Roma and Other Things

February 25, 2013

This past weekend Alan and I traveled to Roma to visit the church there per their request. Typically, couples don't stay and work at the Bible School here in Florence. They usually get invited by a few churches to come and work with them, and the couple picks one to go and work with.

We went down Friday and spent that day just sight seeing around Rome. Naturally, we took tons of pictures and we enjoyed seeing the city. This is my second time to Rome and it was Alan's first. We toured the Colesseum, the Forum, and Altare della Patria. Alan was still a little sick, so we didn't run around to see everything in one day.

We stayed with the Vitalone's. They were so sweet to invite us into their home and we really appreciated their hospitality. The weird "connection" I have with Rome, is this is the same church that my mom (along with her older sister) came and worked with for two years back in the 70s. So I actually met quite a few people who remembered my mom and my aunt. They told me some memories they had of them and showed me pictures. We ate our with some of the members on Saturday night at this great pizzeria. We had these amazing fried olives that were stuffed with sausage. They are called olive all'ascolana. They're a dish from Ancona, which is where my family comes from.

Sunday we enjoyed having service with the church their. Tonia sat between me and Alan and wrote out a translation of the whole service! It was so nice, but must have been tiring for her. Alan and I are both finding that we are getting a lot better at understanding Italian; it's the talking that is the problem. After church, they had a agape (pot luck). Everyone was so open and friendly, and we felt like we were leaving long-time friends when we left.

Rome is a much bigger city than Florence. Florence you can walk around easily. We already know our way around Florence well. Rome is huge. It's like another New York or London. Red traffic lights are just suggestions. There are people everywhere, and we heard more English there than we have since we've been here (because of all the tourists).

Our 4hour train ride got us back in time for feeding the homeless Sunday night. Classes have been going well with our students. Tuesday, Alan and I prepared dinner for my grammar class. We had shepherds pie, homemade yeast rolls, and salad. It was a lot of fun and I really enjoyed getting to spend the extra time with them! They are a fun class. However, the cooking was a bit of a challenge. First of all, we had three different kinds of yeast (all in Italian). I ended up just guessing which one to use, and thankfully the rolls were ok. Then I totally made up a brown gravy recipe because their are no McCormick packets here! Sigh! So I found some beef bouillon cubes (that was a challenge) and went from there.

Class has been going okay this week. We are learning lots of new and hard verb tenses. We had a pretty difficult quiz in class today. However, lots of funny things happen in class too. I guess that's expected with anything that involves learning a second language. For instance, today Sebastian told our teacher that Lindsey was easier than Ashley (he meant to say that his and Lindsey's conversation was more simple than Conner and Ashley's dialogue they had made up). Then Lindsey asked the teacher to touch her instead of saying "It's my turn." Last, but definitely not least, Conner and Ashely's dialogue was hilarious. We were practicing inviting people to events and practicing responses. So he introduced himself to Ashely as if they had never met, asked her to go to Rome with him (our teacher thought this was hilarious and said that Conner doesn't waste time). Ashley refused at first, so he asked to go on a different day (Sunday), she told him that she had a meeting Sunday morning, to which he called her a liar because nobody has meetings on Sunday morning. Then he still asked her out for a different day (At this point, Lindsey says from across the room, "How do you say 'desperate'"). Ashley told him maybe since he did, afterall, call her a liar. And yes, for some reason we learn and remember all the important words like: who cares, liar, lazy, cheater, and you're the worst! :) These are the things we often say to each other at home. haha We're all having fun learning a new language though! Sometimes it is frustrating, but it's fun.