"No Pope, No Goverment, and No Money"
We have settled into a a "routine" here finally. I still have three students, a grammar class, and now a new beginner English class at the church building before service. Alan has four students each week. We are in our third month of Italian. We took our final last Thursday! We really are trying to spend any free time we have, studying Italian.
The title of this post is a phrase that several of my students have been telling me all week. They say that now they have, "no pope, no government, and no money." I'm sure most of you heard that the pope retired. Well, they also had elections last week, and nobody won a majority so basically no political party can govern at all.
Two Fridays ago we went to a Medici villa here in Florence. Bepe, the cutest old Italian man, takes us on a lot of our cultural days (we have cultural day instead of class now on Fridays). The villa was empty, and we pretty much got a private tour by a worker there.
Lindsey and I braved the rain and walked with Peter to the Scandicci market to help him find some gifts. I'm afraid we weren't much help, because we kept getting side tracked by all the coats, purses, and boots. :)
Sunday we had agape. I had what I would consider my first truly Italian conversation that day. I spoke with some of the young couples at church. They don't speak any English at all. I could tell that my Italian wasn't always/usually right but we communicated, and that's how this English class got started on Thursday nights before service. Last Thursday was the first one, and four of them came.
Alan and I got bikes this week, so he is very happy. Fortunately, the rain finally stopped and the sun came out this weekend. We biked around Scandicci on Saturday, and ran into pretty much everyone from our house. Everyone was outside that day enjoying the weather. Speaking of running into people, Florence really is kind of a "small town." It's rare that I go into town and not run into someone I've met - either a student, classmate, someone from church, or even a person that comes to the station for food on Sunday nights.
Last week we found an amazing pizza place when we took one of our classmates our for his birthday. It's called Il Pizzaiolo, and if you come to visit, we will take you there gladly!
Sunday, after church, we met up with some of our classmates, and took the train to Viareggio, a town on the Mediterranen. It's beautiful. You can sit on the beach and look at the ocean one minute; but if you take a glance behind you, you'll see these massive mountains standing guard. March 3rd was the last day for Carnevale. There was a large parade with massive, 6 story tall floats, and fireworks over the sea afterwards. Alan says it's like Mardi Gras but without the alcohol. I'll post some pictures at the end.
Alan and I would just ask for prayers specifically about our future plans here in Italy. Rome invited us to come work with them, but there are other churches who will invite us to come visit soon. We would appreciate prayers on guidance of where we should go, to make it clear where we can be of the most use to do God's will.
The title of this post is a phrase that several of my students have been telling me all week. They say that now they have, "no pope, no government, and no money." I'm sure most of you heard that the pope retired. Well, they also had elections last week, and nobody won a majority so basically no political party can govern at all.
Two Fridays ago we went to a Medici villa here in Florence. Bepe, the cutest old Italian man, takes us on a lot of our cultural days (we have cultural day instead of class now on Fridays). The villa was empty, and we pretty much got a private tour by a worker there.
Lindsey and I braved the rain and walked with Peter to the Scandicci market to help him find some gifts. I'm afraid we weren't much help, because we kept getting side tracked by all the coats, purses, and boots. :)
Sunday we had agape. I had what I would consider my first truly Italian conversation that day. I spoke with some of the young couples at church. They don't speak any English at all. I could tell that my Italian wasn't always/usually right but we communicated, and that's how this English class got started on Thursday nights before service. Last Thursday was the first one, and four of them came.
Alan and I got bikes this week, so he is very happy. Fortunately, the rain finally stopped and the sun came out this weekend. We biked around Scandicci on Saturday, and ran into pretty much everyone from our house. Everyone was outside that day enjoying the weather. Speaking of running into people, Florence really is kind of a "small town." It's rare that I go into town and not run into someone I've met - either a student, classmate, someone from church, or even a person that comes to the station for food on Sunday nights.
Last week we found an amazing pizza place when we took one of our classmates our for his birthday. It's called Il Pizzaiolo, and if you come to visit, we will take you there gladly!
Sunday, after church, we met up with some of our classmates, and took the train to Viareggio, a town on the Mediterranen. It's beautiful. You can sit on the beach and look at the ocean one minute; but if you take a glance behind you, you'll see these massive mountains standing guard. March 3rd was the last day for Carnevale. There was a large parade with massive, 6 story tall floats, and fireworks over the sea afterwards. Alan says it's like Mardi Gras but without the alcohol. I'll post some pictures at the end.
Alan and I would just ask for prayers specifically about our future plans here in Italy. Rome invited us to come work with them, but there are other churches who will invite us to come visit soon. We would appreciate prayers on guidance of where we should go, to make it clear where we can be of the most use to do God's will.
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| Yes, I creeped and took pictures of all strangers |
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| Confetti Tank! |
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| This couple is creative. He was the bee..... |
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| And she was the flower. |
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| This little girl kept putting confetti on her dad's head... |
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| And then she would wipe it off. |
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| Before |
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| After |
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| The sea and the mountains! |
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| Everyone else was building fires on the beach, so we did too. Found out later that that's illegal here. :) |
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| Carnevale Masks |
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| Confetti everywhere! |
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| Too cute! |
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| I loved how much this girl enjoyed throwing confetti on everyone. |
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| She's going to be doing that for a while... |
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| Even the dogs get dressed up for carnevale |
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