be looked at in two ways, good and bad. Bad because I told myself I was going to keep up with this thing, but good because I've been busy doing other things that I've enjoyed.
With this trip I somehow feel like I'm busy all the time and on the move or doing nothing and sitting down for hours at a time. When we first started traveling back in summer, whenever we were on trains or buses for hours I would always watch a movie, answer messages, whatever, but now it's different. Now all I do is look out the window, and really enjoy sitting down without walking across cities with luggage or just moving moving moving moving feeling tense tense tense waiting to sit sit then walk walk and moving moving moving on and on and on and then finally! 3 hour train ride I'm saved.
I think that if I didn't have to bring any clothes or sleep sacks and it was only two people I wouldn't feel so reluctant to be on the move again.
The past seven months have been an adventure, they've been worth it, they've been exciting, exhausting, comical, delirious, enlightening, full of hard work and fun times.
A lot has happened since England, we've been to Ireland, where we visited Dublin for a night and then made are way across the country to the Cliffs of Moher. Which was extremely cool for me because the Cliffs of Moher was in a project for my 9th grade year. That's one of things that's so interesting about traveling over here, a lot of the things that I've heard of in school (or not in school), mostly historical sites or things like national monuments, it's like they actually exist over here! People actually go about their day in the shadow of the Eiffel tower, people live in apartments across the street from the Colloseum, people have their farms backed up to the Cliffs of Moher. It's amazing to me, though I don't know what I had expected.
From Ireland we took a ferry to France, where our first week we stayed in Paris. I loved Paris, it was the perfect size. Everything was so beautiful! The city had a muchness of life and people and vendors and food and language and art, but it wasn't crowded. I was surprised for my feelings for Paris.
From the city we went straight to a small holding in southern France where we stayed with a woman for two weeks. It was one of the most prettiest places! We stayed in a hamlet, which I never I thought I'd be able to say. The work we did there varied, anything from cleaning out the chicken house to gathering, drying, and shelling walnuts. Our host also had a dog, which we were so happy to have a canine companion once again. We baked our own bread, our own cake, and all around had a very wonderful time with our host in a very beautiful place.
From that farm we stayed in a city for a couple nights before heading to another farm, The Eco Etho Research & Education Centre, at La Combe, where we stayed for two months. Unlike the previous farm, there were other wwoofers and students who were there most of the time. Our two hosts are one of the most interesting people I've ever met, the conversations at meal times could stand alone. When we first got there we did a lot of varying jobs, and unlike the other farms there were a lot of animals! There are eight horses, two milking cows, (and then one calf after one gave birth!), three dogs, sheep, chickens, and a small herd of cattle. Along with the garden and greenhouse. Much of the work was building projects, like a big extension on the barn or building up the dam. Everyone helped out with the varied jobs, like firewood day where we all went out to the woods and gathered the dead wood, which was then taken into the arena and cut up with the chainsaw and axe into wood-burning stove size. We cleared a hillside for the sheep to move into, planted lettuce, mucked, dug up radish, got them ready for storing, and really learned a lot. But unlike all the other farms, in our second month it was just us and one of the hosts, and we each had our own individual jobs. Before everyone left, I was taught how I would do my job. My job was dairy. The dairy room was where I went first every morning at 7:30, and gathered the milk and cream jugs from the house to bring them and wash them. During this time my mom would be milking the cow out in the barn. The milk from the morning before would sit over night, and in the morning the milk and cream would separate, and I would fill the house's milk and cream jug for the day. All the extra milk would be set aside until there was enough to make something out of it.
On the days when there was enough milk, I would either make yogurt, soft cheese, or hard cheese, and when there was enough extra cream, I would make butter. Looking back at the past couple paragraphs it still surprises me that I was actually learning and doing these things. Not just surprised, but excited that my cheese actually turned out well, that I learned how to do something I never knew how to do before! I could say this about so many things in so many situations. I now know how to make a cake from scratch (without a measuring cup) and how to make a chair seat out of baler twine. La Combe is a place of learning, I'm lucky to have called it my home in those two months.
Leaving somewhere is always hard, just like sticking a plant in the ground and then wrenching it up again. Most of the time I am ready to move on, but it's a great effort to pack everything up and get on the move again. It's these moments when I miss home. Home as in a place that is mine, a place that I'm not going to leave and a place where I feel like ahh, I'm home. Up until recently if someone had asked where home was I would have said San Diego! No pause. Now home is wherever I'm at for longer than a couple days. When we're out walking around all day and someone says, "I want to go home," everyone knows they don't mean America, they just mean wherever our belongings are. Where everything we have is residing, where we can rest and be on our own. It's strange how things have changed. San Diego is where are family is, where are friends are, where the people we love live, is it home? Sure, if that's where we are.
