Ciao man

Tonight I write from the comfort of my twin/ queen bed. Our apartment gets very chilly at night, so I either hide out in the cage or under my newly clean covers! Since I last blogged I have seen a lot more of Florence and started classes! I’ll start with the basics of Florence…

First off everywhere we go I see something that makes me stop and stare. And it’s even better if I see it at night because then when I pass by it in day light it’s like seeing a whole new beauty. Take the Ponte Vecchio for example; we have seen it twice at night so far but today was the first time I saw it in the light. Unbelievable. We walked up to the top of Pizzale di Michelangelo to see over the top of Florence at sunset and I have never seen anything quite like it. All I kept thinking was “how in the world did people build this city?” I really do love Florence.




Hil and I are starting to get into the routine of day to day living. Classes start and 9 so we start trekking over to LDM around 8:40. I never mind the walk because there is always something to gawk at. Italian class was not so horrible today. Most of you reading this know how much I looove foreign language, but I guess learning Italian in Italy has its perks. I can defiantly apply what I learn, even if the man at the gelato place still looks at me like I’m crazy and immediately starts to speak English  Hey, at least I’m trying. We ventured to the market today. I loved the market. Dad you would appreciate the market. Tons of little men at stands selling fresh produce and weird parts of animals. Our favorite thing was the dried fruit. I especially loved the Kiwi. I just might have to swing by tomorrow and get some more! Hil and I cooked chicken and veggie stir fry tonight. It was really good, and I was very happy to finally get some fresh veggies after eating lots of carbs for the past few days. Italy truly is the home of pizza and pasta. Everyday there is something new. Something new to see, to eat, talk about, and most importantly learn!



One of the coolest things that has happened so far is our adventure on Sunday night. We rested and explored most of Sunday but wanted to try and find some kind of church service. I had researched online and the only thing I found in English was a service located at Pepperdine University’s study abroad location. We found it on the map and even though it was far, and we had no idea where in the heck we were going, five of us set out to find “chiesa”. I shouldn’t be left in charge because smart me forget the address to where we were going (we didn’t realize this until we are half way there). All we had was a map I had highlighted and name of the street we were supposed to end up on. We managed to follow the map to the street, and then began the aimless walk up and down the Via, praying that we would somehow know where this church was located. I was feeling very dumb at this point and kind of bad for making the girls walk 2 miles to a dead end. But like always, God showed up and a gold plated Pepperdine sign and Hilary’s good eyes led us to the door. After ringing the door bell 7 times and begging God again to open the door, a really nice girl came to the door. We found out worship didn’t start until 9:00 and the internet site was way outdated so it was normally only Pepperdine kids at worship, but he invited us to come anyway! It was so great. The worship reminded me a lot of a thing I do back in Chapel Hill called Tuesday Night Worship, and the speaker talked about not knowing what you wanted to do in the future (quite applicable to my life). God is good and he looked after us. Little things like that remind me of how truly taken care of I am, and how faithful God is. After worship we met some really sweet girls, so now we have a few more friends in Firenze. It’s cool to think about how big the body of Christ is and that even in Florence, Italy, we can worship together with complete strangers because we serve the same God! Pretty neat.
It has been an awesome couple of days, but I am still very tired. Hopefully I will nap a little more in the coming week. Continue to pray for my Italian accent and our time here. Love you all and miss you more.
All my love from Italia,
Bec
Just a few fun things:
*Last night Hilary about got ran over by a car while taking out the trash. Like, legit, almost got killed. Also Italians do not approve of putting your feet on bus seats.
*When in doubt of where to go, follow local Italians. We followed a woman with a rug to the IKEA bus. We had to run through about 5 lanes of crazy traffic but we caught the bus! Thank you IKEA rug lady.