Beginnings and Endings

Ciao everyone!  Sorry that i haven't posted a new blog in a couple of weeks.  We have been really busy here.  And i just wanted to thank everyone for the packages and letters that I received, it means a lot and has been very encouraging to me.  So, last week was my last week of language school!  It feels so weird to finally be done and it seems like such a long time ago that I started.  It also strange to not wake up early in the morning, hit the snooze two or three times, and then rush off, late, to school kinda regretting that I hit the snooze two or three times, haha.  However, I had the best teachers!  My first two teachers were Giovanni and Maria.  They were the two who gave me private tutoring for the first two and a half weeks I was here.  Then for one week I was with the rest of the team in their class, but I cannot remember the teachers' names for the life of me right now because I was very overwhelmed with the material that whole week.  Then I moved on to another class and had Enzo and Simona as teachers.  They were awesome and I learned so much from them.  I have a picture of Simona but my camera died on the last day of school before I could get a picture with Enzo.


Its been kinda quiet around the Bible school lately because everyone is on vacation for two weeks.  Debbie, David, Emily, and Ermenita all left around the first of the month and are in the States.  Andrea left last week on Wednesday to go home and be with her family for a couple of weeks, and Angela left on Monday to head home for a couple of weeks as well.  Ryan and Laura went on vacation for a couple of weeks and went to France, Ireland, and Scotland, and they got back on Tuesday night.  Eric and Jessica left a couple of days after them and went to Scotland, Ireland, and France.  Since I just finished school last week, my vacation started on Friday, so I have been taking it easy around here.  I was suppose to go to San Gimignano last Saturday, but we got 6 inches of snow here in Florence, yay!, and I didn't want to chance getting stuck out in the middle of nowhere for a few days.  I was very excited to see the snow since I am from the South and we really don't see snow.  Angela and I took Zoe, the new puppy, outside to see the snow once there were a few inches on the ground and it was hilarious!  She had never seen snow before, being only 5 months old, and she freaked out.  She ran around the yard not knowing what she was running around in and very surprised that she cold eat it.  (Angela has a video on her blog of Zoe in the snow and a link to her blog is on the right of this page.)

I have stayed around here for a few days, but yesterday I went to Siena.  It is a beautiful town and sits on top of the hills.  I mainly stayed in the historical district of the town and saw the main sights, but everything was closed!  Every museum I went to and the tower of the Palazzo Pubblico was closed, everything but the Cathedral there.  The first on is the Piazza del Campo.  It is a huge square and every June or July they have a horse race around the edge with people standing on the side of the square or in the middle.  In the Piazza del Campo is the Palazzo Pubblico and in there is an art museum.  Here are some pictures of them:

I also went to the Accademia there but it was closed when i went, so I just took some pictures of the entrance.

Then I found the Duomo of Siena.  It is a beautiful building and I think that the inside is prettier than the inside of the Duomo here in Forence.

The Cathedral

The front of the Cathedral

The inside of the Cathedral

The baptistery

 Last week was also my last week to teach.  My student Edoardo and I went to get some coffee right across the street and ended up talking for an hour and a half.  We were just getting to know each other and talked about travel, soccer (or calcio here in Italy), and books.  Hopefully I will get to have coffee with him this week.  I also got to teach Felice for one last time before the holidays too.  Alban, one of my other students, couldn't make it last week for our lesson.  Felice, which is Italian for "Happy", is my beginner student and the husband of Rosa our cook here at the school.  He is very enthusiastic and on our first lesson we wrote down 10 questions to ask each other.  It was a way for him to use and learn some English and also a way to get to know each other.  I now have to start working on the curriculum for next year.
I will post again soon and let you know how things are going here.  Please continue to pray for us, pray that God will watch over us as well travel on vacation, pray that we will continue to be a light for God wherever we go, and show God to the people we meet.  This is the season that people remember Jesus the most, but I hope and pray that we will always remember him and what he has done for us.  I was reading the story of his birth in Matthew and Luke and I think the most important verse in those passages is Matthew 1:21 which says, "She will give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins." which is the greatest gift that we could ever receive.  Merry Christmas and Buon Natale.  Ciao and God bless.

Giving Thanks

          I started teaching last week and have three students.  I don't know a whole lot about them yet since two of my students were not able to make it for class the first week.  So this past week was the first time to teach two of them, and I have a beginner, an intermediate, and an advanced student that I meet with for one hours, once per week.  I'll post more about them after I get to know them a little better.  I am still in language school but the others here have finished.  we have a two week break in December to travel and to rest before we start back to work again.  I will do some traveling, day trips mostly, but I hopefully will spend a few days in Rome. 
          Well, last Saturday we had a Thanksgiving dinner for our students.  We started cooking for the dinner on Thursday and cooked for three days.  On Saturday we did a last minute cleaning in the classroom, where we had the dinner, and the outside.  We bought flowers several weeks ago but we were never able to put them in the window boxes because it has because it has been raining almost everyday for three weeks.  So Saturday Laura and Angela put the flowers in the pots while Eric and I took them up the stairs to put them on the windows.  Around 11 am Eric, Ryan, and I started cleaning out the garage.  It took us four hours, but we cleaned it out and rearranged everything.
           The students and their families started showing up around 7:30 and we had about 70 people in all.  we asked them to bring a "non perishable food item", kinda like what people in the States do to donate for a soup kitchen or church,  for the pantry at the Florence church (food that we can give to needy people who come and ask for food).  They went above and beyond my expectations with donating food.  Some people brought two or three bags of food!  Their generosity was incredible!  We had some appetizers for them and before dinner, Andrea read them a story about Thanksgiving that Jessica put together.  The story was about the first Thanksgiving and how it became a national holiday and also what it means to us as Christians to be thankful to God for all has done for us and still is doing for us today.  I know that I am thankful for my family who have helped me and supported me to come to Italy, for my friends who are always there for me and praying for me while I am in Italy, for the awesome teammates here in Florence (Angela, Jessica, Ryan, Eric, Laura, Andrea, Emily, Ermenita, David, and Debbie) and the support and friendship that I receive from them everyday, and for the people in the church here in Florence who have been so welcoming to me and making me feel at home.  There are so many that were not named here but I thank God for you in my prayers.
             I got to meet some new people, family of some of the students, as well as some people I had already met, Like Samuele and Francesco.  We ate good, traditional thanksgiving food (by the way, thanks Debbie and all the ladies here who cooked) such as turkey, green bean casserole, ham with a cranberry glaze, corn casserole, rolls, sweet potato casserole, dressing, and of course gravy.  For dessert we had pumpkin pie and pecan pie with homemade whip cream.  The Italians loved all the food and had a good time and we did as well.  The last person left around midnight and we finished cleaning around 1 am.  It was a very busy day.

             On Sunday, there was an American couple at church that was backpacking around the world for a while.  They are from Oklahoma and about our age as well.  they were surprised to find so many English speaking people at the church there in Florence.  That night they met us at a movie theatre to see the new Harry Potter movie.  It was very interesting to watch it in English with Italian subtitles. 
             I thank you again for reading my blog and keeping up with the work we are doing here.  I ask that you please continue to pray for us and the work that we are doing.  And pray that God will continue to use us and that we will let ourselves be used.  Thanks again and God bless.  Ciao