In the general sense, America is my home. Never thought I'd get patriotic, but I do love us "yankees" with our backyard bbq and surf towns and diners.
From France we took an overnight train to Venice, Italy. Venice was amazing, even more like a dream than Paris. We only stayed one night, but it was worth it. (even if I absolutely hated walking halfway across the city to get to our hotel from the train station) It was really cold, but we got gelato anyways.
From Venice to Lanciano, where we stayed for five weeks and spent our Christmas and new years. It was so nice to be on our own and in one place for a while. We stayed in the medieval part of the city which was so beautiful! Everything was so old, and yet it's part of everyone's every day life. It was here that we ordered my first course in Geometry and I spent time on school work. I want to learn Geometry, so it wasn't annoying to work on it for as long as needed. Our Christmas was one to remember, there was no where that sold real and life sized christmas trees, so we wound up buying our two foot fake one at a street vendor in front of the Basilica! It was so cute, we kept it up until we left. We met friendly people in Lanciano. We were invited to have breakfast at the language school and we became friends with the lady we saw at the market almost every day. We are constantly meeting new people and exchanging stories.
From Lanciano we took a bus to Rome! Luckily we didn't have to walk far with our luggage (just a subway ride). The next day we took a subway to the Colloseum, walking out of the metro and looking across the street to see this ancient monument was so unreal! I mean it's literally like walking out of the subway and it's just there, in the middle of the city with people living in apartments and restaurants and people going about their day. It's pretty crazy. I didn't realize how much was actually being excavated and preserved, it's amazing how much is left! The next day we went to the Vatican City, where we saw St. Peter's and the museum with the Sistine Chapel. St. Peter's was so enormous, I had no idea! It's really something everyone should see. But it doesn't make you feel small, which is interesting because it seems like it would when you're standing at the top of the dome looking down and everything is so far. The museum was also nice, the modern religious art was interesting, and seeing all the different collections the different Popes had added. The Sistine Chapel was very dark, the paintings themselves were bright but the room was dark. We sat for long time just looking all around, it was really nice being able to just take in everything. The Vatican was definitely breathtaking.
From Rome we went to Sorrento, where we took a day trip to Pompeii and bus ride down the Amalfi coast. Pompeii was really one of my favorite parts of Italy. It actually looked like a city, unlike a lot of other ruins we've seen. I could just imagine the streets and houses and people. What was really crazy is that they had moulds of actual bodies from the moment when Mt. Vesuvius struck. The bodies that we're stuck in the hardened lava eventually decomposed, but since the lava had already hardened around the form of the intact body, there were cavities that matched the shape of the person! It was really amazing.
From Italy we took another ferry to Greece, where we landed in Patras on my birthday! (though technically I wasn't 16 until the next day at 2am because of the time difference) Unlike all my other birthday's I actually felt older, which was strange but almost settling. We took a bus to Nafplio, where we're at now, and arrived at night. We got settled in the apartment we rented and set out to go find a restaurant to eat at (I wanted meat and french fries…) but we wound up finding a cake store where we attempted to buy cheesecake (but it turned out not to be) and we got take away from the food place on our street. It was a really nice birthday, I got the Red Hot Chili Peppers record that I had seen all the way back in Lanciano!! I was so excited. I've fallen in love with vinyl.
Unfortunately this past week has been pretty cold weather and really just grey and gloomy. We've taken day trips out of Nafplio to Mycenae and Epidaurus. Mycenae was really crazy because it was more than a thousand years before Pompeii, and it is still standing! (for the most part) We had dog follow us around the entire time, which happened again with another dog when we went to Epidaurus. Maybe it's because there is a pack of us.. ha ha. The amphitheater at Epidaurus was sooo much bigger than I had expected it to be, and it was so amazing that so much of it was intact. That was a pretty cold day, there was snow up on the nearby mountains.
But, today there was sun! Not a cloud in the sky and it was so nice to see blue overhead. We went walking around the city finally because it was so warm, (like 60!) The sea is so clear, and so blue and green! Walking along the water's edge is beautiful, hopefully I will get pictures up soon. Today was a good last day, tomorrow we're on our way to Athens for a week, then Spain! Time has gone by so fast, I still think of Spain as 6 months away instead of a couple weeks.
Well, time for packing up once again.
-Olivia
