Blog #9

Every time that I think I this trip can't get any better, it does. Today we went to
a festival for Santa Caterina, which included a parade in Orroli. We started off at the beginning of the parade in the countryside where people were getting dressed and setting up for the parade. We were given lots of wine, beer, limoncello, and mirto while we were there as well as some Sardinian sweets. On the way to the town where the parade is supposed to end, we briefly visited a bigger nuraghe than the one that we saw the third day of this trip. When we got to the town, we waited for about an hour and a half before the parade arrived. There were basically three different parts of the parade, and the first part involved a lot of horses. There were at least a hundred horses walking down the street with people riding them in traditional Sardinian clothing. Annalisa told me that anyone who has horses in the area will put them in the parade. Some of the horses seemed a little skittish and nervous because they were near so many people, so the riders sometimes had to stop and turn to get the horse under control. The second wave was of decorated wagons being pulled by tractors. The wagons were covered with handmade sheets (which were very intricate and beautiful) and people sat on top of the wagons and threw homemade cookies to us. The third wave was of traditional clothing that was worn in different Sardinian towns. Each town had a sign and we could see behind it men and women and children who were wearing the traditional clothing from that town. I didn't realize that each town had their own style, and I noticed that the towns that Annalisa told me were in the mountains were particularly different than the others. There were also lots of musicians in the parade as well. There was a band made up of a line of heraldic trumpets and a few lines of drums. They stopped a little before up and played a song. There were a few adults and kids playing the accordion, and there were a line of people playing the launedda (which are Sardinian pipes that kind of sound like bagpipes, though they are much smaller). There was also a small group of women who were signing a song as they walked by. Before tonight, I felt that I had not heard that much music that is specific to Sardinia, but now I believe that I have!

 I had also felt that we had not done a lot of dancing, which changed today! After the parade, a man started playing his accordion on stage and three of the people from the parade started doing a dance in a circle to the song. A few people joined in and then I eventually joined in and learned the dance. The dance was very simple and bouncy, but it was hard to figure out because the women's skirts were very long so it was hard to see their feet. The circle got bigger and bigger as more people joined, but I became more comfortable with the dance and had more fun as it went on. I danced two more times, and the second time I learned a new dance step. All of the dances that I did were only with my feet and not with my arms because I was always holding hands or hooking arms with people on my left and right. I was surprised at first to see that many young teenagers were going in front of the stage and dancing as well, and that they already knew the different dances! It seems that since they grew up here, they learned the traditional dance when they were kids. The dancing was a lot of fun and I'm glad that we had time to fit it in and going to this festival/parade before we have to leave.

There's only a day and a half left of this dialogue left, and I will be very sad to leave Sardinia. This trip was definitely worth coming on and I 100% recommend that anyone go on it.

Car Race by the water

*These pictures were taken 6/11/2015

First time successfully braiding a 5 strand dutch braid on someone else! Thanks Cat!

Kestral and I wandered into a car race (we were in the festival part with the food and antiques cars)

A Lamborghini police car!

This one was my favorite.

These guys in the red bull truck were playing music and having a great time.

It was super packed.

This is the closest we got to the race, and we saw one car go by!

Later that night we got gelato and I thought this was pretty hilarious

Blog #8

To start off, I cannot believe that we only have a week left here in Sardinia. It seems like we have so many more activities that we can do and places to see. Time flies when you're having fun, and this trip has definitely been fun so far.

On Monday, we took another sailing trip on a boat named Matilda to two beaches in Villasimus. This sailboat was much bigger than the last one we were on, and it looked older too because more of it was made with wood. We tried sailing to the beach at first, but there was not enough wind so we used the motor. The first beach is called Isola dei Cavoli, which translates to Cabbage Island (not sure why it's called Cabbage Island though). It had a lighthouse on it, and we got to jump off the boat and swim to the island if we wanted to. While we were in the water we saw a thunderstorm approaching and we saw some lightning, but it was very far away. For lunch we got back on the boat and had some pasta that was cooked on the boat, which tasted amazing! We also had some cheese, bread, sausage, and wine, and one of the sailors showed us that seagulls really like cheese because if you hold a piece of cheese, the seagulls will fly over and take it from your hand. I tried with a piece of bread, but apparently seagulls don't like bread as much. We then travelled to the second beach (by motor), and I spent some time climbing on the rocks before jumping in and swimming. We could still see the thunderstorm and the lightning occasionally, and everyones hair was sticking up from the static. However, the storm never got close enough to us to be dangerous. 

