FESTA!

I am so used to having back to back tasks and things to be done all the time, during school or even in the summer, that I am running to Marco asking if he needs help... and he is always telling me to calm down. A phrase that Marco always says out of the few English phrases that he has perfected is, "Not a problem." Nothing is a problem for him. Everything is good. :)
But yesterday we did work harvesting for the market that is taking place today, Wednesday. I harvested Watermelons, tiger melons, other melons, Zucchini, chili pepper thingies, and also I threw away rotten melons into the compost bin. You know, it was amazing because some of the zucchini's were the size of baseball bats...you could kill someone with it; sadly we can't sell them though, since they are too huge.
So moral of the story learned on the farm yesterday... bigger is not always better.

After this, I worked in the kitchen with Francesco, the cook, to prepare the lunch! It was my first time and I think I failed but Francesco said I was a good assistant! hehe. I grilled zucchini and I grilled eggplants and I made a tomato baked dish. I am super excited to learn more, but I was quite satisfied with my cooking yesterday!
Finally, I took a cold shower; there is only cold water here. It is very scary to take a cold shower btw, it takes me 30 minutes to convince myself that, yes, I am freaking dirty and that I NEED to shower, even if it means freezing to death.
Lisa and I got a lift to the  Grande Emilia, that super huge market with Ipercoop and everything.
I needed to get a local phone plan for emergencies and she needed to buy gifts since she is leaving soon.
It was quite fun and we accomplished our goals. I even bought one of those coffee makers for home woohoo!!
We had to catch the bus home and we were dreading it since communicating with the bus driver usually turns out to be a disaster. However, it was surprisingly easy this time. The bus driver was a smiley guy and he talked to us for the whole time...or at least with Lisa because she at least had some Italian speaking skills. I just smiled and laughed. He even told us not to pay, but I had already put the money in! We got to the farm in five minutes and we were soooo happy!
We made sure we walked by all the farm workers just to let them know...wassupp we're still alive and we got back all by ourselves!!!
OH and Festa is party...so you should know that last night they threw a huge party for a friend of a friend of Marco's...Her name is Valentina. There were about 25 or 30 people last night here for the huge festa and so Lisa, Lucca, and I, for once dressed up and were not wearing farm clothes. Oh and right before we went down for the party at nine, we had some free time and Lisa and I had a jam session in her room. She really misses singing, since she is like a hard core musician and lives in a house of musicians in Ireland. I never really heard her sing before because we would like sing softly at the train station, but deear lordy lord I was amazed. We did, "Dream a little Dream" and she was bustin it out!  hahha it was really great. She's done more than a few gigs and has a little band. Anyways we were even joking about doing happy birthday on the uke for this Valentina girl we didn't even know, but after really thinking about it...we thought...better not.

The festa was perfecto! The candles were lit, as we sat outside under the stars, hearing Louis Armstrong in the background of the night while enjoying a beautiful Italian buffet. However there were some disturbing parts of the dinner; like when I found that my foot was prodding a half dead pidgeon for half the dinner...in which I initially thought was someones bag under the table. Also when Marco decided the best way to get  a beetle away from him was to flick it onto me...hahha
      It was a great night and finally we said Buono notte and I did the Italian-kissing-on-both-cheeks to about 15 people as I said Ciao and good night. You really had to make a statement about which side you were going to start on for the polite goodbye kisses, because I almost ran into a few peoples faces and straight up kissed them on the mouth because I was indecisive about which side to start on. Oh gosh i make it sound so hard and like a challenge but really its very easy to warm up to people quickly here in Italy.