Random Walk Through Campania

Hey Family and Friends,

Its been awhile since I have written in this blog thing. Joe and I have safely and happily left the Abruzzo region of Italy and now are west of Naples in Avellino. We are staying with a wonderful family that run a farm here. They grow hazlenuts, walnuts, almonds, figs, saint fruit (my new favorite fruit), and WINE. They grow an old sweet grape called fjana, and its super old from like the 11th century. They make wine and everything else organically. Somehow they skip the femermeation process...still unsure how that works...
The daily chores range from cutting and burning wood, gathering walnuts and chestnuts, and cooking. Ieri (yesterday) we baked hazelnuts and made REAL LIFE nutella!! It was more poignant than the store bought kind, but Joe made it snazzy but adding Miele (honey). These days I think in Italian, especially by myself. I think my learning curve is pretty logarithmic at this point and I need to get out a dictionary and learn some new everyday words. This may not be that useful down here in Naples, because many people speak Napolitan, which is a whole new language mixing greek, spanish, latin, and italian. It reflects well the stormy past of the city. The weather is lovely down here! Today I spent the day in Northern Naples selling fruit and nuts at an organic farmers market. For those that know me well it isnt that far from my volunteer job at school, but selling to boisterous Napoliteans instead of the Princeton Upper crust is a little different...as you can imagine.
At Rosas farm, we eat really healthy food everyday, and my body is healing from the jabs that travelling can dole. Joe and I have a new record of 4 weeks of time spent together! Our previous record was three when we went to Peru. I think I will load pictures sometime soon or our trip so far. We have to capture one of these amazing sunsets over Mt. Vecuvius.


So the past week, we spent time in Rome with two lovely couchsurfer hosts, Stephanie and Annie. For those who have not surfed, you HAVE to. Its without a doubt the best way to see a city, and its free. We spent three days exploring Roman night life, museams, fontanas, and cathedrals. St. Peters Basillica was OUT OF THIS WORLD. It was one giant statement that hey, we may or may not be the foremost relgion in the world, and they guy leading us...may be the spokesperson of god. It was very cool. Religion here is sort of neat, its very reminiscent of a polytheistic religion. Catholicsm in my mind, mabye from history classes has always been a grim and unyielding set of rules...but here I realize more than ever it is super colorful, and truly had to be in such a colorful place! Saints here are very reminiscent of polytheism, and probably had to be from Italys Roman roots...okay i am done speculating...
The Sistine Chapel and the Popes Museam of Art was truly breathtaking. We almost didnt pay the moeny to go, because we are truly poor, but came out so much richer.

This evening Joe and I snuck into a soccer stadium and kicked the ball, (who we named Claire), around. These are the small highlights of these beautiful days. It might have been the chocolate covered fig I ate earlier...unsure.

For the adults that might be reading this, do not worry! Joe and I think of grad school almost everyday and get more and more excited to go. It is the glorious stable light at the end of this crazy tunnel.

Our future plans go so far: We leave Italy from Rome on October 18th for Barcelona. We plan to swing through Granade, Toledo, and finally end up in Madrid for Halloween to see Ryan Corces. Then on November 3rd we fly to Cairo to meet my love, Jess, who will hopefully guide us through Egypt and the holy land(s). Finally we will buy a ticket to South Africa at the end of the month from either Tel Aviv or Cairo. Need to do that soooner than later :)
If anyone reads this, can they send me an email telling me what in the world is going on over in the US right now? I really dont want to be stuck in Europe because the dollar doesnt mean anything anymore!! Just kidding thats probably not the case at all.

Alright Thats all Folks! Ciao Belli!
Namita

L'aperegina

Alright. So its dark outside...and raining...I think its about midnight. This farm is rediculous. Our LIVES have been rediculous so far. After being shown an amazing time in L'Aquila with David (he works in an underground mountain fortress...science doesn't get any cooler) we figured that our cushy vacation was about to toughen up. I just reread Nams post about "manual labor" HA.

So far my manual labor has consisted of painting a pot, picking blackberries and playing with a goat (more on Nina later). If we were on vacation before, now we are living in a resort. We actually kind of literally are living in a resort. L'aperegina is a small organic farm but primarily functions as a bed and breakfast. There are all sorts of nicely manicured and decorated rooms that the guests stay in. Me and Namitas job is to be something between a curiosity for the guests and a servant. At least thats what we would be if there were any guests here. We missed the high season though which means our chores are just to feed the ducks, donkey and goat. And to set and clear the table. Everynight there are about 2 or 4 friends of Marino and Eliday who come over and regale each other with what sound like fantastic stories but becuase they are in Italian I can only guess.

Actally, my Italian is comming along a bit. I would say I catch about every 5th word that is said, which is just enough to get the gist of what everyone is talking about. Mostly it seems to be about food.

(to be continued)

We are actually Abroad Finally.

It's kind of crazy to think that 6 days have past and we have literally countless more to go before our 9 months is up. We are in Abruzzo Italy with our friend David who works in the National Nuclear Physics lab in L'aquila, Italy. Our Italian is coming along nicely as we spent the weekend in Bologna at the beach with 12 guys and girls from David's basketball team while living in a camper.

We visited David's family to get the camper and was priveleged to taste grapes from his garden as well as FIGS, which besides the minor allergic reaction I had to them, are my new favorite fruit. The grades tasted like something between champagne grapes and basil; two of my favorite things.

