Humira Shots, Haircuts, and Wedding Dresses, Oh My!

So, once again it’s been a long time since I’ve written! This year continues to be one wherein very little is “normal”, and in some ways not writing about it but just experiencing it has been the best way to process it. However, God always seems to bring me back to a place where I must recall that putting words to difficult things takes the power out of them… We name something, shed light on it, and invite Community into it, and suddenly the fear-swirl that comes with it must diminish. When I’m silent with something for too long, there is a temptation to see it as bigger than me, and what’s worse, that creeps into the feeling that it’s bigger than God, and the lie that we’re alone. I end up folding, thinking that speaking about things equates to whining, but that’s just a trick to make us feel judged, petty, small, and guilty, when Christ’s real perspective is one that caters to little children crawling up in His lap with little-children-worries.

The funny part is that these emotions seem to come out with the “wrong” triggers! Sickness itself was so bad. This last flare-up was so strong, so altogether crushing, that maybe there just wasn’t time to feel things as they happened, and now, months after the worst of it, the tiny things are the button-pushers.

This past week I had to cut my hair off. The rounds of powerful medicines we had to use for this flare-up made it rapidly fall out, and by the time this month came around it was clear that it wasn’t salvageable and that I was going to be a short-haired bride afterall. Not what I’d always dreamed of, but also NOT a huge deal; it’s definitely just hair! But somehow the no-choice-in-the-matterness of it all shook me up more than I expected, and on the happiest of girly days—when I got to go pick up my wedding dress and do the first fitting—I started to weep. Maybe these tangible things exist to put form to something we wouldn’t be able to process another way. Lost tresses and the way they change my face force me to move forward, to take a deep breath and chose bravery in the small stuff, leaving loss behind and pursuing confidence again after feeling tossed around by feisty circumstances.  

And I have been given the BEST support team for this stuff… two brothers and a sister that came along for the chop, and didn’t make me feel silly in any way, a mom that wiped my tears at the bridal salon, a pappy that nuzzled the words “you’re beautiful” into my cheek, and a fiancé that has only gushed delight, excitement, support, and anticipation at a lifetime of seeing each other grow and change.

A few days later, we needed to administer the second “loading dose” of the new “biologic” medication (given in my arm this time, instead of the initial 4 in my belly – see the pic!). This one is replacing the Remicade that was causing the hairloss, exhaustion, and brain-fog. We’re really hopeful that this is the one we can stick with for many years to come, and are praying that as it gets in my system, I will become able to wean off the steroids again and remain on only 1-2 medicines! It’s awesome to be able to give myself the shots (it’ll be 1 shot every 2 weeks now), and to no longer have to plan around intravenous infusions every 8 weeks! This medicine still suppresses my immune system, which potentially still limits where Johnny and I will be able to serve with Wycliffe in the future, but that “limit” no longer feels scary, and I stand firmly on the knowledge that no medicine will wrangle any limitation on God’s will.

So change pummels forward, but good things are afoot. Smiling today at the oddity of this summer, and thankful for all the ways this body is calming down. 

ROAD TRIP! - Part II

As I left our party for Oma that evening, my heart pulsed with the voices of my family——voices of energetic children, the sweet singing of my Oma's voice, as she metered-out the beat of a hymn with her dancing pointer-finger, and the kind, quivering voices that lifted me up in prayer at the end of the night to a Father that hears every quiet syllable...

I   will   never   forget   it.

Lately, in a serene, steady way, Luke 2:19 swirls in my mind: "But Mary treasured up all these things, pondering them in her heart". I'm certainly not Mary, and not undertaking the weighty journey that she walked, but I find this progress towards the mission field is pregnant in it's own way; it is a season of waiting, planning, and dreaming, full of growth, growing pains, and a million little moments gathering up in my heart, and they are good.

