Cooking School and Lucca

It's still cold and rainy here in Florence.  We're eagerly waiting for spring!

As usual, we've been very busy these past two weeks.  Two weekends ago we had our American Cooking School here at the Bible school.  We helped Debbie prepare the food on Thursday and Friday.  Friday, March 8, was international women's day.  I don't ever remember hearing about it in the states, but here they celebrate it. The women usually go out to eat and men give women a mimosa (yellow flower that smells like honeysuckle).  So on women's day, we were in the kitchen from 9am till about 11pm with just a 2-3hr break in the middle.  It was a lot of hard work, but it was fun.  We had 30 people come, and we have two new people interested in taking lessons here now.  When we have the cooking school, everyone pays a small amount, eats the food we made, while Debbie show how to make it.  It's a lot like a tv cooking show.  After she finishes making one thing, all of us workers carried the food out, and she continued on with the next item while everyone ate.  This time they had Cowboy casserole, salad and a really good dressing that I don't remember the name of, biscuits, and plum cake with gelato. 

The next morning we had Rosa, our cook, and her family over for an American breakfast.  So we spent a lot of time in the kitchen that weekend. 

On Monday, two of the girls from church came and made us dinner before our bible study.  They are from Honduras, so the food was amazing!  I spent a lot of time in the kitchen talking with them in Italian. 

Our classes our going really well.  Alan has picked up another student, and I've picked up two new ones as well.  It's amazing getting to read the Bible with them.  I admit, some days we're exhausted, and I think that class is the last thing I want to do; but as soon as I'm in class with one of my students I think, "Rachel, your'e so stupid.  Why were you dreading this today.  This is the best part about being here." 

This past Friday, we went to a benefit dinner for immigrant women.  It was entertaining.  We had food from many different cultures.  We usually weren't sure what any of it was.  Several people from church came as well, so it was nice to get to spend time with them.

On Saturday, we went to Lucca.  One Saturday a month, someone gets to plan a trip for us to all go on.  Peter picked Lucca because it is one of three cities in Italy that still has it's entire city wall still intact.  So Peter wanted to ride bikes along the well.  Alan, Peter, and I took our bikes on the train and the others rented bikes there.  It was a really cute little town.  We had a lot of fun there!  On the way back, we almost missed our train.  There were two trains leaving for Florence, but one was not at the station yet.  So we got on this train, and a worker told us that it was the slow train and that we should get on the other train going to Florence, which was pulling into the station.  So we grabbed our bikes, which we had to hang from these hooks on the wall, and took off running down the platform.  We had to carry our bikes down these stairs (in order to get across to the other platform) and back up some stairs.  Then, of course, we had to run all the way down the platform to the other end of the train, because the compartment for the bikes is at the end of the train.  So we jumped into the train just before the doors closed.

Sunday, we had the Harding students, who are studying here in Florence, over for dinner.  We made them chili texas pile up style, since we figured that they probably miss "American" food.  It was so nice to have a devo and sing lots of songs in English! At the station that night, Kelli and I got to talk to the sweetest man.  He's from Egypt, and we somehow ended up in a conversation with him all night about the differences between Islam and Christianity.  It's amazing how much easier it's getting to just bring up the Bible and God with complete strangers here.

Another neat thing that happened this week is that my grammar class asked me to do a study on some differences between what we see in the Bible and what the Catholic church teaches.  This came about because we've already read some scriptures that led to these types of conversations.  So I will admit that I was really surprised when they asked me, but I'm starting to realize that God really does work in mysterious ways!

This coming weekend we have the women's retreat!  I'm excited and nervous to meet all these ladies from all over Italy.  We have one more week of school.  By the time we are done, we'll have finished 2.5 textbooks!  It's crazy!