For the six of you who noticed (bless you all), the Field Trip was strikingly absent from your inbox last week. Due to a combination of being in vacation mode, visiting family in the US, camping out of service, and barfing my brains out alongside my toddler, I decided that if the Italians are going to take August off, I deserve a holiday too. When in Rome Salt Lake City!
On that note, don’t come to Italy in August. August 15th is Ferragosto, an ancient Roman harvest festival (ancient like, 18 years before the birth of Christ) that later merged with the Catholic holiday celebrating the Assumption of Mary1. The Italians do not limit their summer plans to one day, Mary forbid. Ferragosto turns Italian towns into ghost towns, a month-long shutdown as Italians flee the sweltering cities to the mountains and beaches. We took it a step further and fled the country for three weeks.
We are now halfway through our trip to the motherland, basking in the frigid, influenza-inducing central air conditioning and eating our weight in Mexican food and Red-40. Despite being ill for most of the trip, it’s been good to be home.
But I am going to honor the ancient Italian tradition of taking a freaking break. At least for one more week.
Love you all. We’ll be back with our regularly scheduled programming in September. Find a beach, boil up some penne, turn off your AC and wallow in a puddle of your own sweat. La dolce vita!
As penance, here are some sweetie film pictures of me and my baby from this last summer in Italy (thank you to my sister Isabella for being our slave and photographer these last few weeks!)
What did she assume? Also, Mary was probably a teenager when she had Jesus, which means that Ferragosto is probably around the same age as Mary. Like Mary, the Italians spend a lot of time being taxed, but they get to escape to their seaside apartments in Liguria.
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