The second leg of this trip was just as full of that... priceless togetherness, and my family members' intentionality, fleshed out in so many beautiful ways that will stick with me all the days of my life: my thoughtful Tante keeping me company on the route between Hamptonville and Garner, an impromptu Birthday party for Krissy and I, a Garner-Wondracek family dinner, blessed evening time with just Tante Eve and Onkel Mirvan, and a breakfast with my cousin Paul. I don't have words for these million moments, but hear me that they are so deeply, meticulously, lovingly stored up and treasured.

        

A spontaneous Birthday party thrown by my
thoughtful Tante for the 31 year old twins!

Cousins!

Passed by a street sign commemorating
one of my earliest missionary inspirations

When it was time to leave my family, I drove three hours to Charlotte for the last leg of my trip~

With the last destination, I got to meet a friend that I've known through Skype for almost a year! Diane is also a member of Wycliffe and worked with me through 2012 when I was in the membership application process. She interviewed me, answered my questions, and patiently walked me through narrowing down which country I would serve in.  It was delightful to meet for coffee, to talk face-to-face with my dear guide.

When I left the Starbucks, I got to meet up with precious nearly-family that I grew up with in NY for my last night in North Carolina. Pastor Prado is one of my spiritual fathers, and it was a keen joy to sit for a meal with the Prado family, chatting with grandchildren, and praying for one another. 

All of these moments gather with the others, a heart thrumming with a satchel of things to ponder.

ROAD TRIP! - Part I

January brought me the supreme treat of getting to hit the road to spend some time with family and friends in North Carolina! It had been a long time since I'd seen most of my extended family and some dear friends that live close, so I set out with the goal of making a huge arc, from Atlanta to Asheville, Asheville to Hamptonville, Hamtponville to Garner and Raleigh, and from there to Charlotte and home again~

The trip was fantastic, emotional, and filling. It was so good for my heart to have TIME—time to drive through icy mountains that looked like they were hemmed in only by snowy clouds on the right, time to listen to music and pray as I drove, time to hold an almost-six month Peter-baby and to catch up with one of my favorite families and closest friends since college—even time for us to curl up on couches with dogs and to learn to knit~  During this first leg of the trip, I took walks, bundling in borrowed hats and extra layers, found some Asheville barbecue, and just generally soaked in the presence of some of the Biards and Freels. Take a peak..

 

 

My borrowed tuque, colors, and coats~

Jacob getting a ride from Nona!

The next leg brought me to my Oma's house, where we were all planning to converge for her 94th Birthday! It was very nearly a surprise, but Oma is a clever woman, and sweetly, excitedly, silently waited for everyone that could to show up! I drove in the night before the party and got to spend some precious hours with just Oma, Tante Magie and Onkel Erlo, and then the next day the home swelled with almost twenty family members—kids, grandkids and greatgrandkids! It was the very best kind of ruckus that exists... bustling cooks, boisterous conversations, a beaming grandmother, and delighted second-cousins running about.

   

2012 - In Memoriam

Just a handful, not even a full-fingered hand, of posts punctuated 2012, and yet it has been one of the most remarkable of my life... The last few hours of 2012 tip-toed out last night, but I was left with gratitude as I listened to the patter. I stand baffled at the sheer speed of this last year, but more by the things I don't know how to explain about it.

A year ago in December, God set a tumble of miraculous movement in motion (explained HERE, if you missed it), and in that post I mentioned the impression I had that 2012's name for me was The Year of the Lord's Favor. This might have sounded pretentious in so many ways, but my goodness this past year spilled over with kindness and generosity that I have earned in no way. Over and over and over again, there has been a constant stream of things my soul couldn't have thought to ask for, and a joy-rush towards the work God formed me for. Where pain and waiting were my strong, patient teachers for the last few, warmth and unmerited awesomeness have guided this year. And so, though it is less conventional than listing things at Thanksgiving time, here is my heart's attempt—a typed register of a few things that should not stay unsaid, an account of goodness that must be spoken.

