For My Lovely Travelling Companions

I was having so much fun picking out Christmas gifts this holiday season I could not help but make a little something for my travelling companions. They say a picture is worth a thousand words so I guess I gave them an evening of conversation with my little gift. I made a small photo book of some of the adventures from our trip. Each has a story attached, ones you can probably find in the blog like why Cathy was hugging the McDonald's sign and why we took photos of an elevator. Each picture meant to provoke a small smile, and memory to help fill everyone's Christmas with joy.
I hope all of you have a wonderful Holiday Season.

More photos

I admit it. I got a little caught up in the everyday activities in life and have not posted my colleagues incredible photos from our trip for you to see. These are absolutely fabulous and worth taking the time to sit back and watch the slide show. They are also set up so that if you would like to download some you can. So go ahead and get comfortable, and transport yourself back to Italy.
Dale Safrit's photos.
Cathy Brown's photos.

Back Safe and Sound

Well we're BACK! Safe and sound and happy to be home. Excuse the lack of photos (the one above is one I downloaded of the Rome airport today) but it was a busy day of hurrying up to get luggage moved and then get in lines and sit for hours so we could do it all again and again.
We started our day around 6 a.m. (midnight here at home) getting up and ready and then, one at a time, got in the elevator with our luggage to head downstairs. We walked a couple of blocks to the train station. We found our train to the airport and were headed in that direction around 7:30 (or one thirty a.m. here). Once at the airport we did the usual location of the international terminal checking in security, getting transported to the gate and duty free shopping. Not to mention locating breakfast. We boarded our flight to Philadelphia and and sat back for 10 hours while someone else did the flying. We made it in around 3:15 and went through customs and rechecking bags and all of the good stuff before heading to the gate for our flight to Raleigh. Fortunately it was an uneventful flight and we made it in just after eight. I made it home just in time to hit the bed and grab a full 7 hours of sleep before coming in to work. I sit behind my desk now as I type this reflecting on what an incredible opportunity this was. Stay tuned this week as I will be putting up links to Dale and Cathy's photos and a slide show of our experiences. Not to mention a few thoughts as we rejuvenate ourselves and reflect back.

Saying Goodbye, Travelling, and Thoughts on Elevators

What an incredible conference and experience. I hated to say goodbye to my new international friends and colleagues but it was time to get on the train in Assisi and head back to Roma Termini.

I could tell I had relaxed and adjusted to the Italian lifestyle in Assisi when we got off the train into a flood of people and got frustrated and the hurry up and stop pace. Dale went ahead and got our train tickets for tomorrow morning (so we can get to the airport) and we headed towards our new B&B. At the Beehive we found out our new place to lay our heads is literally three blocks from where we spent our first few nights in Rome. I will say the management said no more than 2 people in the elevator, with luggage, at a time. When we got here there is no way more than one person can fit in the elevator with luggage. It is a bit old and slow and made me slightly nervous as the doors in the elevator did not quite shut all the way so you could see between them as you ascended up and felt like you might be in the magic glass elevator from Willy Wonka because for a brief moment I thought we would actually go through the ceiling. Alas I made it to the fifth floor safely and sent it back down for everyone else (however after dinner I climbed the steps, and for those of you who know me it is not because I am a fitness guru). Now not that I am trying to harp on this elevator thing...but I am....it was slightly unnerving that our elevators in Assisi, which were much larger than the ones in Rome, sometimes jerked before the doors closed. For a group of people who have been stuck together in an elevator recently this can be a rather scary thing. Of course the last time it happened all four of us had accidentally gotten in the elevator again together. Cathy was up against the back wall staring straight ahead, and I don't think she was breathing. Carolyn was next to her looking at the floor. None of us wanted to state that we should not all be in an elevator, and then it happened. Right after the elevator doors shut Dale rushed the three of us yelling SHIFT! What could we do but laugh? Oh by the way tomorrow when we leave, we will be going down one at a time.

As soon as we got in we freshened up we headed out to see the Pantheon and other sights. Some interesting factoids about the Pantheon, the dome roof is actually open to the sky. When it rains it comes down on a section of the marble floor that is higher than the rest and has drainage holes in it so that the water will drain out of the building. You can actually feel the slope in the floor which is pretty cool. It was originally created as a temple to the Gods and is now a Christian Church (consecrated in 609).

