the journey continues...still...

Nothing of interest happened today. I went to class.
I took a nap.
Spent the afternoon planning our Sweden trip and brainstorming ideas for 1st, 2nd and 3rd free travel.

Just to throw some ideas out there...
1st (6 or 7 days i think)
Flight to Portugal (you have to understand that you can find VERY cheap flights here; our flight to Sweden is 19.96 Euros)
Beach in Lisbon.
Train to Spain (Seville).
Ferry to Morocco; spend the day there. Ferry back at night.
Train to Barcelona.
Day there.
Overnight train to Switzerland (Interlaken).
Train home.

2nd (7 days?)
somehow get to Istanbul.
Day or two there.
Train to Thessaloniki. Train to Athens.
Flight to Rome. Train home.

Last (10 or 11 days).
Munich/Dachau/New-es-schwan-stine (fake phonetics)
Paris
Brussels (an hour or two...haha just joking)
Amsterdam (to see NOUR!!!!)
UK.
Dublin, Edinburgh/Glasgow, LONDON!!!

We leave the villa at 6:45 in the AM to catch a train a little before 8 in Firenze.
Onward to Rome. I'll be there til Sunday. Limited internet.
Don't worry it will all be documented so you all can be on the edge of your seats until I am able to update again. What a jam packed 4 days we are going to have!

I'm so excited to see the hub of the ancient world again.

Ciao!

Carnevale.

Not every day is interesting here. We're finally really settled in after being here for 2 full weeks.
And, the cabin fever is setting in -- everyone is ready to get out of the villa for a couple of days. Which, is good because tomorrow we head to Rome until Sunday.
After that -- our schedule is pretty much non-stop for a month or so. When we get back on Sunday, 8 of us are heading to Stockholm, Sweden via Venice on Monday and will be back Thursday...
Home for a few days then we go do a 4 or 5 day southern Italy tour...home for a few days then 1st free travel...etc.

It's about to get crazy! But, it's fun nonetheless.
I realize everyone at home is having awful weather...I hope ya'll are okay - but, don't send it here!! For the most part it's been very mild and for that, I am thankful.

Classes are pretty boring; Dr. Garner's two classes run together (which isn't a bad thing) and we listen to a lot of Italian pop music in Italian class. But things can't always be SO colorful :]

Class this morning and then the afternoon/evening in Florence.
And what I said about blisters - don't worry they will attack you too. They are okay to live with, but really...there's nothing you can do to stop them.

Ciao!

scherzo.

Last night we had a Super Bowl Party here at the villa after dinner. Kyle went to the Army base and bought Doritos and chips & salsa and GIRL SCOUT COOKIES and snickers/reeses and SO MUCH junk food. And, while it was junk food --- it was fantastic. We started to watch the game around midnight. However, it was broadcast in Italian with no American commercials. Needless to say, I went to bed around 1.
The game wasn't over til 4 am or so here. But, everyone was in happy spirits when I woke up because the NY Giants had won...and there's a Harding Alum (#52 Tank Daniels) on that team :]

We didn't have class until 11 this morning and then we ate lunch and had some free time.
Libby, Nathan, Leigh, Mallory and I headed into to town to go to the Co-op to find some masks for Carnevale and just to explore.
Needless to say...we got off at the wrong stop, had to find the right bus, ended up being the wrong bus and then just got off and followed the golden arches to the McDonald's that was right by the store.

And, when we got there - it was almost disappointing. Definitely a neat place, but somewhere I would like to wonder around by myself - not with a group of people.

Tonight we had a Carnevale party and before dinner/the party it seemed as if people were very somber -- neither happy nor sad. So, we dressed up and took pictures together and played games and ate dinner. After dinner, we turned on music and "choreographed" in the classroom until everyone was ready to go outside.

