More than halfway through my stay in Tuscania already!?!? How time flies! The past week has been quite an amazing experience, but by now I'm probably beginning to sound a bit like a broken record. School is going well, my marks on my Italian quizzes probably show that I've learned at a much quicker rate the course was designed for...but hey, it's easy, fun, and sort of imperative to pick up Italian when I live with a family that knows nothing else. My food and wine pairing class is going very, very well. Tonight is our midterm, so I guess I cannot assess how much exactly I've learned until next time. However, I am absolutely loving the course, because I'm learning valuable life skills, such as when I am to host either a large banquet or party or rather just have an elegant night with a special person whom I'm trying to impress, I will be able to not only satisfy their stomachs, but also send their taste buds on ride they'll never forget.
As always, outside of school, I am learning even more. On Saturday, my host father, Constantino, took Charlotte (for those who do not know who she is, she is a fellow study abroad student who means quite a lot to me) and me to an old Templar castle. This wasn't your picturesque Camelot, complete with a moat and massive drawbridge, but rather a fortified residence in the middle of some of the most amazing landscape I have ever seen. The family who lives there now explained how the Templars who lived there from the 10th to about midway through the 12th century were a very self-sustainable lot, and would grow all of their food there and keep and raise the animals that they needed to help them survive. In addition, they build their castle over a spring, which still runs today, meaning that water was never a problem. The family who now lives there lives a very similar life, though adapted for today's standards of living. They are essentially Lavender farmers, and produce multitudes upon multitudes of lavender oil and water, which I inferred from their Italian to mean that they contribute to lavender in perfumes, soaps, and other like products. They also have many animals which they breed and raise to help them with their chores. Being on their property and seeing all that this family does, I began to realize that what most of us in America view as essential for life is really just a bunch of bogus that isn't required for LIFE, but rather required for our COMFORTABLE living. The requirements for life consist of a set of routines that I would be willing to say 80+% of Americans have never experienced or have any desire to experience. This was a family that never has to travel far to get things that they need to prepare for food, they never have to commute for miles into a city for work, and most notably they don't have to deal with seeing skyscrapers and crawling metropolises wherever they go. Of course this idea freshly instilled in my mind was drilled even harder when after we were done at the castle, Constantino took us to his brother's "ranch," rather more like a farm by our definition.
This farm is located about 35 km southwest of Tuscania, in a valley from which the sea is barely visible between a couple of hills in the distance. In other words, absolutely gorgeous! It is easy to see why this area was selected to buy some land and grow crops...plus there are Etruscan tombs littering the area, not only adding a bit of Indian Jones-like adventure but also signifying that humans valued the grandeur of the land here thousands of years ago. The family (I couldn't quite make out any of their names, for their Italian was quite fast and mumbled) grew about 10-15 different kinds of crops, ranging from giant egg plant to little red, hot peperoncinis to grapes for wine. Talk about being self-sufficient, I mean these people went out of their valley only for leisurely activities and to socialize with family and friends. This coming Thursday, I am going to get to return to experience a true Etruscan dinner, which I am super pumped about, especially because it is supposedly quite picante, so I will be sure to report back on how delicious I am sure it will be. Regarding the tombs, well I did not to go into any but we saw quite a few around, and the father and son were extremely knowledgeable on the subject. I cannot quite reciprocate this knowledge, because A) I would butcher the story a bit due to my lack of knowledge, and B) it would break the confidentiality that was instilled in me. All in all though, I learned so much about the quality of life on Saturday I feel could not be replicated by living in a place, such as America, where everything seems quite easy.
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