Classes Have Started

I feel like I could title each week's post as Chaos, because each week has been sooo busy!  Last Monday, we started up our Monday Bible study that we have here at the Bible School.  Some students come and some of the members from the Florence church come as well.  We are studying the book of Luke right now.  

Tuesday was a pretty normal day.  We had Italian class.  Alan and I cooked dinner.  If you know me well, you know that whenever I cook I get flour all over me from head to toe.  So, today I actually wore an apron.  Guess what? Yep, you guessed it, not one smidgen of flour on me.  Go figure.  After dinner, I gave Melissa C. a piano lesson.  We don't have any music here, so I've been writing her music and exercises on blank pieces of paper.  I don't know how long that will work, but it is for right now.  After her piano lesson, she helps me out with Italian.  It's a pretty fair trade.

Wednesday we picked up some skiing gear that we were borrowing for our weekend trip in Abetone.  Abetone is a mountain here in the Apennines. It's about an hour and half drive away from here.  So, as a group, all of us avanti workers agreed to go to Abetone to do our official orientation and to do a little skiing for a little fun trip.  We found a hotel that included breakfast and dinner for extremely cheap.  It was a beautiful hotel, with a gorgeous view of the mountain.

Snow plow everywhere!

We left for Abetone after class on Thursday.  We didn't get to leave until late in the afternoon because Lindsey, who has been back in the States for the past few days with her family, didn't get in till late since her flight was late.  As soon as she arrived, we jumped into the van and headed on up.  The nine passenger van was full, we had snacks, a guitar, and lots of silly people for the trip.  It was dark by the time we were on the curvy roads that made their up the mountain and through the small villages.  The views were stunning.  It was snowing while we made our way up, and at one point we had some excitement when the van slid.  David and Alan got out to put the chains on the tires.  As soon as they got out, the van slid backwards towards the edge of the road (which was also the edge of the cliff with a small looking guardrail) a couple of feet.  We all screamed for the break, Lindsey was up front and screamed back that she didn't know where it was.  So Peter dove over the seat and rescued us by putting on the break, while Alan and David both tried to brace themselves against the van.  After that, all of us girls got out of the van and took all these lovely pictures.

We obviously were very helpful when the boys put the chains on the tires

I have never seen so much snow in my life.  There were a couple of feet on the ground, and it was still snowing.  After our lovely dinner, which included the antipasta, primo, and secondo plates, and dolce; we had the first half of our official orientation about living at the Bible school, what's expected of us, and how our classes are going to go.

View from our hotel.  You can see the ski lift where skied.

Friday, we spent the morning and early afternoon skiing in Abetone.  It was unbelieveably cheap!  I would definitely recommend it to friends that come here to visit.  We stayed on the bunny slopes all day since all they had at this particular ski lodge was black diamonds and bunny slopes.  Peter was the only one brave enough to go to the top.  In the evening, before supper, we had the rest of our orientation.  We talked for a couple of hours about events that we are planning, new and old ideas that we can get running, and just spent a lot of time brainstorming and scheduling.

The next day, Alan and I are the only ones that skied.  We went to a different place that actually had intermediate slopes.  Alan and I had so much fun.  We've only been here a couple of weeks, but it was nice to just get out and be by ourselves for a while.  We love everyone we live with, but it is definitely an adjustment going from living by yourselves to living with 12 people.  It was actually snowing really hard that day, and was very cloudy.  We called it quits around lunch time.  Managed to go to a place where nobody spoke English and did just fine on our own ordering lunch.  :) After lunch, we all headed back on down the mountain.

Best thing that happened on the ski trip was when we were at the ski rental shop, and Alan asked the owner if he had any helmets.  After trying on several different helmets that were too small, Alan said to the owner, "I guess you don't have any helmets for big heads."  To which the guy replied, "No, I have helmets for big heads, just not for heads THAT big."  :)

The girls on the team.  We had some good bonding time over learning how to ski and falling.  Kelly and I were the worst!

After church on Sunday, we had Rosa's lasagne!  Oh my!  That stuff is amazing! Then, we got our list of students to call and arrange our class schedules with.  So far I have three students, one each on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday.  I also am doing one of the grammar classes.  It's on Tuesday nights and I will have several students for that class.  Megan is supposed to be my helper for that class.  I am really excited about getting started.  Alan already has three students set up for this week as well.  He hasn't heard back from any others.  Ideally, we should have 4-5 students while we are still in Italian class.  Once we are done with that, we will take on more students.

Alan had another soccer game this Sunday up in Massa.  They lost 11-10, but Alan made 4 goals.  He said it's hard playing on a team when you can't communicate well, but he also tried to communicate a lot more with his teammates and was successful at times.  I know he's having fun getting to make friends and connections in this way.

We did have a good Bible Study here Monday night.  During the day we had to go to an office to turn in our permessos.  This is a process that can take anywhere from 6-8hrs.  We actually gone done in 1.5hrs, but we aren't done because they've increased the price of the permessos this year.  Therefore, that meant that we had to go to the post office again today to pay the tax increase amount.  Can't wait to get all of this paperwork done!

We actually gave oral presentations in class yesterday.  It's hard to believe that we actually know that many words already.  I had my first class yesterday with this sweet highschool girl.  She actually speaks English really well.  Next week we will be starting to use the Bible to help with her reading and grammar.  It's so much fun listening to everyone compare their students.  It's exciting to see where all of this is going to go. Today, I had my second student, Laura.  She speaks English very well also.  We talked for a while just to get to know each other, and then we jumped right into reading in Luke.  She told me she isn't really familiar with most of the Bible and is interested to learn.  It was so much fun starting to read the story of Jesus with her to use as an English lesson! 

Uncle Scot is in town this week as well.  He's the Avanti Italia recruiter in Searcy, AR.  Today, Kyle (he works at Harding's campus here in Florence, but he lives here at the Bible school) and his wife Elizabeth came back from their honeymoon trip.  So now we are officially at 13 full time residents.  Joele left today to return home to Rome to look for a job there.  We are all going to miss him a lot!  Also, Jay - a guy from Napoli is here this week.  So we have a very FULL house!  :)

Typical scene in our house during free time right now: Giacamo and Kelly playing guitar.  Me or Peter playing the piano, and the rest of us sitting on the couches talking or studying Italian.      

Totally forgot to mention this fun little tidbit.  For the past two Sunday nights we have gone to the train station to feed the homeless.  Both times a homeless guy has pinched Megan's cheeks and tried to kiss her (one was successful).  I guess they like Megan!! :) The second time, I saw this guy coming so I high tailed it and told Alan to stick around for her. :)

Thank you all so much for your prayers and support.  We are just now starting to really get into the busy schedule of taking Italian classes while giving English lessons.  Alan and I also have some good news.  My parents were able to sell our car! Such a blessing to have that done!