It's Like Sticking Your Finger in a Hornets Nest!

The crowds are starting to come

Waiting in the El Campo!


Well, fortunately (or unfortunately?) I am rewriting this entry. I typed FOUR AND A HALF PAGES and decided that it was too long, I am sure you don’t want all the gory details of my July 2nd afternoon. If you do…send me an email (Hoover101@gmail.com) and I’ll send it to you.

This week (as in last Monday to this Monday) has officially been dubbed the week of roller coaster highs and lows. I can honestly say thank God Claire was here or I seriously would have gone crazy.

To start, let me give you an update on the front of the battle: We have been courageously battling new armies of scorpions, crickets, and an occasional slug. The ants are slowly fading out…the ferocity that Claire and I have with the Raid is definitely an intimidating sight!! The flies are threatening to win when they buzz in our ear in the early morning hours. We have found a new strategy to prevent raiding our selves – practicing our hand eye coordination with a crop as a fly swatter – mission still needs practice. We have only lost one battle (I have bugs (unidentified) in my bed…not yet eliminated), but the war will be won, victory can be tasted!

Claire has mastered the fine art of improvising desserts with cake in a frying pan and cookie dough with no eggs or brown sugar. The horses are continuing to take a year off of our lives with their unpredictable never a dull moment-ness. In one day we had a thrown shoe, 3 leg lame horse, broken stall door and fight with Rusty, with a fine icing of a group of seven canceling on us at the last minute. We have had crazy beautiful thunderstorms (The kind with constant rumbling and where the sky looks like someone is flipping a light switch on and off…no rain). During the one on the night of July 1st, the fireflies came out and it was absolutely beautiful. I thought of Colorado Springs at my aunt’s house and the time I almost spent the night on the porch during a bad thunderstorm. Haha. We have also mastered the fine art of moving giant round hay bales through the mud into shelter in the middle of the night with only our sheer arm strength! Yay!

And after a crazy week of the injuries, cancellations, and trail adventures, waiting to go to Siena on Thursday morning felt like waiting to go to Disneyland as a kid. July 2nd will always have a special meaning for me. I don’t know when each of you last had your “edge of the seat, hold on tight to someone or something, heart stopping, built up anticipation, gasping, yelling” adrenaline rush, but mine was that morning, July 2nd at around 8:30 pm Italian time. I had the incredibly awesome opportunity to experience the oldest horse race in the world and in a most unexpected way!

The morning started off early, of course with some technical difficulties along the lines of late buses and stubborn hay bales. We had to wake up at 4 am to feed and catch the 6:30 am bus from Tocchi. We sat on the bench and waited, and waited. At around 7:15 the bus was still not there. We started thinking of alternate plans. Walk? Hitchhike? Drive an unlicensed car with no international drivers license? Fortunately by the time we were starting to wonder if it would be possible to teleport ourselves or if we were going to be rescued by our men in shining armor, the bus arrived, precisely one hour and three minutes late. That in itself was an adventure…I didn’t think it was possible for a bus to drive that fast down a windy road. I felt so sick, but we finally we made it to Siena!

The afternoon was great. Highlights: Learning great news from my roommate, spending one hour translating a Peanuts comic, seeing the end of Mass on the Campo (square in the middle of Siena), seeing the Palio horses walk through the town streets, eating lots of gelato and pizza and pastries, having a nice sit down lunch at a restraunt (I tried liver on bread…interesting!), and catching up with world news (I finally learned about the death of Michael Jackson!)

Around 2, we headed to the Campo and found a little space against the fence to have good seats. We sat in the campo for three hours, waiting. I felt like I was at Disneyland with my dad, sitting on blankets at the front of the lake, waiting for Fantasmic, guarding your territory with all your belongings. We talked with our neighbors and we all worked together to keep our spot, ours. One of our neighbors was a group from Australia and the other was from China. I also met a couple from Galilee…way cool!

Anna got a phone call from her dad. If it dumped buckets the Palio would be cancelled for today. In that case, the Americans with the tickets that cancelled on us would not be able to stay and watch it…we would get their seats. Claire and I screamed and squealed at the idea. We got some pretty strange looks. I prayed for God’s will to be done. Still, the sky didn’t drop the buckets. About twenty minutes later, close to 5, Anna gets another phone call. I think I needed someone to pinch me. The Americans from Boston that cancelled on us invited us to join them on a balcony above the Campo for free! (These are extremely expensive seats by the way.) We squealed and jumped in place and held hands and pranced out of the Campo. We were little kids at Christmas…probably worse than, you would have thought we won a million dollars…what a gift!! We pranced around holding hands, hugging and squealing for at least ten minutes before we could be calm. Good thing we got it all out before they came to show us the way to the seats!! It didn’t rain. We were going to see the Palio…in real life! Not postcard pictures, not James Bond movie intro, but the real 699 year old Palio. I actually felt a tear of joy on my cheek, I am so blessed!

