Yesterday afternoon we took a bus about 40 minutes outside of Siena to a small town called Rabolano, where we met up with a two guides who were to lead us on a hike (in Italian, trekking), through the hills to another nearby town in Tuscany.
The started with all of us meeting to make brunch together. I did not actually make anything because my homestay family gives us breakfast every day, but the spread of food the others made was quite impressive! Then we all met again at the bus stop to venture out into the Tuscan countryside, in Italian, la campagna toscana.
I wanted to take as many pictures as I could to show you all how beautiful it was, but I quickly realized that pictures could not do it justice. I will try to describe what we saw and I have posted pictures below in this post, and then you can use both and imagine it for yourself
The town we started at was a very small and very old town built into the side of a hill. Siena might look much like it today had the Francigena road not been built straight through its center. At the time we arrived, there were no people and no cars out. We walked down the middle of the street under an old arched doorway and stopped near a large wall which I believe was part of the town's fortifications, and like the fortezza has now been turned into a park. Then we went on to a medieval Grancia, like a granary, and which is still maintained today.
All of this was told to us in Italian. I was the translator for some of our group several times throughout the day, because one of the guides seemed to not speak English, and the other not well.
We turned from here and continued down the old roads until we suddenly were no longer in the town. The small Italian towns are not like American cities. There are no suburbs. The city simply ends. We crossed a street and were in the middle of a field. The fields extended out from the city as far as you could see, and here and there, usually on top of a hill, there was a old villa surrounded by trees. We walked through the fields, through tall grass dotted with purple and yellow flowers. Everything smelled sweet. When the wind blew, all of the grass would wave and seem to change color, darker and lighter. We came to one point where you could see for miles over the hills rolling, up and down, hills which our guide told us were formed under the ocean thousands of years ago.
We had passed one villa and were continuing down the road when a car drove by with a golden retriever running in front. The dog ran up to all of us and just stood there, and then the man pulled over and got out of the car and introduced us to the dog, who had already decided he was best friends with all of us. We passed the farms where many of the horses which run in the Palio come from, and many of the horses had foals. And we walked through some of the most beautiful land I have ever seen.
Today I went to an Italian church, one which is affiliated with the Methodist church. It was tiny! There were maybe thirty people there, and of course they recognized my roommate and I as new immediately, but they were all very kind and helpful. I know enough Italian that I was able to understand most of what was going on, and when I didn't catch a number, the man behind us would find the page in his Bible, hand it to us, and then take ours. I had my English Bible with me but I didn't have to use it! I plan to go back there when I am in town on Sunday, and maybe get to know the people there better. I am going to email the pastor later and see if they have any other programs. I think that this may be a good link for me to Italian culture outside of my host family if I can find a way to get involved somehow.
This afternoon I am going with a friend to l'orto di Tolomei, a garden behind one of the university buildings here. My homework is to watch a movie, Roman Holiday (In Italian, Vacanze Romane) and describe the characters. We are going to do that today as well.
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