One Week Til Takeoff!

Hello friends! Welcome to my blog! As the the departure date printed on my one way ticket to Rome is looming, I figure it's about time I start updating all of you as promised. Over the next 9-ish months, posts to this blog will be posted on Blogger, Twitter (@EmlyMae), and Facebook. If you prefer to receive these updates via email, you can subscribe to the RSS feed and choose the email option. Using my handy iPad, I'll be able to compose blog posts wherever I happen to be, and then upload them to the blog whenever I find myself with an Internet connection (hopefully about once a week). While I'm in cities, I'll also be posting micro-updates to Twitter and Facebook.

As some of you might have heard, it turns out that there is no such visa for the trip I wanted to take. The only long-term visas available are for rich people with independent incomes and their own villa in Tuscany, or for people who have been invited to work in Italy by a reputable company. So I have had to revise my travel plans slightly, but hopefully that won't impact my project very much. Instead of nine straight months in Italy, I will be spending three months in Italy, three in the UK and Ireland, and then returning to Italy for the spring.

The project (a reminder): Create an English-Italian glossary of all words one might need on the farm, in the kitchen, or at the table (hence Farm, Kitchen, Table), interspersed with recipes, essays, and snapshots from this year's adventures.

So far, I have farms set up for the first three months in Italy. Here's a rough itinerary:

September 14: Arrive in Rome! Spend five days soaking up Italian in cafes and on the streets and five nights trying to sleep in a hostel.

September 19: Spend two weeks harvesting grapes at a castle near Siena.

October 3: Begin four weeks harvesting grapes and olives and cooking at a villa outside of Grosetto.

November 1: More olives (and horses!) at a farm near Cortona, this time with an old stone mill to make olive oil.

November 22 - December 13: Florence, Parma, Modena, and Bologna!! (read: art, cheese, balsamic, meat!!!)

December 13 - March 13: Some combination of Ireland and the UK (cold! wet!). So far, an organic brewery in Scotland and a few dairy farms in Ireland look promising. Still a little early to set that up.

March 13 - May ?: Back to Italy, probably Emilia-Romagna, to maybe herd some goats, make some cheese, etc. Again, to early to set up specifics.

I'm mostly ready... I still need to make a few little shopping trips, find a few more warm layers (see cold! wet!), and make sure everything fits in my backpack. Fitting enough layers for anywhere between 35 and 80 degrees in one backpack is going to be... challenging. Wish me luck!


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Location:Grayslake, IL