That night for dinner, Lindesy found a vegetarian soup restaurant that she, Divya, Lauren, and I tried out. The food was really really good (we got a few courses and tried two soups) but it was also really fun because our waitress was excited that we were native English speakers. She told us that she has a bachelors degree in English and that she also speaks french, so she wanted to talk to us to practice her English (which was already very good). She was super sweet, and she told us that she is from one of the islands on Sardinia but she is now working in Cagliari and going to the University of Cagliari to get a degree in communication. When she was in high school, she said that she didn't like English very much because she thought it was boring, but then her senior year of high school she started watching American tv shows. She said that she loved them so much so she decided that she wanted to major in English. She said that her dream job would be to get a job in the US and become a producer. I was really surprised how much influence US entertainment has had in her life, until I remembered that most of the songs and music videos that I've listened to and seen while being here in Sardinia have been from the US. I realized that other than one movie that I remember watching with my mom, and a couple songs that I've listened to, most of the movies, tv shows, and songs that I listen to are from the US (with the exception of a few tv shows and songs that are from the UK). I hope that the American entertainment culture won't completely take over in other countries, because even though I like a lot of the movies and songs and tv shows that are made in the US, there are a lot of things about the entertainment industry in the US that I think are dumb. 

Anyways, I could go on about that, or I could write about another beach that we went to today! As usual, it was beautiful and we got to do some snorkeling. It was very windy, and one of the beach balls kept being thrown too far and floating to the other side of the cove, which I walked and swam to to rescue it (twice). Even though it was a beautiful beach and a glorious day, I think that my skin has had enough contact with salt water for the time being because I felt like I was coated with salt today and somewhat dehydrated. I also got a little sun burnt on my back, which just proves that it's almost impossible for me to spend a whole day at the beach without getting sun burnt (even though I reapplied my 50 spf sunscreen twice, waited 10 minutes for it to soak in before getting in the water, and sat under an umbrella when I wasn't in the water). I have loved every beach that we have gone to, but I think that I need to take a break from going to beaches for a little while :-).

I'm very excited for tonight, since we are going back to the vegetarian soup restaurant for their international night. They have it every week, and this week is french themed. There is a set menu that gives us 5 or 6 different courses that are all french and vegetarian, and we get a free glass of wine if we dress like we are from France (which we are going to try to do). I'm helping Divya by giving her a french braid, which will hopefully count as looking french! I've never been to France so I don't actually know if people in France braid their hair a lot. Alesia, our waitress form Monday, will be there too so we will be able to talk to her more! 

Beach day and more sailing!

*These pictures were taken on 6/8/2015

The boat that we sailed (part of the way) to the beaches

She's called Matilda II!

One of the sailors feeding the seagull cheese.

The seagull eating the piece of cheese.

Kestrals hair blowing in the wind.

Pulling up the first main sail.

Pulling up the second main sail.

Sail is almost up!

We sailed part of the way to the beach, but there wasn't that much wind so we used the motor for the rest of the day.

The lighthouse on Cabbage Island.

The first cove that we swam in.

Some dark clouds approaching.

Matilda behind the rocks.

Some blue sky being overtaken by the thunderstorm.

The second beach that we went to.

The other side of the beach that was more interesting because it had more rocks to climb on.

Lots of the rocks had little crevices.

Lindsey on the edge of a rock.

Some geometric shaped tidepools.

Selfie with Lindsey in front of the creepy/awesome rock! We ending up jumping in a few mins after taking this picture.

Pula and the archaeological site in Nora

There were lots of flags hung up over the streets all over the town!

Some of the Roman ruins and a tower in the background.

Looking out over part of the town.

The back of the theater.

The nooks were for shops on the back of the theater, and on the right are some steps to get into the theater.

All of the buildings used to be covered in marble, and now the last piece of marble is the white piece of rock in the middle of this pile.

A place where people used to take walks.

The houses used to be here, and we could still see some of the holes in the ground where they stored water.

One of the nicer houses with pillars. The rainwater would fill up the basin in the middle of the pillars.

A pillar that used to be on the front porch.

A room with mosaic tile.

The tile here was smaller and more detailed, which meant that it was a nicer room.

A hole that people used to store extra rainwater.

Looking over to the building with the public baths.

Matt walking through the entrance to the public baths.

One of the baths in the public baths (on the left are some steps, and on the right we could see a drain).

What is left of an oven used to heat the baths.

The front porch with many pillars (or what used to be pillars).

The stage in the theater.

The seats in the amphitheater. The simple people would enter from the stairs in back and sit up at the top, and the richer people would enter from the arches at the bottom and sit in the front. 

We also took a tour up this tower.

I though that this was very considerate of whoever built the walkway; instead of moving the rocks, they built around them!

The tower was on the edge of a cliff.

About to walk into the tower.

The view of the peninsula that we were on from the tower.

The water was very clear and we could see to the bottom from the top of the tower.

Some pretty flowers we saw on our way back.

Hehehe.

Italian flags!

We wandered into a very interesting candy shop.

They had candy that looked like bananas.

And candy that looked like strawberries!

When we sat down to have a snack, we saw one of the biggest dogs I've ever seen in my life.

And his name was King!