Throw rocks at snakes.

Sorry to dwell on this topic, but that's exactly what I was doing all morning.

La Gavina is surrounded by a Sergio-built wall of large stones, and a few days ago part of the wall collapsed. Sergio and I spent the morning reconstructing it. Omitting the day I spent with a baby deer named Leo, this was the nicest morning I've had since I arrived. Sergio is pensive and usually relatively quiet (Lorena does most of the talking around here). Today was my first opportunity to work with him and it gave us a chance to talk a little bit - something which turned out to be very enjoyable.

Now, let's backtrack. Remember my three encounters with snakes last week? In one (very emotionally exhausting) day? In the vines? Well, today we were rebuilding the wall that those vines grow on. And encapsulate. So, when the snakes dodge in and out of the vines, they are actually just chilling on their front porch. Their real homes are inside the rocks of this wall that we were rebuilding. For three reasons, I was relatively calm about this whole thing: 1. Working with Sergio, I felt like I was working alongside a snake-whisperer. He loves the little guys because he thinks they're interesting and also because he knows exactly which ones to stay away from. (Incidentally, there IS one very poisonous snake that lives here, a small, brown viper with stripes.) 2. I decided to approach the project as a peace offering to the snakes. They can't mistreat someone who is building a house for them, right? That seems off. 3. I was sort of throwing rocks at them in the process of building their house - not like I was aiming or anything, or throwing them harder than necessary (I was) but at least I felt like it would keep them away.

The project was difficult because as we built new parts of the wall, older parts lost stability and collapsed. But with a lot of patience - which was mostly Sergio's, as I had to talk myself out of serious frustration every time we were slowed down by a new collapse - we made a lot of progress and we're almost finished. I wonder whether Sergio has always been this patient and level-headed, or if he learned to be this way over time. It's nice to be near someone who is that way. Most importantly, I saw one snake, a little green one with a yellow stripe, and it was right nearby but I did not panic! The only thing that can help you get over this kind of fear is finding out that something even worse than what you're afraid of exists. In this case, the "worse" thing would be the viper. Now that I know who he is, and what he looks like, the rest of them don't bother me as much. Don't get me wrong, I still very much hope to never see another one, but if he's green and he slithers we don't have as much beef as if he's brown and he slithers. Triumph!

Also a little overview of the past couple of days:

On Friday I went to Florence where I met up with two other Tamars (friends who are traveling in Italy now) hard to believe! It was so nice to be around familiar people, although it's clear that I've definitely become less capable at carrying an intelligent conversation in English which is, frankly, embarrassing. We had such a nice day though, and it was nice to be back in Florence and even nicer to find it feeling so familiar.

Over the weekend we've had two visitors at La Gavina, one previous WWOOFer who has just returned for a quick visit, and her friend (WWOOF is the name of the program I'm on). Sophie, the WWOOFer, was only 15 when she came here for three months, but she and Lorena grew very close over that time and it's nice to see them back together. She has been traveling with her friend Sinead for three months, and here they are on they're third to last stop before heading back to Australia. It has been fun to have other girls here, and especially english speakers. They leave tomorrow morning.

In addition, Emily left last night suddenly. She decided yesterday to leave, and so she did. I'm happy for her because I know that she missed her family very much. So now it's just me, Sergio and Lorena, which is perfectly fine!

Tomorrow I'll take a day-trip to Montepulciano (where I will eat gelato twice and also be sure to fill up on other goodies), and after that I have two more days at La Gavina before I head to Rome to catch my flight back to the US! More postings to come before that happens, of course.