The race itself is hard to put into words…I don’t think any amount of words can really justify the experience. There is a parade that is about two hours…not as a show but for tradition, with all the mid evil clothes and everything! You can feel the tension build as the parade nears the end (The actual palio - a big painted banner pulled by four ox, the prize of the race). Each race has ten horses. Siena is split into seventeen contradas (District in Italian), and the horses that race are basically chosen by lottery (too much detail to explain here).

The competition is fierce (take Boulder v. CSU at the big game every fall and multiply it by five and you might get an idea of the intensity). Grown men cry, songs are sung, and the celebrations last for days. The race itself ended up taking a long time to start. There are no starting gates for this race, only a rope. There are negotiations/agreements made (if you do this to this person, I’ll…which is totally legal!) Then, one rider hangs back behind the line and is the one who gets a running start. The Palio would never ever fly in America, we are so orderly. At this race, no one knows when it is going to start – it is all chosen by the jockey who stays in the back. Then it is just a waiting game, the only rule: They have to start before it is dark outside, which is essentially 9 pm. Beyond that there are no rules, even a jockey-less horse can bring its contrada to victory! We had FOUR false starts, you could feel the electricity in the air...the anticipation was too much sometimes! Each false start agitated and amplified the crowd. (Hence the “Its like sticking your finger in a hornet’s nest!)…The energy of the crowd, the cheers, the boos, the increased tension each time the cannon went off (signaling a false start) got my heart rate up! At last the race went off, three intense laps, two ninety degree turns, crazy jockeys being slammed into gates.

Naturally speaking, around 8:30 pm, nearly twelve hours since we left the bus station in Tocchi, Claire’s battery was low and my memory card stick full…REALLY?! I mean, why would our cameras be functionable when we needed them most? We quickly put her card in my camera. My battery lasted until the jockey FINALLY decided to run the race and had a real start…then it went low…I only got to film half of the first lap.

We were voting for Istrice, the porcupine…who came in dead last…unfortunately his jockey pulled him up/slowed him down due to what we suspect was injury. The winner? Tartuca…the turtle. We saw a very rare thing – he led wire to wire, which apparently never happens in the Palio! It was awesome to watch. The best part? Seeing the reactions of the members of Tartuca…tosee the joy of the members of that contrada…I don’t know if I can describe it except lots of tears, hugs, jockey on the shoulders of people in the crowd, people pouring onto the track, more tears and hugs, flag waving and cameras, singing and chanting.

The lady from our first breakfast in Siena was right…to a tourist the Palio is a crazy horse race…to a Sienese local, the Palio is what they live for, a race of tradition and honor. It is just amazing to me that a race of such importance has so few rules, so much history, and such a cultural feel. It was such an AWESOME experience that words, pictures and videos really can’t give justice to. I am so so so glad that I got to share it with Claire, it would be cool to see alone, but having someone to share it with is a million times better. We screamed and jumped and cheered together and gooed and gawed and pinched each other…yes the day did happen. We saw the Palio.

I remember sitting on my cousin Eric’s couch right before I left for Italy, doing some research on Siena…clueless to the Palio…almost (The exception being watching the new James Bond movie at a friends house). When I found it and read up on it, I thought it was a little horse race that few people knew about, something cultural that would be cool to experience…especially because it dealt with horses, I was so excited at the thought of going! Well, I didn’t realize how cool it would be, I didn’t realize that the Palio is well known! Despite the tourists flooding half the Campo…it is a very cultural tradition...the parade is not for show, it is a crucial part to the whole thing. The Sienese live for the Palio...that much was evident as we watched the winning contrada march home underneath our balcony.

It is a day I will never, ever forget, a day I will remember every July 2nd, a day that will remind me to always trust God with each situation!

Apparently the August 16th race is an even bigger deal, Claire and I are definitely hoping to attend!

In the meantime, I have faithfully resumed my position as instigator (causing water fights, etc), and have started to give riding lessons to Anna, which is soo much fun! Thomas gave me the keys to the chapel at Castello so I can go pray in Church whenever I want (time is the only issue), and my ability to cut fruit is gradually improving. The grocery store is no longer intimidating, and Claire and I are slowly picking up Italian. She and I have had many laughs, and are starting to think the same…uh oh. She even understands my half finished sentences…it is almost like we spend all day, all night, every day, every night together!! Hmm…


Lessons of the week:
- Bananas are unpredictable, but can be tamed
- When you haven’t had cake in over a month, chocolate stove-top cake is a delicacy.
- In the end, everything will work out the way it is supposed to
- Handwritten letters from friends and home have more meaning then ever before
- Chacos have multiple functions (hiking shoe, running shoe, riding shoe, muck shoe, casual shoe, dress shoe, feeding shoe, and rain boot)
- Flies are the worst alarm clock…EVER
- Your camera will fail to function when you need it most
- The phrase “Italian time” is not a joke – things just happen when they do

PS – yes it is long, but it is a whole page shorter and hopefully more entertaining then what I had before…there is just so much! I guess I should save some stories for face to face, eh? …my 4th of July? That is a whole ‘nother story to be posted at a future day.

Love and miss you all!
Tracie