Besides being able to do laundry last night, the highlight of the day was stopping at a rocky secluded beach and were able to see the sunset while swimming in a perfectly blue ocean.

We are getting into the groove of traveling and have found that if we want to make it work, we are going to have to spend less that 15 dollars a day for our entire trip in Europe. That sounds difficult but between getting free accomadation through WWOOF and couch surfing I really believe it is possible.

Our Italian is coming along quickly, and we are almost able to be conversational...but severely limited to the present tense.

We leave on Wednesday to go to our first WWOOF farm, L'aperegina. We will check in soon with how difficult manual labor REALLY is. The gist of our future plans are as follows:

Italy, Naples Oct 1-->15th
Spain Oct 15th-->Nov 1
Egypt (to see Jess) Nov 1-->Nov 15th
Botswana and South Africa Nov 16th-->January 1st...

Then who knows!

Well, ci vediamo presto, CIAO!
Namita

Italy HO!

Hello all,

So it's been awhile but we finally have a plan of action! In a more an intelligent decision, Joe and I decided that getting one of these round the world trip tickets for a longer trip like ours wasn't practical given that we could get sick or hurt and need to come back early... Instead we calculated how much our trip would cost if we just bought cheap one-way tickets, and found it to be surprisingly much more affordable. After dallying with the idea of going to Brazil, buying tickets and the WWOOF list, we decided it would be ironically more inexpensive to go straight to Italy (a ticket from Brazil to Europe ran about $800).

Joe found a great fare across the pond to England on SEPTEMBER 4th! Then we got a ridiculously cheap fare from RyanAir (10 bucks) to Italy. We are flying into Bologna, staying at the beach with our good friend David and then meeting up at our first WWOOF farmstay. The farm is called L'Ape Regina. www.laperegina.com. Read about their TREEHOUSE! Apparently it causes young couples to conceive....so if you are having problems....

Anyways, after a couple weeks here we are moving south to a lovely farm in Campania, 1 mile away from the beach and also in the middle-of-nowhere-gorgeous-Italy.

All this sounds wonderful, but I am beginning to realize that farm work is going to actually be really difficult.

I am also beginning to work on my Italian, so from here in Tennessee: Arrivederci Y'all.

Northface BackTrack 50 and Quickdry Towels

So our first major purchase is waiting for us back at the apartment...I can't wait to open it! After much debate about straps, zippers, compartments, daypacks, and volumetrics, me and nam found the perfect packs.
This one is not too big, not too small, not too heavy, not too flimsy, not too expensive etc etc.. it is perfect. This red one up top is mine and Nam got the same one in black


We also ordered two large "Quickdry" towels which are kinda foamy felty things which claim to circumvent the rotting mildew problem we ran into with the cotton towels we traveled with last adventure. Mine is an apricot/curry/orange, Namita's is blue. I kind of like this color coding of all our possessions...


In other trip related news, I went into McCosh today and made an appointment to see Helen the travel nurse. It was super fun to answer the receptionist's question, "And where are you planning to go?..." "Oh you know, Batswana, South Africa, Indonesia, Italy..." By the time I got to Brazil and Argentina she had stopped writing down what I was saying. Our first meeting will be a 45 minute syringe extravaganza. In about two weeks, I should have a brand new immune system. Stoked...

We have an itinerary!

So Carmella from STA travel totally came through. Here is a tentative itinerary that was given to us yesterday. She gave us a quote around $4800 for the entire trip, which does not seem bad at all!

In a nutshell:

30 days in Brazil (September)
1 week Argentina
1 week Spain
30 days Italy (October/November)
1 week Bulgaria
2 weeks Istanbul/Turkey
2 months South Africa/Botswana (January/February)
1 week Ethiopia
2 months India (Feb/March)
1 month Thailand/Indonesia
1 week Tokyo

FLY HOME!

It sounds awesome, but I think it may be a liiiiitle too much. I was hoping to not spend more than $4000. Also after talking to some friends of Forrest's up here in New Hampshire, I think a trip to China might be cool too. Joe and I are more beach/nature people so my first impression of China is that it may be more developed...

ANYWAYS. Happy fourth of July weekend. If anyone...actually...reads this...
Namita

Some Updates

Hey all!



So nothing spectacularly new going on in Princeton, NJ. Joe and I are working in our respective labs, playing a ton of incredible soccer, and getting really excited for leaving. Our projected date of departure is September 1st 2008! We have gotten in touch with "Carmela" from STA travel who has alleviated a lot of our initial questions and worries about using round the world trip tickets. Before when we were investigating Star Alliance and other places, we had to use this silly online application that made an itinerary that you could submit to the airline.

STA travel on the other hand, and Carmela specifically just wants us to give a prioritized list of the countries that we want to go to and they will find the cheapest way for us to go to hit them all. For example, we really want to go to Brazil, South Africa, and Italy. Given these destinations Carmela can find the right order to go in, and also whether some legs might be better cut out if they are too expensive. We estimate that the tickets will cost us ~3,000-4,000 dollars.

In other news, Joe, Forrest, and I have been listening to this Moth Story-telling radio broadcast. If you get a chance listen to it at: themoth.com. So good. That is all! (Picture is of Joe on the oceanside of Campeche, Mexico).