Pompeii!!! part 1

On Sunday we went to Pompeii (north of Naples). I just, after a lot of work that was deleted by mistake a couple of times, finished this slide show… don't worry I will add captions and a description of what everything is but until then just have fun trying to guess was the pictures are!

Day 7- Olives, oil and much much talk of italy!

If you've ever been to southern Italy, especially the east part of Italy where we live you might have noticed that outside of the towns there are fields and fields of olive trees stretching as far ( and I mean as FAR) as the eye can see. Well the months October to January are olive harvesting months… yay!!! So some of our friends from the next town over have found this great family owned olive press, and on Sunday they were having a small harvest festival. So like total Americans who have to get to everywhere on time we showed up about 2 hours before the actual festivities started, but we got a special tour of the oil pressing process , from the son of owner who told us all about his philosophy of life… very insightful!

Here’s all the olives piled together ready to be de-leafed

This is the de-leafing machine, kinda hard to see the leaves flying out, but they're there.

Pile of leaves!!!

Crushed pits! This place uses all of the olive!

While we were having the tour there was the most beautiful sunset!

Ok I know what this looks like but I swear this is a pile of left over’s (pulp, skin, residue and

so on).

Ok it was pretty dark, and it turns out our camera is really sucky at night but this was a truck that drove by us during the tour and dumped a whole pile of freshley picked olives- the smell was amazing!

Then we went inside to see the great big olive crushing stones!

This is how it works, you add the olives

grind them up real good

so it looks like guacamole!

then turn them into  even finer mush.

There are some more steps but practically this is what comes out, this is virgin olive oil, which means that it is pure olive juice and what we tried was the youngest one!

Here's dad trying to taste it without havin his throat burn, he takes his work so seriously!

We were also shown some of the Puglian ( region of Italy where we live) wine and got to celebrate with some Nocino which is a nut liquor, not as good as lemoncino in my view but definitely hardy!

For the fest the news was there and they wanted to interview the non-Italian visitors ( so I promptly ran away as fast as I could) instead our brave friend Amory went and did the interview in Italian, she's was so cool about the whole thing, I thought she did Great!!!

December 6th HAPPY SAINT NIKOLAUS DAY!!

The German holiday Nicholas Day (Nikolaustag) just happens to be based on an old tradition that was celebrated in the 16th century. Back then, children would carve marks in pieces of wood to show what good deeds they had done that year and then give them to St. Nicholas. Depending on whether they had been "naughty or nice", they would either get treats or a piece of birch.



Today in modern Germany, Nicholas Day is celebrated a little differently! On the night of the 5th of December kids put their shoes outside their bedroom door. At night supposedly Saint Nicklaus comes and fills their shoes with treats like chocolate, candy, cookies, fruits, nuts, or little presents. BUT if you were a bad kid that year in your shoe in the morning you would find a birch twig (I think for your parents to hit you with) although funny enough NOBODY ever gets the birch!!!


On top of all that excitement, it's tradition that on the 6th men dress up as Saint Nick and his little helper: sometimes known as the Ruprecht or Knecht Ruprecht or even Krampus. He travels with St. Nicholas and punishes kids who have been bad. Any way the men will go into schools and do the whole Santa thing!

So, carrying on the long tradition that we picked up from living in Germany, every 6th of December we enjoy a small present left in our stinky shoes! Even Rachael last year got a chocolate Santa when she was rooming with a house of Germans, at university!

Now I just love the idea of putting high heels out!

 Traditional german boots.

Now this is what I got!

All the Saint Nicks with their trusty helpers!

THE 5th of december!!- Kinder eggs!

Today my mom went to the grocery store to get lunch, and brought back 2 kinder eggs for me and my sister (partly because I was especially in need of sugar and fast). So Olivia and I had fun opening our kinder eggs and putting together the toys!

What ? what ever could it be!

Chocolate power to the rescue!!

And inside there was.....

Another egg!

And inside the specialy crafted hinge opening yellow plastic egg there was ...

 a crazy lion with a magnifying glass, i've been in need of one of those for so long!

And olivia got a cool sky guy!

Olivia in Rome!

Yesterday Olivia went with her class to Rome for the day, they started at 4 in the morning ( a great accompleshment for any itailan), she went with her history of art teacher and so they saw many really amazing art works from classic art by  Bernini and Caravagio!! Here are some of her pictures:

DAY 3 - Chirstmas gifts or just for fun!

Here are some fun things I found when I was looking aroud for christmas gifts:

The piggy ring!! " Will you marry me?" " yeah when pigs fly" well their'a'flyn!!

A super cool octopus ring! From noirjewelry.com

The kate spade zzee slipper boot!  These look REALLY fun to wear!!

THIS clutch is so CUTE!  Its from bougainvilleaboutique.com
And as my mom said " every woman should have a cluch" and i say every woman should have one of these!

I love this blue one!!

AND now for some funny ones!!!

Giant inflatable hair doos!! Who needs a brush anyway?!

EVer wonder where your pet is going on its long mysterous journy's in the out side wold? Well with the pet cam you can!! What a great sales pich!

Now who doesn't like bubble wrap! This is a key chain with ever lasting bubbles to pop!

And last but not least the sudoku toilet papr roll, never a dull moment on the loo!!