Casa Cares

Just to explain a bit about Casa Cares for future reference. (Does anyone even read this blog?)

CC used to a children's home in Florence. It closed in the 60s and the Waldensian church got it. They didn't know what to do with it, and asked Paul and Antoinette, who were volunteers at CC when it operated as a children's home, to come back and do something. So they did and CC now operates as a guest hous. (This is a very basic intro. Paul can give you a very detailed background. Or the website: www.casacares.it)

CC accepts volunteers every year for how ever long period of time they want to stay. The volunteers are housed in the Colonica, where there is a kitchen and living room on the first floor and sleeping quarters upstairs with a common bathroom. In the same building live Paul and Antoinette and below them is The Apartment,which is for guests. (Basically imagine an 'L' shaped building. One wing for the volunteers, both levels, other wing for P+A upstairs, guests downstairs.)

The main building is called the Villa. This is where the office, the kitchen, library, guest rooms, etc... are. This where I spend most of my day. We have about 20 rooms, able to house 55 people. Each room is unique and there are no two that are the same. Some of the rooms have an incredible view of the valley down below. The rooms that have no special view (except the wonderful Colonica) are painted to make it nicer looking. (One of the rooms was painted by a Hungarian!) Some rooms have their own bathrooms, but most share a common one. The common areas are the eating room, where all three meals take place (duh), the soggiorno (which I called the sitting room, before learning it's proper name. Others call it the fireplace room), the piano room, where the conferences/meetings/seminars/etc take place (we had a piano concert here back in September!), the library, with many religious themed books, the downstairs piano room, and the downstairs eating room, aka the room with the triangle table in it! This house has many other rooms that are for staff only, but I don't want to let you all in on those secrets! ;) Though, my favorite 'staff only' room is the infamous Chamber of Mysteries. This room has everything in it; sheets to be taken by the laundry service, extra mattresses, art supplies, costumes, papers, toys, LEGO!, candles, and every other thing you can imagine.

Currently, there are 6 of us volunteers. Our jobs include a variety of things. Work in the garden, fixing the olive trees for the olive harvest in November ( we are all so excited about it!), kitchen work (including, but not limited to: making salad for meals, making yoghurt, cleaning dishes, helping make meals, etc...), house chores, like cleaning bathrooms, making beds, sweeping and mopping, laundry, ironing, etc... We have come up with the things we do like to do, and other, well, not so much.

Like
- Ironing
- Towels
-Laundry
-Being in the kitchen
-Being in the Chamber of Mysteries
-Doing dishes


Dislike
-Bathrooms
-Dusting
-Making beds alone
-Deep cleaning
-Cleaning things that have not been done in who knows how long

Of course, this list in reality is much longer, but it gives you a glimpse of our lives.

The Volunteers
Zachary- From Kentucky along with his brother. We have a very similar sense of humor, our sarcasm is alike. Aka Zack, Zack-o, Zacky.
Ethan-(Variations of pronounciation: normal, Eeeee-thaaaaan, E-tan) Also from Kentucky, Zack's younger brother. We've come to the conclusion that he has several sides to him. 1. The Ethan-Ethan, the one I first became familiar with; very quiet, keeping to himself. 2. The Passagero-Ethan. This term came from us observing him on the way back from Il Passagero, the local pizzeria, about 1 km from us. He is extremely hyper and crazy in this state of mind. 3. The Raymond-Ethan. This is when Raymond and Ethan are together being extremely stupid. Thank goodness, we see the least amount of this.
Raymond- (Pronounced: Rhy-mond!) From Norway. He speaks excellent English and is incredibly obnoxious (he even admits to it). He has black hair, and I have yet to see him with his original hair color, which I guess is blond. Though, he gets annoying at times, we all love him.
Dennis- The oldest of the group, from Denmark. His Italian impeccable. He keeps to himself a lot, but he's a pretty good guy.
Friederike- Well, I can say a lot about this girl, but I'll keep it short. She is from Germany, and speaks incredibly English and Italian (after only having it for two years), makes amazing food and baked goods, draws beautifully, plays the piano really well, and there is so much more to her! The two of us are very similar in many things and I feel like she is my sister. :)

I don't really know what else to say about CC, so if you have any Qs, just go ahead and ask!