After that we did a little walking tour of Rome and bought our last few souvenirs. Then we made our way back to Gesuppies for dinner and enjoyed our last Italian dinner very very much. Tomorrow we are headed back to the states and we will be letting you know how that goes as well. Stay tuned for links with all sorts of photos and other neat links in the days that follow.

Learning About Different Tourisms

Saturday at last and the work still does not end. Today we are touring Assisi. Where we are staying is considered a suburb of this bustling town and today we will take a cab up to the top of the ancient city (dating back to the 6th century B.C.)And walk our way back down.
One evening several of us were sitting and discussing agri-tourism versus other types of tourism. George, our colleague from Malta said agri-tourism to him is defined as an agriculture based business that opens its door within its community but draws the majority of its business from outside the community and becomes sustainable off of those dollars. When we toured I asked him if the tour we were on to the winery etc was agri-tourism. He said no, although the family winery was an example of agri-tourism, the tour we were on would be considered academic tourism. Of course then there is just tourism, which is people coming to see or view your product or area, perhaps spend some money and leave. So I say all of this to say our day trip today was academic tourism not tourism or agri-tourism. No matter what you call it it was very educational.
At the top of the mountain are the remains of a castle or fort, Rocca Maggiore e Rocca Minore(Great Fort and Small Fort). From the castle you have a 360 degree view which would be very helpful during a time of war. The fort was the scene of many bloody battles and often determined who was in control of the area. As we started to walk down we ran into many homes, shops and coffee shops as we made our way to the main piazza, or Piazza del Commue (town hall square). There we stopped briefly to enjoy a café or Coke Light and then travelled to the church at the end of the square, Cattedrale Di San Rufino which was erected to hold the body of St. Rufino who was the first Assisi Bishop that was martyred.
From there we travelled to Tempio di Minerva which is on the other side of the square although the first century structure is impressive from the outside the inside only seats about 60 people. It is lovely but very small in comparison to all the other churches within the town. After posing for pictures in front of the newest piazza attraction, the fountain, which was erected in 1772 (that is new here), we pressed on. As we checked out the little stores. I must say our favorite was an olive wood shop. There they make a variety of items out of olive tree wood; it is very durable and attractive.
After a brief stop for pizza we pressed on with our tour. Our highlight of the trip was the Basilica Di San Francesco (the St. Francis Basilica). This structure is made up of an upper and lower church. The tomb of St. Francis is also available for viewing down under the church. It is absolutely incredible the number of people who come to the church to pray by his tomb. After admiring all of the artwork through the two churches we started walked back down to our hotel.
It was probably a two to three mile walk downhill. Cathy kept looking for break areas along our walk and wasn’t finding much of anything. After a few Hail Mary’s she made it to McDonald’s where we stopped and she grabbed a large fry to help renergize her and make it the rest of the way (a big 10-15 minutes) back to our conference center. We were so proud of her for making it the entire route!
The rest of the evening was as normal, dinner, conversation and then rest. Tomorrow we head back to Rome and will catch our flight first thing Monday morning. Of course we will have several more posts as we make our way back home with lots of incredible experiences and stories.

We Did It!

Back to the hard work of the conference. More than 150 papers were submitted for this conference and about 60 were selected (Only four from America and N.C. State had two of the four, N.C. A&T had one, and Perdue had the other) . Dale, Cathy, Angela Shaver and myself co-wrote one of the papers on the L.I.N.C. program and it was selected. That means today is the day we have been waiting for. It was time for Cathy and I to get up and present the L.I.N.C. program and talk about how it empowers agents to challenge themselves and their clients. The reaction was interesting. Everyone said we did a good job with the presentation. Some of the folks in the room wanted to know more about the mechanics of the program while others wanted to know more about the evaluation data and how it was collected. All in all we had some very good feedback.

After our presentation we listened to other papers and switched working groups so that we could also support our collegues from Perdue University as they gave a presentation on 4-H in Poland which was very interesting. After lunch it was time to reconviene and work on notes from the session and wrap up the themese shown in these works as well as the issues to see if there might be a solution or at least a common issue that the group could address in teh future. At the closing session these findings from the three workgroups were presented. Then our collegue from Finland got up and announced that the next conference in 2011 would be in Helsinki, Finland.

