Fare la spesa (shopping) and Trulli!

I finally made it to the market today for a glorious stash. 

Lessons began today.  There are around 13 students in this “over 50” program and all are from the US with the exception of one French Canadian, Jeanette.  She and I are very much in simpatico and have ended up in the same class after taking the initial exam, etc.  In class we played a few games designed to familiarize us with each other and also to give the teacher a better idea of our individual comprehension level.  

In the afternoon we went on an informative walking tour of the trulli.  These dwellings are centuries old and the stone, limestone, is anywhere and everywhere.  Basically, Puglia is all rock.  Our guide said that if you took a shovel and stuck it in the ground, you would hit rock.  And some of that rock is flat, naturally occurring slabs that can be easily chipped and shaped into stackable pieces.  There is no cement holding these structures together.  But to seal the outside they concocted a paste (also made out of ash and ground limestone) to seal the outside.

Puglia gets its name from Apulia, its original name.  It was first colonized by the Mycenean Greeks during the first millennium BC.  Apparently, “apulia” means “without water.”  Lots of rock and no water.  But that didn’t stop it from being prized territory for after the Greeks came a slew of other colonizers (Romans, Saracens, Turks, Venetians) to take a hold of this perfectly situated land and its various ports. 

But back to the trulli, they were so smartly designed.  The layout of the rock, from the bottom up, is in a circular pattern whose purpose is to capture what little rain falls and funnel it downward into a cistern.  Each trullo has this system. 

We went into a trullo that was furnished as it would have been in the 19^th century, say.  We learned about the diet of the contadini (farmers), which was mostly grains and legumes with some fish occasionally.  Andrea (a man’s name… he is the program director) said that his grandfather told him that when he was young, their family may have eaten meat only 2 or 3 times a year. 

To live in a trullo used to be a sort of shameful thing because people associated it with being poor.  NOW, they are the thing and it is so very cool to own one.  They are cherished and smothered in love and attention.  Look at these precious and enchanting homes!