7th of April 2009

In the morning I went for a short bike ride while Luisa was feeding the lamb. When I came back I found Pepe at “La Canestra” making calls. He wanted to build tents since last night the epicenter of yet another earthquake was in Pizzoli, 20 kilometres from Capitignano. It was between 4-5 grade on Richter. We again didn’t feel it much during the night and even decided to stay inside and continue sleeping.

After lunch though everybody from Capitiganno went outside because the fire department advised it was safer.

I couldn’t just sit around and do nothing so i grabbed a piece of bread and cycled to feed it to the horse, Cabroso. He appreciated it so I also stayed for a while to pick up some grass for him. After I came back we all went to put out tents in an opened space just in case than gathered again with neighbours and friends of the family for lunch. I quickly finished and since my Italian wasn’t good enough to get involved in a passionate conversation on the current events I went to clean the horse.

I did that for most of the afternoon and than decided to roominess abit of my childhood riding without a saddle. But it’s not the same to ride a small tamed horse and riding an Andalucian. On top of that I was also wearing slippers. Once I got up on Carboso he started galloping and I fell scraping my arm. I’ve had a few phobias that I got over with a bit of work and I wasn’t going to develop one about riding horses wich is very important to me. I got on Carboso again but this time he made sure to let me know that’s not the way you ride an Andalucian. He was also very agitated because the family’s dog, Charlie was barking like mad at him. He started galloping again and without a mouthpiece to remind him there’s someone riding him he wouldn’t stop. I fell again and this time face first into a tree which left a mark. I got up, looked for my slipper that flew somewhere in the bushes while I was falling and went up to the house with Carboso. I tried to put him in his electrified enclosure but again he started galloping, pulling me into the mud of the enclose and breaking the fence which took me and Pepe a bit to fix.

I took a shower and got reed of the all the mud that I even had on my face and it was already dinner time. This time even the nun that held mass the last Thursday came and stayed a while with the family. And while everyone else was having fried meat with bruschete (toast with olive oil and salt) I was having my bruscheta with nutella, not a very healthy vegetarian alternative. But tasty.

Even though I dreamt of terremoti (earthquakes) nothing disturbed our sleep during the night.

Radu Burtescu - Romania, Constanta