Life Lessons

It's been a week since my last update, and I'm happy to say that I'm still enjoying everything there is here in Orte! Last week I visited a few different towns around Orte, learned a few new skills around the farm, and just enjoyed being in Italy.

On Wednesday I went into lower Orte (there are two parts, upper and lower) with Elisabeth's friend Patricia into town. Patricia drove me around to some of the surrounding towns just to get a feel for everything that is here. We did kind of a loop to the north and saw places like Montecampano and Amelia, just driving through so I could see. Life is definitely much different out here, but not really comparable to back home. There are pros and cons with both styles of living. Elisabeth also has a beautiful apartment in upper Orte. Most towns in Italy are built into the highest point of a hill/mountain so they can overlook everything. Her apartment is just wonderful and has a great view of the countryside, if I ever came back here on a vacation I would definitely think of renting it out from her!


Thursday I went with Elisabeth on her way to work and she dropped me off in Tarquinia, a few miles from the Mediterranean coast. Tarquinia is an ancient city that used to be the main home of the Etruscan people, who live around 500-300 BC. It's a UNESCO World Heritage Site and most famous for the Etruscan Necropolises. The Necropolis is a site where many ancient Etruscan tombs were discovered. There are over 6,000 tombs scattered throughout Tarquinia and many of them are pretty sophisticated and built into the ground with staircases and such. They also have paintings and artwork on the walls of the tombs, of which only 20 are open to the public. It was definitely pretty neat to see. There is also a museum that I went to in town that had quite a few artifacts. I like that type of history so it was pretty interesting to me, I just wish I knew more about it. The pictures are of shelters that were built to protect the tombs (they are all over the place) and also of inside one of the tombs underground.


There were a few guests at the house this weekend so I spent a lot of time making sure everyone had everything for meals and such and didn't do too much yard work, just kinda hangin' out and doing a few hours work per day. A new helper comes on the 11th and two more on the 15th, so it'll be fun to have some change in the house, especially since all three of them are girls....

Anyway though, I am learning quite a bit here in Orte, about simple things and about life in general. I've learned to drive a stick shift, or I should say learning. I drove once with Elisabeth so she could teach me and after that she sent me off on my own...talk about throwing me into the ocean! I've also learned how to make a great salad, bake loaves of bread from scratch, that olio (olive oil) is good on everything, and that alternative medicine can discover foods that are bad for my body. I'll have to go into that last one in more detail later.

But I suppose I should describe life around the house for everyone that's curious. I should start off by saying that it's extremely different and words aren't enough to describe it, you really have to live it to experience it. As I said before, Elisabeth is very in touch with nature and believes that nothing should be wasted if possible. Energy, water, food, materials, anything and everything gets put back into use in one way or another. The water is solar powered so it's best to take showers in the afternoon when the sun has been out. There's no garbage disposal, food scraps go to the chickens. Every meal is finished or turned into something else for later. The only scraps are from preparation. Milk from cereal and spoiled milk goes to the cats, water from washing the salad goes to the plants. Paper cartons are into the fireplace to start a fire. There are no plastic water bottles here, no big bags of garbage. Clothes hang to dry outside, no dryer. Everything we eat is either grown here or bought organically. The overall rule is that because everything comes from nature, we should try to return everything to nature without destroying it by burning or burying our garbage.

It's really hard to describe without experiencing it, but all in all I completely agree with her. Even after only being here at the house for two weeks, my whole way of viewing the world has been thrown upside-down. I hope that when I get home I can start to implement some of the things I have learned here into my own life, not only personally but also in a way where I can help spread the word about trying to protect nature.

I'm going to try to post updates more frequently so they're somewhat shorter. I hope everything is going well for everyone at home, keep the great comments and e-mails coming, I love to hear from people! Buona sera!