First of all, I have the coolest boss ever. Last week, on a wednesday, she randomly told me to take the day off and come with her and some friends to Polignano. I think it was sometime between eating panzerotti in the sun and swimming in the warm sea water that I thought to myself, "Dang. I sure wish I was at my desk in the office doing a quality control check right now!" hahahahaha not.
Polignano is amazing! Some of the clearest green and blue water I've ever seen! The buildings are often painted the typical Mediterranean colors; white walls with a dark blue door, just like in the Greek isles. We paid a guy with a boat twenty euros to give us a tour of the caves underneath Polignano with his boat. I couldn't believe how beautiful Polignano is from the sea! Even better than from land! Some of the caves were super teeny, and I couldn't believe that his boat could fit, but he was an expert and sailed right through them. In one cave we all jumped off the boat and swam around in the water for a while. There's even a restaurant set up in one of the caves! Then we found a nice rocky beach and swam. It was so cool! We were in a little inlet, swimming in super clear and warm water, with ancient, beautiful buildings overlooking our little covered beach from three sides. I can't wait to take Giada there. Anyways, then we went out to my boss's countryhouse to make pizzas in their authentic pugliese woodburning pizza oven. Check out the pictures of the city of Polignano here.. Check out the pictures of our pizza making in the countryside here.
Then, this weekend I had the amazing opportunity to go down to one of the areas of my mission, the area around the city of Taranto, to visit some friends from the mission. Basically, Taranto is a big city with other missionaries in it, but my area was all of the villages within a huge radius around the city of Taranto. The members of the church in that ward are spread all around the area in various villages. I went to stay with the Rodio family. Francesco Rodio was the bishop while I was there, and he has an incredible family. They're the perfect model for the family that I want to have someday. Their oldest son is 11 years old, and he was baptized while I was there as a missionary. Their daughter is 8 now, and was just baptized. She's so fiery and fiesty, it cracks me up. Her parents are constantly reminding her to be "more ladylike", "nicer", or "less agressive". One time I asked her why her brother has huge gouges on his arm. She told me "Well, he was being really annoying, so I had to make him understand that he was annoying me." She then looked at me with a flirty cute little smile and said "But don't worry, Anziano Alan. I would never scratch you!" (She couldn't get it into her head that I was no longer an Anziano, but at least she made progress by calling me Anziano Alan towards the end, instead of Anziano Embree.) She absolutely loves me, and wouldn't stop crawling all over me and hanging on me the entire weekend.
Francesco is a professional chef, and so everything I ate the whole weekend while at his house would have cost me at least thirty dollars at a five star restaurant back in the states. Something I love about this region is how everyone eats everything fresh, straight from their gardens. We didn't buy anything the whole time I was here! Puglia really is the promised land. Name any vegetable or fruit, it grows here. There were several vegetables I had never heard of before that I ate this weekend. Everyone presses their own olive oil from their own olive tree orchards, and there were fruit trees and wild vegetables EVERYWHERE. Before our meals we'd go out into the countryside and pick wild herbs which he would use to condiment the pasta or salad. I've never eaten so fresh and healthy in my life. After a while of eating like that, it's going to be hard to go back to eating out of a grocery store.
In the evening we went out to his family's trullo. If you don't know what a trullo is, then shame on you! That means that you didn't do a google image search of Alberobello like I told you to. A trullo is a typical house of this region. They're little stone rounded pyramids, and they're super amazing. We went out to his family's trullo to eat dinner in the countryside. While we ate, he hooked up a TV outside and we watched the Champion's League final match, Barcelona vs Juventus. ¡¡DALE, MESSI, DALE!! The next morning we went to church. It was so good to see all of the members again! I missed them so much! For those of you who haven't read my mission book, Statte was a very special area of my mission. It was there that I passed through the darkest, lowest, most difficult part of my mission, and also the best, most productive, most spiritual climax of my mission, one right after the other. I've never gone through so many trials or worked so hard or seen so many blessings as I did during my time in Statte. Go back and read some of my mission stories if you want to know more.
Anyways, I love and respect the Rodio family so much. It was great to get to spend a weekend with them. I got to sit in on a family scripture study, and I was amazed at what a great system they have. Their kids understand the doctrine and the scriptures so well, and participate actively in the lesson and the study. Francesco and I stayed up late talking after the kids went to bed, and he gave me some fantastic advice on family, marriage, and on how to be a good Latter-Day Saint. It was an amazing experience to be able to go back there and visit them. Check out the pictures here.
Oh yeah, and also, if you want to get an idea of what the beach looked like that we had our Singles Conference at, check out this video.. A drone flew overhead and made a video of us on the beach. Sick.
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