Ciao a tutti! / Sziasztok!

Things are changing here in Faenza as well as in the whole of Italy. There are definitely some good things; as the weather (arguably) gets better the restrictions get looser and we can finally enjoy yellow zone, meaning that we can have aperitivo every day – or we could but it is only allowed to consume outside which now basically means sitting in the rain. Our little group also have plans to travel finally so it won’t be so boring for you reading our blogs which unintentionally became food diaries (or is it just me?). Anyway, you don’t escape this time as we had an amazing Syrian cooking workshop (with a bit of Italian influence) on one of the weekends that meant endless parsley chopping and yogurt mixing but it all was worth it.

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So after the essential drooling I hope you are ready to read about another important matter. We had a guest for a night, the cat of our neighbour above sneaked in one night and didn’t want to leave so had to make the best out of it by taking thousands of photos of her. Also, I believe mentioning that I found a strawberry that was almost the size of my palm is a major event.

Okay putting all jokes aside (I knew it wasn’t funny but I hope you still appreciate the wholesome content) there were actually some bad weather, renovations, concerns of future and mostly goodbyes that made this couple of weeks a bit sour. Two people of our little volunteer family have left, most recently the one and only Spanish, Javier whose birthday is actually today so let me visually reflect on this weekend when we said farewells.

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It was the weekend full of hiking, eating and singing – the best way to celebrate Javier. The party was Eurovision themed – obviously – and our Galician (Gonzalo) indulged us in amazing Spanish food. Over the months we managed to create an invisible playlist with all the iconic songs of this experience which had to be played while we tried to follow the lyrics of the karaoke videos. I can say that our success rate of hitting the right notes have significantly increased with the Finnish (Laura) in the team, however, there is definitely space to improve. The highlight of the night was the gelato birthday cake made by the French la baguette (Mathilde) and to end the night we put on the theme song of Sotto il sole di Riccione for the second time.

Javier, you will be missed greatly – Happy Birthday!

Ci vediamo dopo,

Györgyi – l’ungherese