Ciao Tutti!

Ummmmmmmmm how impressed are you that I created my OWN BLOG!?!? Admittedly it's one of the easiest things to do. I just uploaded a whole week's worth of clips that I wrote last week. I hope you enjoy! Elizabeth and I have had so much fun and it's already been a wild ride.

We started working at 7:30 am on Monday morning. We arrived at 7pm on Sunday. Not the best planning on our behalf in terms of dealing with jet lag, but we survived. Here is the email I sent to my family during Lunch that Monday:

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I arrived in Italy and we have somewhat settled into our new place. With all of our stuff not yet properly unpacked it looks like hurricant Hanna hit our room. We are living with six boys and three girls. Liz and I have our own room, with two closets so we are happy. There are two showers, but our other female roomate Rita told us to use only one because she cleans it herself... so our showering technique for the next two months will be sitting in a tub with a handheld faucet. Kindof fun actually! We had THE MOST DELICIOUS meal last night. An enologist here named Andrea (I almost told him that was my moms name but thought that might make him feel weird) took us out to dinner at the restaurant that Ceretto owns. So basically - the first dish was ground RAW beef - a big mound of it - with fennel, carrot, and a slice of parmesean cheese, all drizzled with olive oil. I was totally expecting the sort of ground beef we have in the states, but this was just clean, healthy raw beef! Such a thrill. Then we had three beef tortelloni with pork, rabbit, and I think beef. Equally as delish. We shared a bottle of their best white wine called Blange - and it is 100% arneis. SO refreshing. OH and we had a digestif of grappa last night and I acutally kindof liked it! Kindof a rosey finish... Liz got terrible heartburn. So we got up at seven thirty this morning, to begin work at eight. Today, we have unwrapped new french oak barrells, and are now painting the middle of the barrells with "bad" moscato wine - which is the varietal that they use to make their grappa. They do this so you can decipher between red and white wine barrels. Then at lunch we had a tuna and egg salad (mom youd be in heaven) and I really wanted to ask for some salt, but a) I dont want to be rude and b) Ive got to try to break that habit sometime!!! We then had a pasta with meat sauce - and the pasta was green because it had swiss chard in it! I was tyring to explain to one guy how to say swiss, but he could only pull off SWEZZ SHARD. Very cute. Dad, we had this wine with lunch called Monsordo - which liz and I took to be their equivalent of our Insignia. Its a blend of Cab, Merlot, Syrah. and Nebbiolo. So delish - and Im working hard to pull out aromas from wines - today I pulled brown sugar?? Liz could not concur, but who knows! Have you ever smelled brown sugar in a wine??

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Here's what happened the next couple of days

1. We were given a car. The car was given to us on the day that we worked from 8am to 10pm. It took us an hour and a half to get to our house. It usually takes 20 minutes. Lizzie was not familiar with european stick shifts. Just as we were pulling up our long and rocky driveway, we hit a rock and punctured the oil tank. The next day, after the mechanic came to repair it, we were told we could not drive long distances, and should keep our speed to a minimum. We told them that we were okay not having a car.

2. We have helped Franca collect many varieties of grapes for laboratory testing. So far we've collected Arneis, Barolo, Dolcetto, Merlot, Syrah, and Barbera. We have learned that the largest crop of grapes they have is Arneis, but the Barollo is the most important in terms of their reputation and profitability. And the coolest thing I have learned is that there is no assisted watering of the vines!!! Every bit of water that the grapes take in is from rain. How cool is that??

3. We have learned that it is just fine for Italian boys to walk around the house in their "tighty whities" or boxer breifs. Literally, the boys in our house hang out in their undies. We thought it was just one guy at first, but no. Also, I had to take out some laundry so that I could put in a load. I hung all of the boy's things on the drying rack and I came across.... a man thong. It was purple, stretchy, and I will be forever scarred.

4. Looks can be deceiving. The man who's in charge of us is named Alessando. Alessandro Ceretto. He and Andrea invited us to a birthday party last saturday night. It was the wildest party I've ever been to. And Alessandro lead the whole thing! It was so cool to see such a serious business man cut loose and lead the party. There was a two hour cocktail hour with varoious cheeses and that meat that I'm so fond of. Oh and also stuffed squid. Bomb.com. Anyways, when we finally headed to dinner, there were two long tables. One was occupied by the "old" people, and the other by the young ones. For some reason we were seated at the old people table. Anyways, the old people got a loudspeaker, and began dancing and chanting old italian songs. After that, the young ones offered a rebuttal chant. People were standing on the table! People were kissing strangers! People were SHOUTING AT THE TOP OF THEIR LUNGS! It was a wild party, and we were there from 9pm until 3am. Lizzie and I then slept till noon.

I'm pretty sure that in addition to Henri, my true origins are from Italy. I'm way too loud and wild to be a German.

5. In most working situations in Italy, two people do the work while five people watch. We've been reminded of this expression about three times now, and are attempting to take on this new, slow paced work ethic.

Well, thats about it for now. Stay tuned, this will be a recurring column of all of our Italian learnings.

Bocci per tutti