"It kind of makes you appreciate flatness"

Fridays we normally don't have class but yesterday, our Italian class had an all day field trip. At first we were all a little bummed at having to have "class" for 10 hours starting at 8 am, but it turned out to be amazing! We drove about an hour and a half north to this organic farm that makes cheese, wine, olive oil, honey, etc. One of the workers showed us where the sheep live and how the milking process. In case you were curious, mungere means to milk something. After this, we got to go make our own cheese. We took a big jug of sheeps milk (Jake and Zach were the only two brave enough to drink fresh straight sheeps milk) and heated it up to I think about 38 degrees C. When it got that warm, the man added a certain amount of lamb stomach enzymes from a bottle. 

Then we let it sit for 40 mins. We got to walk around and pet the goats and donkey. There was also a bamboo forest and a playground. Being the mature, 20 something college students that we are, we played crouching tiger hidden dragon in the bamboo and then had a who can jump off the swing the furthest contest. When we got back we had to finish the cheese. I got to stir the milk which was now really thick and more like flan or pannacotta (which would make sense since I finally realized panna cotta means cooked cream). When it was all broken into smaller pieces, we scooped it into little cup sized colanders and used our hands to press out the liquid which we collected into a pot. When that was done, we salted it a bit and then took it out the the colander and we had cheese!! We then used the collected liquid and reheated it to make ricotta (ri-cotta means cooked again). They gave us bread and foccaccia and we all just ate massive amounts of this cheese which was just amazing! I never thought I would be eating cheese that had been milk less than an hour earlier. When the ricotta was done we got to eat it while it was still warm. So so so delicious.

After lunch we drove to Bomarzo which is a tiny town that is famous for its Parco dei Mostri, or Monster park. It is this incredible park in the woods and there are these gigantic stone monuments of mythical creatures all around. It's beautiful and a bit eerie. http://www.parcodeimostri.com/ You should go look at it if you can't fly out to see it. We all had to do a one minute presentation on one of the monuments. After this, we stopped and played on the playground there. There was one of the playground spinny things, that's kinda like a teapot ride but way faster. Also we went on the see-saw. Our professor thought we were really funny. I guess she wasn't used to 5 year old college students. On the ride home, all of us fell asleep pretty much immediately, we were pretty tuckered out. 

Today is the start of CARNEVALE! There are a bunch of parades and street performances and then there is stuff going on until March 8 (Martedì Grasso)!!!