I am thankful:

• For my parents and siblings!—My parents and my sister and brother-in-law have a Masters in sacrifice with a Concentration in making you feel loved instead of needy. They have all made room in their homes for me, as we're all adjusting to the nearness of my move to Papua New Guinea (12 months!), and it has had such an impact on me.  Beyond this, I am so very blessed by the friendship of my siblings... how all three of them are truthful mirrors, verbal, kind, honest, and playful. They chip the edges off my too-serious, and comfort me in my too-sensitive. I am surrounded by love, and have never felt the weight of it as keenly as I do now that there is a timeline until I'm on the other side of the world for a few years.
• For getting to use my passport this year! I was blessed to spend time globe-trotting with Krissy and Chris, to hop into Canadian life for three months, and to take a train down the West Coast when I left Canada to spend time with dearones in San Francisco! 

• For a church family I am always blessed to be near, where there are artists that give of themselves, where worship is born of what God is doing among these people, where community is valued above 'having everything figured out', and where I'm challenged 

• For the many new babies in my life this year, and friends that welcome me into Auntishness with their children!!!
• For getting to go to Wycliffe's headquarters last February, and again in October for training. Both of these trips shifted and impacted huge decisions, and were such a submersion tank of prayer, preparation, and counsel

  

• For time this summer (while I was at school in Vancouver) with my uncle that lives there. We got to know each other as adults now, and I am moved by his tender heart and funny stories
• For all the students, friends, and soon-to-be-colleagues that I spent the whole summer with at CanIL! It was an incredible experience, to be surrounded by people that are passionate about Linguistics, Christ, and the need for Bible Translation, (not to mention the part where British Columbia took my breath away!) Lord willing, I will see them again in 2013 for one more class~

• For Allison and the Thursday Girls—You are friends of the highest caliber, and I will always, always, always be grateful for these years in Alli's dining room, one night a week, unmasking the world, laughing, baring our hearts, and eating delectables. 
• For a job that has been more than a job and people that have been more than co-workers

• For the interest, care and concern that I have been shown as I step into this role of missionary.. for the encouragement and prayer warriors in my life, and the prayer and financial team that is beginning to form.
• For good health(!!)--I have been in a pretty steady remission from Ulcerative Colitis for more than 2 years, and despite symptoms being a little rockier during grad. school this summer, I have been allowed to begin lowering doses of maintenance meds. This was something I dreamed of getting to do before heading to PNG next year!
  
  And most impactful to me,

• the overwhelming grace that I have been treated with this year. In so many ways, I have had nothing to offer. In the past, desert places were utilized to plant me firmly in the understanding that all I have sometimes is the will to choose obedience——when sickness comes, when hardship shakes what our culture tells us we're entitled to, all we have are the ways we respond, and this can bring God glory even when we have or are nothing else. But being stripped down in this way (in strength, health, time, finances), and needing to depend on others, has also at times left me feeling utterly indebted to kindnesses I can never repay (or has made me respond as an awkward recipient). But God is turning this on its head for me—reminding me that it's all His, and that He will do what He wants with it, that He delights to surprise us, and that His methods of getting us to where He wants us (and ultimately, of redeeming  e v e r y t h i n g) are unpredictable, joyous, and almost always communal and relational. He has been revealing pride for what it really is in me, and showing me that this will need to go; that His plan has always been about interdependence and goodness that we can't earn.
  This grace and generosity took many forms this year, (a spontaneously provided airplane ticket to visit my potential school last January, a vacation with 2 of my siblings gifted to me with a loving desire to spend time together in the face of us finding out I have 1 year left before moving to Papua New Guinea, an extension on a paper that came with so much more encouragement and edification than I could have guessed, dear friends providing the funds for Wycliffe's Equip Training and others paying the full conclusion of school loans that were keeping me from the mission field).. and this has sprung fertile humility. I have been shown so much faith by others in what God has been working out in me, and that faith and the active support of it moves my heart beyond words that I will ever have access to.

My brothers and sister and I! - Christmas 2012

Repairing the ruin in the year of favor

I finally know “what this year is to be called”…
A beautiful friend of mine has been whispering for months, “ask God what this year is about for you… He will give you a word to focus it in, a name to call it. He wants to narrow in and teach you, show you something specific.”

