Italia!

Throughout our travels we've heard horror stories throughout the wwoofing comunity about bad wwoofing sites, sites that describe lucious, well tended land where wwoofers end up cleaning toilets for a week or working twelve hour days instead of five. We had our qualms about our Italian farm before arriving, and because we thought we were due some less than perfect accomodations after the wonder of Old Chapel, we're prepared for the worst. Thankfully, the wwoof gods have shined upon us once again. Nathan and I have our opinions about which site may be better, but both of us agree that our current farm is also amazingly breathtaking and that we have almost too much space to ourselves. Here we are about to spend our second night in our own apartment overlooking Tuscan hills over which the sun sets every night on fields of heavy headded sunflowers. Wwoofing is hard guys. Though don't forget we spend our days trekking the cracked clay under a red hot Italian sun, we're pretty happy doing it (at least when we reflect during our siesta.) More soon! Ciao for real!
-Sarah

Update: We left Rick and Lindas on the sixth to meet up with our next wwoof host on the seventh.  We woke up at 6am, to catch a train from Luxembourg at 645. It took about 14.5 hours for us to get from Luxembourg to Pisa. We were super brilliant and forgot to pack food, and also didn't have enough time to get food at our transferrs and as a result all we ate were some peanuts and three granola bars, sorry mom. Anyway, i was a lot of sitting, but some how it seemed shorter than our 8 hour flight.  We had more room on the trains and with 4 connections we switched trains so with the changes maybe that makes the difference.  Either way it was a long and non-productive travel day, though worth it since it was practically free with our eurail passes.  We ended in pisa around 1030 and had to catch us a bus in the direction of our hostel, then walk the rest of the way. We then had one of those amazing accidental travel moments when the bus happened to drop us right next to the old city walls. Across the wall I saw the top of the duomo and Sarah wanted to investigate. Just as we crossed under the archway, we saw the leaning tower, lit up in the night at the end of the piazza. We had no idea we were that close to it and because it was late at night all the tourists were in their hotels only some of the locals out on walks, and it really was amazing to happen upon. Someone was even playing guitar at the base. We would have stayed to sit but we unfortunately still had our packs with us so after a short stroll we continued our march. After the site seeing we took a sketchy walk under a dark graffitied bypass and through a not very well lit street, untill we found our hostel/camp site.  It was actually fairly nice, I would describe it as a small hot caravan within a trailer park.  Which most people think is trashy but after all the places we've stayed we're not picky, and this place was clean, had a bed, and good storage for our overpacked rucksacks.  We even had an outdoor stove and oven to use, which we unfortunatly didn't have the time to try out.  The next day we went back to the duomo area to see it in the light and walk around it more, since we did not have our packs this time, along with thousands of other tourists and huge stands of knick knacks. It was super hot and we sweated out all the water we had
in our bodies.  Sarah got kind of sick, but it was mainly on the train so she was able to sit for a while and recover. We took a train to Cecina, took a bus that we almost missed since it looked like a tour bus, which would have screwed us over royally to getting to our WWOOF site, to Pontigenori.  We spent 15 minutes figuring out the italian pay phone, so we could call our hosts before they picked us up.The place is amazing.  we are on a hill in the middle of Tuscany and we get our own little apartment.We cook our own lunc here but our groceries are provided by the hosts.  The place is really nice and well kept.  Our hosts are quite well
off, they both used to be lawyers and have lived all over the world, and in the past few yeras decided to retire on a farm I suppose.  The sunset, which is happening right now, is also, I'm going to say it again, amazing.  Sarah can probably write a better poet description than that but it really is great. The red sun sets over rolling hills with only the lights of a small city in one corner, and when the sun sets behind the hills the horizon is lit with faint oranges and red, and the hills almost look foggy or hazey, with the peaks of the hills cresting over purple haze.  It's spectacular. The work here is fairly laid back. we work 5-6 hours a day independently on tasks we are assigned. Here we can decide our hours as long as we work around
the required number.  It's definitely different than working at old chapel, but nice to have time to ourselves.  The big house, and attached apartments, and area they live in is so well kept and clean and beautiful.
The only problem is the heat.  It is 100 times hotter here than at old chappel, and there is not one ounce of rain or a single cloud in the sky.  We are constantly putting on sun screen, sweating tons, and being attacked by bugs.  Sarah as developed a new found hate for giant scarabs, and is known to run from them as they dive-bomb, it's actually kind of funny.  We've worked two full days and the heat has really drained the engery out of us.We have two more work days then we get two off. At that point we think we will head to Cecina and spend a few days at a seaside hotel and on the beach. We have some manic travel days ahead once we leave so we're just taking it a bit easy when we can.  Until next time.
Ciao!

Nathan