manga! eat!

biscotti, cookies made by our grandmothers,,,,, following one of the holiday traditions. we shared our treats with our italian friends... and check out our albero di natale... christmas tree. and notice our festive lights...bumba the dog keeps us company in our country home... not much to do but make sweets.....

NOTO, Sicily

from creepy Catania to the neat little Noto... good change. just a few photos of our arrival.

campania, NOTO, Sicilia

resting up for our return, eating for three, taking hikes to the ancient city and cave dwellings, reorganizing the piles of stones, appreciating our time alone, working on our italiano, thinking of home around the holidays,

we reside near the city of noto in the valley where the oranges grow. vittoria and juan carlo join join us around noon each day and cook up some sicilian cibo...polipo, melazane, pomodori, pasta..

italy is treating us well and we stay here through the new year... then spend a couple days in tunisia, north africa... with a couple who sound a bit like us.... couchsurfing is a wonderful network of people. on jan. 13th we are heading back to barcelona, adam will meditate for 10 days at a vipasana center and whitney will return to our farm, Mas Franch, outside of girona. 15 days in espana and feb 1 to Dublin. we stay with a friend of my sisters... and on the 4th.... back to bmore!

much love

Rome, then North to Tuscan countryside.

The chickens, those little peckers, glare through the wire with desire for the pastures of plenty: the orto at sunset, while Adam recycles some fennel scraps from the Roman farmers' market at Campo Del Fiore and suddenly, Whitney is illuminated by the spirit of the holy goat in the Pantheon.

you' re never alone in barcelone...

The lovers lay low outside the Gaudi headquarters. Whitney appeases the eager spectators who proceed to scale the rocky animated cliffs and deadly cacti in reach of the summit: heaven.

per scarpe o por zapatos or for shoes?

clay (barbatine) + sand +straw +hay (for fermentation)= body coat (body coat). Plaster the house with the tierra dug when excavating. The skeleton is made of selected oak branches, the ever-pleantiful hazel wood, and bamboo, then body coat is smoothed on. The community healer, Guisep likes the organico style of the shoe shelves. The design is a merge between Whit's art pieces and the form of shelf mushrooms. Practically-speaking, it has German-engineered spaces for all varieties of shoes.

in barcelona doing a bit of administrative work....

we finally uploaded all of our photos to photobucket.... let me know if you have trouble viewing them but i think you just click on the large photo and it will bring you to a link where you can see hundreds of our photos over the past few months. we still need to add titles and rotate a few...
keep sharing your comments.

we are currently in barcelona staying with a friend of a friend that we met at our last farm. it was really hard to leave the family at Mas Franch. a few tears and many hugs... we will return and be reminded of them as we continue our journey.

does anyone know what kind of fish this is? adam cooked an amazing meal tonight. we went to the market this morning and loaded up with fresh food for the next few days.

missing everyone.
whitney and adam

spain

Photobucket Album

france

Photobucket Album

Wales

Photobucket Album

catalanya

after our brief stop at the dali museum in figueras, we arrived at Mas Franch outside of Girona spain and began building with straw, barbatine (clay and water) and stones. Our spanish friends have great things happening, good food to eat from the garden and they love to make a fiesta, especially for birthday boys. we plan to bring some of these bioconstruction techniques back to baltimore where clay soils are plentiful. the barbatine makes a nice exfoliating mask and helps with the venom from a whasp sting. half way point and we still sleep in the same bed.

crossing the spainish border

a view from the hills of collioure, with our big hearted friend. we made it across the border and saw this mural in figueras.

peasant camp by the french castle

preparing for battle with a stomach bug. apparently the protection wasnt enough. we spent a few days camping in a small town near the train tracks with a bit of food poisoning from professor sambroskis polish stew. adam has whit safe and sound in the gilloteen. we continued south to avignon with flying colors and met some friends along the way.

les grandes terres, bully region in france

the view from the vineyard, while harvesting grapes


the viking collects the grapes from the peasant workers and our friend Torro the King looks out over the fields, chopping off the fingers of those that leave a grape behind:
there are many woofers and workers, we all dine together, a four course lunch and dinner: cutlural differences make for good laughs as we navagate through languages
je swee fatigue, nois allon sud en 3 jour. se fine por menow; au revoir:

sorry that some of you are having trouble posting comments:
i dont know what the problem is but i guess you can always send me an email

my friends from argentina in paris under the willow tree; me at the louvre; the tanning man at the louvre; a view from the contemporary art museum; one of the many parks where young people happily play

still in paris

heading south soon to lyon

love you all:

sorry it has taken a while to update the blog