L’Aperegina: Our new home

Here we are in Italy’s region of Abruzzo, just outside of the Gran Sasso National Park.

It is so wonderful here! Our hosts are very kind to us, and our room is almost luxurious (we even have a bidet!). Marino and Elide operate an agroturism resort (L’Aperegina, meaning The Queen Bee) just like our last host family, but they are wrapping up their season now because they live in Australia from November to March. They have only had a few guests since we’ve been here and their last ones of the year will departed our second week here. Maybe because it’s the end of the season, or maybe it’s just a difference in personality or culture, but these hosts are much more laid back and less demanding than our other hosts have been. They keep using the word “slow.” We’ll start at eight-o-clock, but slowly. Varnish this wooden bench, slow, slow.

View from the back yard. If you look closely you can see the Adriatic Sea on the right. This picture was taken on one of the only clear days we’ve had here. We live in a cloud.

Apparently there is a pretty large Italian population in Australia, because Marino and Elide told us that they don’t speak much English when they’re there. Nevertheless, their English isn’t so bad, and they say that they want to practice it, which makes me feel only a little bit less guilty about the fact that we came to Italy without any Italian language skills. I’m not convinced that they understand everything that we say to them, but they’re very smiley, and having just been on the other side of the language barrier I am very impressed with how well they handle communication frustrations. They do speak in Italian unless they’re speaking directly to one of us, and I’m glad for that because it’s a beautiful language. Marino also has been teaching us some vocabulary as we go about our day (Our favorite word is cazzuola, which means “trowel”). Italian is definitely very similar to Spanish, but I only catch a few words or so per sentence. It’s usually not enough to follow a conversation.

As far as work goes, we’ve been cleaning and closing up the place: cutting tree branches for fire wood, varnishing some benches, moving all of the outdoor furniture inside. We also have learned some cooking skills, specifically canning and preserving.

Marino teaching me how he cans tomatoes for all of the pizza and pasta he’ll make next tourist season.

It’s cold here. We’re in the mountains now, and it was extremely rainy the first few days after our arrival. I was a very drastic change from sweating in Rome. Apparently this weather just started here the day we arrived. Hopefully it will get a bit warmer again when we descend! I didn’t pack very many cold-weather clothes for our trip to the Med.