Kirbys in Catania

Graffiti House Last week went by quickly.   Our official semester is ending this week but we are continuing classes with those students who want to continue.   All of mine and Alan’s students are continuing.   Thursday, Alan went to dinner with one of his students and his student’s family.   Now that we are at the end of the semester, it’s nice to look back and see how our relationships with our students have grown.   Another one of Alan’s students, Arben, has been coming to the school nearly everyday this past week.   He made us an Albanian meat pie dinner one night.   They were pretty good! Cute buildings in Milano Tram in Milano Early Friday morning Alan and I took the train to Milano.   Two men from the church took us to Marisa and Carlo’s house where we had lunch with them and a few other people from the church.   Once again, this weekend, most people didn’t speak English, so we were had to practice our Italian. ...

Since it's been a while since I've written, I'm going to split up what's happened the past two weeks into two blogs. The first week of May started out slowly.  Actually, April 30th was what they call Notte Bianca (White Night).  Most of the major cities have a celebration with bands, events, music shows, dances, and other entertainment.  Also all the stores and museums are opened till around 1am.  So Florence is just crammed pack with people.  Most people and most of my students told me that they stayed out till 2/3am.  Robby Shackleford used this event to help raise some money for Help the Children Florence Foundation.  Lindsey and I helped him set up Tuesday morning and the others helped him with the event during the White Night.  This foundation donates money to the research of a local doctor here who has found a cheap way to do diagnostic tests on infants to detect genetic immunodeficiency diseases.  You can read more about it at this w...