Il Canto Dell'Asino- WWOOF first impressions

first day: 

we took the train the whole 8 minutes from Perugia centrale to Perugia Ponte San Giovanni. We were kindly greeted with three kisses from our wwoofing hosts Nicola and Elenora. After a quick grocery shop we were off to the casa (house). We were shown our room- a clean room in the bed and breakfast area of the home. After looking around a bit we sat for pranze. elenoras mom is staying with them so she does the cooking for now. Staying with hosts who do not speak a word of english is a lot of head nodding and charades. Other than the immediate language barrier Il Canto Del’assino is almost my dream come true. I say almost because I’ve been creating an italian dream in my head for as long as I can remember, so its pretty hard to live up to that. 

The house is situated on the top of one of the rolling hills of Umbria near a town called Gubbio. The drive to the house was an adventure in itself, winding dirt roads barely as wide as our truck yet meant for two way traffic, turning up steep hills and honking around cliffs. 

Il Canto Del’assino literally translates to The singing donkeys and is a sanctuary for donkeys who also provide pet therapy for children with disabilities or anxiety disoders. After some more tedious work setting up tarps we were able to work with the donkeys. There are 20 donkeys, 2 sheep, 3 cats, and 3 dogs. They are very gentle souls, and a few of them are not more than a few months old. Literally the most adorable things i’ve ever seen. They follow us where we go on the grounds (including the sheep) and answer to their names. This should be a very interesting week!