Already, just the 2^nd month in, and this has been an incredible year of blessing, of vision being sharpened and light spilling all over it. I feel God undergirding it—undergirding me—with Isaiah 61, which my ESV titles “The Year of the Lord’s Favor”… and so it is.

I want to come in the next few days and fill you in on a whole bunch of monumental boulder-movings that have occurred in the last few weeks for me, but in case you read this blog and you aren’t at my church where this was already circulated, I wanted to post this initial update and then go from there:


Notes from a Glad Ledge

I can almost feel my toes curling tight over the edge of the precipice; a jumpy anticipation poised in my spirit’s heels, it’s tummy full of butterflies, and elation burst-fisting its way out of the fortress of waiting I’ve lived in for years… 

I wish I could show you the million little moments that have led to this cliff, but this is the story of some of them, so that you will understand the beauty behind it when you see me hurtle off its height—

Ten years ago I “accidentally” took a Linguistics class.
God had begun nipping and tugging at small fibers of my heart, telling me I wasn’t for this place and that he was fashioning my compassion and preparing it to pour out into other cultures all the days of the rest of my life. As I went through college I felt the conflict of “wisdom” to choose studies that would lead to a job, and a job that would be a livelihood, but as I kept trying to choose ways to do this, God would wreck my heart with images of orphans, cultures I’d learn of that were flanked by oppression, and blatant demonstrations of the fact that He’d wired me to find no joy in things but to hunger to reach into people’s stories and do life with them.

At the same time that He slowly revealed this burning call to missions, I stumbled into this most-odd class that had its students playing scrabble with the International Phonetic Alphabet and learning concepts about how languages all over the world work. Almost every student with me found it to be the most boring, absurd class they’d ever taken, but I was lit up and intrigued! Over the course of the next year, I began looking into ways to combine these passions, which eventually led me to Bible Translation… As I started to research how God could use something like linguistics on the mission field, I found out that there are still about 340 million people that have no portion of the Bible accessible to them in their mother tongue—that’s more than 2,000 possible languages left.

I found this utterly overwhelming.

I have since witnessed deep caverns of darkness in people’s lives, footholds, sorrows, staggering lack where God’s heart longs to fill in and heal—but to imagine these millions of people with no Living Word, with no access to the Words, Spirit, and Breath that swoop in to redeem all brokenness—this felt like too much. I knew that whatever manner of loneliness I have ever felt in this life, I have always had a book of shelter—Words that save me, have loved me, have torn me out of sorrow and into a Kingdom that seeks to rescue. But so many don’t have it. This knowledge licked at all the tugged fibers like whipping flames, and I felt God’s purpose in me solidify: you are to fight for Me this way.

So I set to it—I took a trip to Ghana in ’04 with Wycliffe Bible Translators, and spent a summer exploring how one approaches the idea of translating God’s Word and how many different roles there are in that process. I met the most incredible missionaries, witnessed moonlight literacy meetings in the mountain village of Gekrong, and watched God expand my heart and shatter my worldview. In the weeks that I spent observing the work and seeking God’s voice on these new hopes, Christ spoke such confirmation and assurance into my being that I came home fiercely excited. I thought that I would just quickly work off my undergrad school loans and then launch into the 1-2 years of Linguistic training I would need to be ready to head to the mission field—

Eight fascinating years have plodded past instead, though.
I look back on that time and the care God put into planting certainty into my heart and can’t help but laugh at how much He knew I’d need that! I tumbled into working several jobs, took certification classes and became a teacher, walked with my family through some heartbreaking crises, and wrestled through a long, sharp season of sickness. Journal after journal from the last few years were slowly filled with passionate out-cries, scribbled reminders of what God told me ‘on the mountain top’, and jotted down prophecies and prayers that I received from the Body and the people in my homegroups.

Each year I would ask and pray “is this the one?”, and always He would whisper that the Kingdom is here, and the Kingdom is coming—now/not yet, my love—You are already on the mission field, and every bit of now is the training. I, Myself, am cultivating in you what you will need for this task.