A Carnevale tradition for the kids is to spray eachother with silly string and throw confetti. So, we were all awarded a can of silly string and ordered to go outside to the basketball court. It was to be boys vs. girls. Unfortunately it was raining...so we took off our shoes (bad idea) and froze. Once Robbie said "GO!" we went at eachother...and I had silly string in my hair, on my pants, my shirt, in my eyelashes....it was fantastic. Robbie got a video of it on his camera...it was madness!!!

We went inside and they had chocolate cake and milk for us. The perfect ending to the evening! Michella (the 7 year old I wrote about earlier) was here at the villa for our party with her brother and sister and her mom. She was dressed up as Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz. While we were eating our cake in the dining room - she came up to our table of 6 or 7 people. She talked to us girls in English and then looked over to Riccardo and spoke in fast Italian and looked back at us and said "bye-bye students". She's absolutely brilliant - despite her learning disability.

I've been a little home/friend/job-sick today. Not in a bad way, but I've been here for 12 days now and I'm settled. I miss my sweet little girls at Gym Stars so much. I miss their energy and their hugs and I miss getting to interact with them everyday. I hope they don't forget me.

We had a split chapel today. I did the devo and talked about Ex. 21:5-6 --- Pierce My Ear....that song still is so deep and so moving.

Ciao!

days like today.

I'm thankful for days like today when I look at the schedule for the next month. This is going to fly by much faster than ever expected.

I went to class (fell asleep maybe only a little) all morning...planned our Sweden trip for about 2 and a half hours after...took a 2 hour nap...ate dinner and went into Scandicci.
Only to find out that everything was closed at 8pm and that it was very easy to walk around on the outdoor ice rink...even though it too was closed.

Exploring is always fun and we never seem to miss the interesting people; the man we met tonight in a bar (not a thing like an American bar) was a native Italian but lived in Dublin/England for 30 years until 1993 when he moved back and opened his store. He was eager to speak English to us and told us to come back any time so he could practice.

Oh, the places you will go...the people you will meet. It is all so true.

Tomorrow we must be up and on the bus by 8am to go to the Accademia to see (mainly) Michelangelo's David and prisoner statues. I'm most excited about seeing the Prisoners again...and the David too. I'll look for the finer details this time...instead of just being in awe.

I love tea time. Hot tea, sugar, and milk...mmm.

Ciao!

santo, santo, santo.

We caught the bus into Florence this morning around 9:30 and met for church there.
We came in and Robbie announced about us and we sang songs for a while in English and in Italian. Robbie would lead the 1 and 3 in English and then the 2 and 4 in Italian...it was a neat way to 'learn' the language. Don't worry, they use Songs of Faith and Praise even in Firenze ;]

We got a surprise during communion - well, not a surprise per se, but it was pretty gross. The 'fruit of the vine' was for sure fruit of the vine and man it was some nasty wine. Oh well.

Today was the last Sunday for the directors of Avanti! Italia (a missionary program/Bible school here in Florence) who had been there for 5 years. Their 'contract' of sorts is up and the Woodroof's (she was my ASL teacher) are in language school right now and are officially taking up their position tomorrow when the Williams leave - as new directors.
Anyhow, the church very obviously loved Gary. He got up to begin preaching and he told us that he would be preaching in Italian only because it was his last Sunday to preach to the Florentine church. So, I obviously couldn't understand - but I did know he was talking about Hebrews 11-13 (only because he told us). But, towards the end I was able to pick out words -- esp. when he had visual aids!
He brought his suitcase up front and put three pieces of paper inside; "la fedes, la esperanza, la amore" (faith hope and love!) those were the only 3 I caught. As we sang the last few songs the whole church (there were probably 70 people there total) gathered around the Williams and all the Italians were singing their hearts out and just weeping because they were losing their dear friends. I didn't even know these people and I was ready to cry!

We met a little girl at the church today named Mikayla who is 7 or 8 I think. She is mentally retarded. However, she made all of us feel so small today when she told us how much she loved Ariel...in English and then turned and spoke to her father...in Italian. It's amazing how brilliant this little girl is in such an unconventional way.

oh, here's our church! it's beautiful!


