Prima settimana as a College Graduate. On a farm.

So thanks to my lack of monies, and pouring all my savings in that joke of a overly forced academia study abroad program, I am volunteering on a mostly olive and clementine farm in a region called La Puglia. Its hard to describe except the city where I am most near has a rustic lack of urban design as southern development is far down on Berlusconi's finance agenda, since flying his private escorts in to his villa obviously take more presidence than cleaning up the south. Sound familiar? give or take a prostitute, add some corruption, cocaine and/or corporate kickbacks/sponsorship and a pinch of empty promises. And thats the story of a lot of peoples lives.

Anyways, the people im working with are pretty awesome, very seattle-like for what concerns lifestyle. Good music, homemade stuffed pizza with olives from the backyard (not exactly Seattle...), a sweet pair of drums, matè, and napping by the fire. Its sort of inspiring to live out on a farm, work for your room and board but working in a way thats in syncronation with the sun and the dirt.  So I guess me being really broke and curious about food and doing that program actually has a brightside to it. Is it possible to become a traveller for profession? I think it would gross me out to settle and become a number at a job that wont make any sense just so that I can buy a car to drive to work and then drive to work to pay for that car. I know there are cool jobs that exist, but the chances of me finding one with a Bachelors in Italian in a economic crisis and the unemployment rate steadily increasing makes me shiver with pessimism. che brivido.

Anyways, the point is that when i get home, I think I want to figure out a way to learn spanish and go WWOOF in South America. Go see some mountains and go puddle jumping. It would kinda be neat. I can feel it.

Im getting pretty savvy into listening and attempting to decode various italian accents and dialects wherever I stay. And since Puglia was influenced by the Greeks, its dialect is a huge fridge for my linguistic appetite. Sometimes I catch my "boss" speaking in dialect and ask him to repeat and explain, and he usually tells me the words came from Latin and or Greek and I giddly mwahaha like a total geek. I also spend my free time reading old pugliese poetry, random italian contemp. lit. that reminds me of Kerouac and Palahniuk and cookbooks. Then nap by the fire.

Food in Puglia is wicked good. The cuisine seems to dig almonds alot, my 1st  treat when i got here was a almond flour pastry with dark chocolate coating filled with a orange marmalade with a spreads' worth of marzipan inside.  Fried Stuffed Foccaccia and Calzones is also one of their specialties, I ate a foccaccia that was made out of fried rice and stuffed with artichoke tomato and prosciutto. It was hearty. Then eating freshly butchered pork chops grilled on the fire from the neighboring farm who just slaughtered it maybe 2 days prior is also pretty fantastic. And, juicy.

I better go, its time for my nap by the fire.

p.s. please excuse my spelling. no spell check!! is ruining my life!