Tobacco Road

Hello Ya'll!
I've had a flashback (have I been gone long enough to have a blast from the past of NC?) to my Southern roots...there are fields and fields of tobacco all around Sansepolcro! We went for an early walk this morning before it got too hot. We sauntered down to the Tiber (it's barely a river where we are, but all the water leads to Rome!) and skipped rocks. Then we headed to the farm of a friend of the program directors. The lady was so welcoming, even though we showed up unannounced at 9 o'clock on Saturday morning. She showed us all around, and when her husband came, he took us to their tobacco barn. The sweet smoky smell came pouring out as soon as the farmer opened the door...it made everything a bit hard to see. A log was smoldering and smoking up a storm under a metal pan of water, and you could stick your head in and look up into the semidarkness and see the hanging brown-gold--yellow-green leaves like branches on a palm tree for twenty or thirty feet. It was really really odd to see something that I associate so strongly with home in such a different setting.
We had fun on the way back, looking at all the grapes and fruit trees. There are apples, peaches, pears, plums (damson and regular), figs, lemons, walnuts, chestnuts, olives, and I don't know how many kinds of grapes in everyone's yard. After a late breakfast, we headed back out to the market and shopped around. I got two little chocolate cookies at a pastry shop and some bread for lunch.
Then it's homework time. Anybody know anything about why Mussolini left the Socialist party or how to conjugate verbs in Italian?
Tonight there is a horse show in the piazza where the big tower used to be (the Germans blew it up near the end of WWII) and I'm excited! I'll try and get some good pictures up for you guys.
Arrivederci!