After a greuling day of papers and discussion we sat out front of our conference center and relaxed with our host Fabio Santuci. As always he was gracious and funny and we expressed how much we enjoyed this conference. Carolyn and the other compainions joined us shortly thereafter when they returned from their trip to the lake with really big smiles on their faces. Fabio said this lake was like Austrila, at one time people who had committed crimes had a choice between jail and living around this lake. Now it is a pristine place with plenty of activity.

At 8:30 it was time for our closing banquet. We all gathered upstairs in the reception room and enjoyed our five course closing banquet. By the time we were finished it was after 11 p.m. and we were full and exhausted.

Tomorrow Dale, Carolyn and I will head to the castle/fort on top of the mountain at Assisi (where we are now is kind of like a suburb). There is lots of history to learn and new things around every corner. Stay tuned for more .

Learning by Touring

I like Thursday! Today we headed out into Italy to see Extension’s work and learn, learn, learn. Being a 4-H Agent of course this type of learning appeals to me and today was definitely not a disappointment. There were two tours. Cathy and I were on Tour B while Dale and Carolyn were on tour A.

We all loaded up on buses around nine a.m. and headed out. Tour B enjoyed the one lane twists and turns in the road to head to ANABIC about 9:45. ANABIC is (excuse me for breaking into Italian but I don’t know any other way to do this) The Associazione Nazionale Allevatori Bovini da Carne or the national Association of Meat Cattle Breeders. The organization has been in existence for almost 60 years. There they do genetic research
on bulls. Specifically the five types of “white breeds” that are native to Italy. The breeds that they deal with are the Chianina, Marchigiana, Romagnola, Maremmana and Podolica. They got a few of these rather large breeds out to show us. All the bulls they deal with are between the ages of 12 and 24 months. As you can see in the picture the back of this Chianina bull is taller than Cathy. Bulls that are tested and make it through the rigorous process bring a higher price for the farmer’s herd at sale. By higher I mean about $750 per head higher.

After our visit we headed to the Chiorri Winemakers Company. This is a family run winery. The father had a degree in agriculture and ended up working at a bank but his passion for the land and winemaking was passed along to his daughter. She has gotten a degree in law and food safety and along with her retired father now run the Chiorri Winemakers Company. Monica gave us a tour of their winery and showed us the improvements they have made to promote their wine and tourism at their winery. We also had the opportunity to see the harvested grapes pressed and then the juice flowed into a barrel and the leftovers were pressed again with the juice flowing into a barrel. The juice from the barrel was then pumped into a large vat were it will sit with yeast and ferment. Not only did we get to see the winemaking process we got to sample the wines and enjoyed a several course homemade lunch. It was incredibly delicious.

After the winemakers we headed to a medieval town in Umbra, Todi. Our first stop was a unique temple, Tempio di Santa Maria della Consolazione (Church of Saint Mary of Consolation) that almost a century to construct. It is the landmark for the town that you can see from the valley. Todi is actually up on a hill and cannot accommodate busses or large vehicles. You can walk up the hill or take a cable car which we chose to do. Once we got up to the top our well versed tour guide took us to the two churches there. In contrast to many of the churches we have seen these two were fairly plain. The first one, although adorned with incredible sculpture outside on the side was fairly blank. Our guide told us that the area was hit hard by the plague in the 15th century and the church was used to housed the sick. When it was over they had two choices, one to close the church for 6-7 years until the bacteria died out or to wipe the walls down with boiling lime to kill the bacteria. They chose the lime and the side effect was that it destroyed the frescos on the walls. There are still some spots on the walls (our guide said this was because the workers did not do a very good job) which allow us to experience a small part of the artwork. The other church is under construction and has some small pieces of artwork. After the tour we had about twenty minutes to walk around the town and explore before heading back down to the bus.
After the tour we headed back to the conference center. It was a great ride back and we were exhausted.

Carolyn and Dale joined us at the conference center and told us about their tour. They had the opportunity to tour an olive oil factory, as well as a small town. Carolyn said they had a loovely day and their lunch was incredible even though it did not involve meat. Dale later reminded her that there were many types of sausages at the lunch so they did have meat.

The rest of our evening was filled with incredible food, great conversation and the opportunity to enjoy new friends. Tomorrow we are back in conference learning about different opportunities and issues going on throughout Europe in Agricultural Extension. Carolyn is headed to the lake, although we don’t know what is in store for her we have decided she is going to have a lovely day.