We've had a busy year so far, and I'll do my best to catch you all up on the highlights. I might break it up into a couple of blog posts over the next week if it gets too long.
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| Davey got to have his own personal crib on the flight to Italy |
At the end of January, we came back to the States to visit family and friends, and to rest a bit. It was a whirlwind of a trip. We had to take Davey to meet several relatives so we did a lot of traveling. We also had several run-ins with snow storms and blizzards on the days we were flying. The airlines lost our luggage, but they found it two days before we returned to Italy - so basically they found it when we were at the point of being ready for it to be lost so we could just get reimbursed. Instead, we ended up not getting reimbursed and spending our trip in borrowed clothes. So, thank you so much to those of you who lent us clothes so we didn't have to shop for a whole wardrobe during our short visit back! We traveled from Maryland, to New York, to Arkansas, to Louisiana, and Texas. We enjoyed being back, but by the end of the trip we were ready to come home to Italy! Some fun discoveries we made when we were back is that we don't like a lot of desserts/sweets that we used to like cause now they taste too sweet, I cannot drive in the states because I want to drive like a Sicilian (aggressive and a little crazy), and American pizza still tastes sooo good. Some people asked us if we felt a lot of re-entry culture shock, but we didn't. The only place we felt a little bit of culture shock was back in church. We have become used to going around and kissing everyone hello and goodbye in greeting, that it was really strange to handshake or awkwardly hug people at church in the states. The reason I say hugs are more awkward than the Italian kiss greeting is that there are actually rules to the Italian greeting. You always lean to the right and kiss the other persons left cheek first, and then move on to the other side. Hugs are so much more awkward....we never knew which way we were supposed to lean first. :) But in all seriousness, it was lovely to be back and see everyone again.
When we were in the states I was actually really surprised by how many people asked us what our daily life was like. I suppose I haven't written about that in a while so I decided to write about it here.
Sunday: Church (only morning services). After church we usually spend the day with someone (someone from church or a friend or student outside of church). Occasionally we are home along on Sunday afternoons, but this doesn't happen often.
Monday-Friday: Alan goes down to the church building in the morning and stays there a few hours. Most of his classes are in the afternoon, so in the morning he is just there to talk to people if they come by and ask about classes or about the Bible. One of the elders is usually down there in the morning as well. Then he comes home for lunch. Here in Italy everything does close down from about 1:30-4:30 for lunch and for a midday nap. Alan then heads back down in the afternoon for his appointments. At this point, I only go down when I have a scheduled appointment. I have just a few students at this time. Alan has the majority of them. So I am spending more of my time at home being a housewife and working on things that I can do from home such as: planning VBS, writing the lessons for our youth group meetings, and planning activities for our kids class.
Tuesday afternoon I teach piano to a friend of mine from church, Giorgia. She comes over every Tuesday afternoon, we have a one hour lesson, and then we have tea and just talk and swap recipes.
Tuesday night we have singing/prayer night at the church.
Thursday night is midweek Bible study. Alan and I teach a kids class during the Bible study so that the kids have something to do, and so the parents can have a chance to listen to the lesson.
Twice a month now (yes, before it was once a month) we have the preteens/teens over to our house on Saturday nights for a Bible study, pizza, and games. We have increased it to twice a month now so that we can spend one of the Saturdays each month preparing for Bible Bowl, which will be happening sometime around the end of summer.
Saturday afternoon is evangelization that the elders organized. It consists of handing out tracts to people on the street in downtown Catania. We occasionally help with this, but it depends on our schedule. Sometimes we are out of town at a convegno (Gospel convention/retreat) or we are spending the day with students. We try to go when we can.
Once a week I go over to Rina's house and meet her daughter Cinzia to read some books in Italian to practice my Italian and expand my vocabulary. It's a lot of fun and a big help to me!
Note: Our daily life activities have changed a bit since Davey came along. Before he was here, I spent more time at the church with Alan. However, I don't feel like it's hindered me in being able to make contacts. In fact, if anything, Davey is making us get out even more and meet people/be in situations that we wouldn't have been in if he hadn't come along.
Also, several people asked us to take pictures of where we live so that they can see what it's like (not just the pretty views around us). So I'm including pictures of our daily life activities to give you an idea.
We live in downtown Catania, so we don't have to drive often for daily errands. We have a fruit vendor down the street from us, we have a butcher, a bread store, a grocers, and our favorite bar (coffee shop) all within a couple of blocks from us. We often put Davey in the stroller or the baby carrier and walk around to get our errands down. Most of these businesses are run by families. We've gotten to know them well, and they treat us like family. They give us things for our baby, hold him, ohh and ahh over the million pictures we've taken of him, and in the fruit vendors case he makes sure we buy organic products when it's for David. All these people know why we're here. We try to be very open with everyone we come in contact with. We want to show others the love of Jesus and be the light that Jesus calls us to be. We can't force people to be interested in following Jesus, but we want to be that example and to love others so that they can see that Jesus has made a difference in our lives. We've made friends with several people here in the city, and we have really come to think of it as home. So without further ado, here are some pictures to show you all where we live and show off this small area of God's beautiful world.
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