Come to our house, friends, and eat these:

There are a few things in our garden that are LOVING the Calabrian heat (while we, on the other hand, are tolerating it by going to the beach).  Watermelons are one of them.  We probably have about 6-8 so far (but note their size compared to my fingers... still pretty small!).  The other heat lovers are tomatoes and peppers.  We look forward to enjoying them soon! We've already started on the tomatoes...

    

Come to Calabria, Friends. See this:

A sunset on the beach in Fuscaldo, only thirty-some minutes from our house.

First trip to the coast, and a tour of old Cosenza

A long time ago when I was first talking to my boss about this job, I said "Isn't it really hot there in the summer?" And he replied, "Yes, but then you just go to the beach". Well, Sunday morning we did just that. We woke up early, and Tyler said to me "What time is it? Usually you already have some job for me to do by now." And I said "Let's go to the beach!!" We packed a few things and hit the road for Paola, about 40 min from here by car, over the mountains. The drive was beautiful but we got a little nervous when the clouds showed up atop the mountains. Thankfully the sun reappeared and we had a nice couple hours on the coast reading books and putting our feet in the Mediterranean for the first time!

When we got back, Tyler's friend Dana from undergrad came into town from Naples for a couple days (our first visitor!). After a lunchtime BBQ with some friends, we took Dana for a walk through old Cosenza. I finally brought my camera for this walk and snapped a few photos of the old city. We are just perfecting our tour guide skills for our next visitors - Tyler's friend Lars next week, and the Pawlowski crew at the end of June!

Oh, and there might be a few more garden photos in here... ;-)

Meet Skodie

Can you guess which of these two cars is ours, and which one we had to borrow from a friend while waiting for our insurance to get set up??

You might like to think it is the shiny newish looking one on the right, but in fact it is the slightly dirtier maroon one on the left.  Meet Skodie, our 1998 Skoda Felicita station wagon.  

We were very fortunate that one of the British guys who we meet for beers on Fridays had an old car he didn't want anymore (because he now has a shiny new Ford Focus).  It has about 250,000 km on it, does not have AC, and has the shortest clutch ever such that it's like not even having a clutch (which makes Lynne happy).  It has character and we like it.  Now if only the insurance company could get their act together so we can actually start driving it again!

Calabrian fruit in the summertime

In recent weeks, more and more great produce has been showing up in the local markets.  A week or so ago we stocked up on some really tasty stuff.  This is one thing we are very thankful for here in Calabria!!  Berries, peaches, apricots... every week it seems that something new is in season.  Feast your eyes...

Garden Photos May 2011

Here are some photos of what our garden looked like as of the end of May. Flowers, herbs, lettuce, and of course tomatoes. And still going! We hope that before too long we can shop for produce in our own yard!!

Garden and University Photos

Here are some recent photos of our home garden project (and by "our" I really mean "Tyler's". I'm just trying not to kill the plants while he is gone). I also took a walk today and snapped a few photos around the university so you can get a better sense of where we are and what it looks like around here. Enjoy!