Arriving in Italia!

After a year of preparation, we are finally here in Italy! We left my parent's house 4am on Monday, the 1st. After flying to Miami (where we met the two other girls on our team - Megan and Lindsey) we had an 8hr layover before we caught our flight to Dusseldorf, Germany. From Germany we took a little propeller plane to Florence, Italy. We got there at noon on Tuesday. Non of us slept very well on the plane, so we were pretty exhausted when we arrived. We celebrated the New Year on the plane, and the only other exciting thing that happened was the German lady in front of us who spoke very little and broken English was really mad at Alan because his knees were in the way for her to recline all the way back. Poor Alan sat with this lady's seat on his knees for most of the flight, and she didn't understand that he wasn't doing it on purpose. He's just 6'6"! :)

David and Debbie Woodroof are the directors of the Bible School in Scandicci. They, along with Peter and Melissa (two other Avanti workers who have been here for the past year) met us at the airport. We managed to stay up for the rest of the day. We toured Scandicci on foot, went to Gallo's for pizza, and played nertz. We also met Joele, he is an Italian boy who lives here at the school.

With the chef at Gallo's

The school is three levels. There's a kitchen, dining room, pantry, a classroom, and laundry/storage room on the first floor. The second floor has an apartment for David and Debbie, another apartment for a worker at Harding's campus here in Florence, and a library. The third floor is split into two hallways. There's a boy's and a girl's side. Alan and I have a room and bathroom to ourselves at the end of the boy's hallway. He walks down the boy's hall to get to it, and I have to walk down the girl's hall. There's a door across from our room that connects us to the girl's hall. We're supposed to get a door between our part of the hall and the boys hall.

We're actually here during the down time right now. Many Italians are actually still gone for the holidays (Buon Feste!). So we won't be starting our English classes until the third week of January. This is actually a good thing though, because we spent all of the last week getting our permesso di soggiornos (they take the place of our visas), our health insurance, our phones, and our id cards. We went to the post office every day for the first three days we were here, but we finally got all of our official paperwork done. Melissa, David, and Peter have been taking us around to get all of this done. They have been such a huge help, since a lot of people at these places speak hardly any English. Can't wait until I can carry on a conversation in Italian! It's encouraging to see Melissa and Peter do this since they've only been here a year.

We've gone to several bars. A bar here is a coffee shop. I've already tried espresso (I accidentally dumped too much sugar into it, and it was still way too strong!) We've had several cappuccinos. One day some people in our group ordered hot chocolate, which is much different than ours. It's more like warm chocolate pudding, and it's really good. So, the next day Megan and I ordered a hot chocolate of our own at a new bar, and it was AWFUL. It was bitter, and had lumps in it. Even David couldn't believe how bad it was. But it was a funny experience. We kept dumping in sugar to see how much it would take to make it drinkable, but it never got better.

Melissa and Peter gave us a tour of Florence on Thursday. Took a tour of the Duomo for free. We learned how to take the bus into town, and how to find our school for our Italian class. Melissa Camarata arrived on Friday. She is another Italian that lives here. She actually majored in teaching Italian to people, so she and Joele will be really good to practice with. In fact, Alan already tries to communicate with Joele a lot even though Joele speaks very little English. Their chats involve lots of shrugs, hand gestures, and smiles.

Friday, us newbies made dinner - cooked out hamburgers and hot dogs and made fries. It was really good. Saturday, we went to our first convegno (basically a convention for members of the church of Christ in Italy). It was in Padua, which is about three hours north of us via car. We met several members from the church in Ferrara and several others from the military base in Aviano. In fact, the Americans that lived in Aviano were very excited to meet us, in particular David, because they had had no contacts with the church and the events in Italy. Now they do! The subject for this convegno was the family. John Phyllis, a preacher from Kaiserslaugher, gave the lesson. We really enjoyed getting to meet other Christians from different areas in the country already!

Sunday we went to a local bar before church. Apparently, it's tradition to get a coffee before church. Church was conducted completely in Italian, but it was easy to understand because it was a service of reading scriptures and singing songs. We've actually picked up enough Italian to figure out what book, chapter, and verse they were in so we followed along the whole time.....well, except once we didn't hear the name of the book and we were completely in the wrong book trying to match the Italian words we were hearing with the English we were reading. We figured it out eventually. We met several people at church, and afterwards there was a potluck. Italians here bring their dogs everywhere! I mean everywhere - restaurants, grocery stores, buses, etc. Mario had his little dog sitting in a chair beside him during the potluck. It was pretty funny.

Sunday night Alan joined the Florence church's soccer team. They were in a church league tournament. Alan and David were the only American on the team. There were several Italians and Hondurans. In fact, one of the guys actually plays on a semi-professional team here in Italy. I'm gonna brag a little here - Alan was definitely the star. They didn't expect an American to do that well, and Joele said he was the best one out their last night. Alan scored the first two goals, one with his head. He played well. Alan is really excited to get to be doing this, because several of the guys on the team are actually not Christians and have only been coming to church since this soccer team got started up. Before we ever came over here, Alan was hoping to get to use soccer as a way to make contacts and eventually maybe share the gospel with those contacts. Looks like he might get to do that once he learns more Italian. ;)

Today, we had our first Italian class. We have class four hours a day, five days a week for three months. We managed to find our way to the right bus and to our class in Florence without a hitch. Class was a lot of fun! We learned a lot, and I have homework to do after I finish this blog.

Today, Rosa, our cook, came back into town. She was at home with her family the past few weeks. She made us an amazing lunch. I don't remember what it was called, but it was fantastic. When Rosa is here, we are not allowed to talk in English. We have to talk in Italian or else we pay a 10cent fine in a jar. At the end of the semester, if there's a enough money in the jar we have a pizza party. So, us newbies didn't say much during lunch. :) However, today the rule wasn't really enforced.

Well, as I learned today, Buona Giornata (have a good day)!

PS. Sorry this was so long. I felt like I should include all of this, but I will try not to have all my blog posts be so long!