Viva Italia!

Once upon a time, a girl travels to Italy. She sees ancient Rome, walks romantic streets at night, eats delicious and breath taking food, meets a lovely Italian boy, meets amazing friends from around the world.

I don’t know how I got so lucky, to be that girl, but somehow it happened. This summer I am in Italy, wwoofing (a program that connects volunteers with organic farms), sightseeing, traveling, and otherwise gallivanting around. I went straight from freshman spring finals to Milan, where I traveled to Venice (Venezia in Italian), and Umbria with my mother. I then worked on my first organic farm, which was a fruit jam and juice farm. I spent my days weeding lampone (raspberry) plants, pitting apricots, and attempting to substitute our gigantic summer workout by sprints up the hill. After meeting some amazing fellow wwoofers and the host family, I went to Rome for a week for some quality sight seeing. I was lucky enough to be able to stay somewhere for free in exchange for teaching English for two hours a day. The mother of the family that I stayed with was a communications director for swanky clubs in Rome, and she was incredibly generous and took me out with her every night. I must admit, amongst the ancient ruins and late night disco’s I slacked on my work out routine. Now, however, I am at my second farm and am starting to pick it up again. I have no choice, preseason starts in just 1 month! The second farm’s name is Podere Amarti. Amarti means ‘to love you’. It is a perfect place. They host vision quests, meditation and yoga retreats. I think that it was fate that I showed up here, it is made for me. I’ve been starting my day with homemade yogurt and the lemon-apricot jam we made the day after we arrived. I’m going to be here till the end of July. After that, I have 10 free days, the first week and a half of August completely free. Hopefully I find something spectacular to do, I’m sure something will pop up out of the blue and become another integral part of this adventure. And after that, preseason starts on the 15th! If I didn’t miss the team and volleyball so much, I don’t know if anyone could get me to leave.

Viva Italia!

Lucia