Leigh and I tricked Libby tonight and told her we were going into Scandicci to explore and we ended up taking her to Gallo's (an awesome pizzeria) and the 4 boys were friends with showed up as well and we celebrated her birthday which is tomorrow. We went big - which we haven't done since being here...and all got a pizza and tiramisu and a nutella calzone; we just split all this food and it was fantastic.
The pizzas are realllllly really thin and have fresh tomato sauce and lots of cheese and are very crispy.


until next time, ciao!

benvenuto!

Classes started today. They're going to be great.
We began at 8 this morning in the classroom with "Good Morning Baltimore" from HairSpray and Dr. Garner dancing all over the room as he handed out papers. What a fantastic study of Paul we are going to do -- more than anything we're going to study how the letters he wrote and the things he said have had an affect on the modern world.
Italian was great - Mona has a beautiful Italian voice even though she's not a native speaker.

After lunch we put on real clothes and Leigh, Libby and I made the trek down the hill and then to the outskirts of Scandicci and caught bus #16 and rode into Florence. We went to the San Lorenzo market -- our first adventure just us girls.
Leigh and I met a younger (mid-thirties) Italian man and his father who owned a leather shop and they taught us all about the qualities of leather and for which kind you have to actually enter the store to get.
We bought scarves and practiced our Italian on the vendors. One vendor asked Leigh how she was in Italian and she replied "bueno." And he looked at her and just said - "Umm, that's spanish!" and chuckled. He then taught us the right way to say "fine thank you and you?", "nice to meet you" and several other phrases.
We used the poco (little) we learned today to tell him our names and explained that we were American students.

The vendors - the Italian ones at least - are nice and are happy to have you practice the language on them. They are eager to share their products with you, especially if it is a family business.

We went and got cappucinoes and cacao latte caldo (Hot chocolate milk) and caught the bus to get back to the villa. We made it up the hill in record time - only 12 or 13 minutes just to find a wonderful supper waiting for us. After dinner, we had a "Benvenuto" party which means welcome. We played TONS of icebreaker games and silly games and sang silly songs and had an "indoor scavenger hunt" and just enjoyed fellowshipping with one another.

At the end we sang "What a Wonderful World" by Louis Armstrong - what a beautiful world it really is!

OH! The group has an optional ski trip in a couple of weeks. It costs 160 Euros and a group of about 7of us just don't want to pay that to go sit and learn how to ski so we're going to use those 2 and a half or three days to do a day trip to Venice, then onto Milan and then Genoa and back to Florence. It's going to be our first real "European Adventure" and I'm sure it will be great.

Ciao!!

So, I'm pretty sure it's Wednesday...

Finally, after almost 24 hours of travel we arrived at the Villa.
It seemed as though we would never get here!

Overall, the plane travel was fantastic. I was lucky enough to sit with my friends Tyler and Libby on the 8 hour flight and then on the flight from Amsterdam to Rome I sat next to a nice Dutch man who was on his way to Rome for a conference for Roman History/Classics professors. I got a nice view of American Politics from the outside and I learned plenty about Dutch politics as well.

When we arrived in Rome we were greeted with this face...(I Hope it shows up)


That's Kyle the Assistant Director of HUF.

Unfortunately, we did not make it to Scandicci before dark...so, our first walk up the hill (which is quite a trek!) was in the dark. But, we made the most of it and that means it will be that much more impressive tomorrow.
The house is beautiful. I'm in a room with 4 other girls and we have a bathroom right outside the room which is very convenient.
We had dinner and filled out a bunch of forms tonight; in the morning we rise early for breakfast and off on our first trip into town together.

Dr Weaver - Don't worry, I hugged Mona and Robbie immediately.

Sidenote: On the way to Florence as we were driving through Tuscany I heard someone ask, "Which mountains are these?" And I (almost just out of habit) said, "The Apennines." I think Latin did me some good.