 As the years wore on, and especially inside the one of sickness, people began to suggest other goals, saying that I would need to stay where doctor’s were easily accessible, and that surely I would be happier accepting that circumstances were different now and that maybe I’d misunderstood God’s will. Medical bills were added onto the stack, and although the determined fire for what God had written on me wouldn’t wane, I shoved up my sleeves, understanding that it would be years more than the eight that have already passed before I would work the last of the debt down now.
Carefully, painstakingly, God ushered dependence into me, humility that has bent wide His vision for the impossible to be completed. Slowly I submitted my expectations and timeline and begged that God teach me to be where He has me well, and to trust that He would make it bullhorn-clear when it was time to move forward.

This past year, in August, the “Deeper into Community” series broke my heart again, and I found God stirring my waiting up with the “Your Calling Takes Us Deeper” sermon. In September, I sat in the sanctuary afterwards and shivered as I felt God whisper “it’s coming”, and then grabbed at my journal so I would keep that moment, writing it down as the physical goose-bumps dissolved back into normal skin.  In October God asked me to give up the sickened sorrow that I was carrying from my hope deferred, and November poked at my held-breath when we tumbled into speaking of Rescue each week and mingled our post-it notes together on the curved sanctuary wall—all our dreams stated beside one another, interconnected.

By the end of the year, I sent a long email to the Wycliffe recruiter that I’ve spoken with for years. I updated her on the debt again and explained that I was in another one of those weeks where my soul tingled and God was keeping me up at night with dreams—She sent a note back with a prayer and signed off with “LORD MOVE THE BLOCKADE”. Three days later I got a phone call.

One of my dearest friends was on the other end of the line saying, “Monica, are you sitting? We have something to tell you.”

And this brings me back to that cliff that I mentioned—

Through the obedience and sheer generosity of other believers, God is moving the blockade. With a single swipe—out of my hands, more than I could ask for, more than I can swallow without fits of joyful laughter—God has suddenly led a couple to completely wipe out the last of my school debt!
In quick gusts of the last month, so many miracle-nudges have been set in motion, and now it looks like I may be moving this summer to one of the three training-program locations to get equipped for this mission.

So I dance on this brink with you, beside you, sweetly terrified, our whole souls thrumming to the shift God’s calling our Body of believers to—church planting, adoption, foster care, feeding the poor—His fingers, His ears, His arms brought to His waiting people, and also His mouth in their language to feed their hearts. And as we all hurtle off these peaks, I hear Him comforting me… every one of these cliffs is in the vast Land called Married (Isaiah 62); none of you are hurtling alone, and whatever distance is coming, for a long or short time, you belong to one another—I am making you into each others’ netting.

June 6, 2009 - News~ [North Dakota!]

Precious, precious family and friends~

Please forgive any presumptuousness of a mass-email, but time has slipped by me again, and as I find myself on the brink of something I’m really excited about, the loudest emotion cutting its way through my busyness keeps being a throbbing sense of wanting to tell you all about it—So, if you’re reading this, please know you’re special to me; that you’re either a part of my family by blood and beautiful inheritance, or part of my Body at Vineyard, or one of the dear friends I’ve made as a student or as a teacher or as a traveler—all journeys anyway—and it is for all of these reasons that you’re on this list. Also, I am so sorry I didn’t get this out sooner, and if you’ve already been told some or all of this by me, be patient with my impulsive enthusiasm :)~

Two major events are beginning/changing for me, and I have longed to have you “in on it” for the few weeks that I’ve known:

Five years ago I spent a summer in Ghana, West Africa with Wycliffe Bible Translators, praying and testing out a burning heart. It was a sweet time of confirmations, joy-heat and heart-spurs, and all the time since then has been a meandering journey of soul sifting, patience, and preparation. In these years, God has had to realign my compassion to first identify with Him before any personal will to help another, and has deepened the ardor I’d grown for the concept of bringing His words to cultures of people that have no access to it in the language they most understand [in 2008, there were still 2,393 languages without any part of the Bible]. For many of these cultures, their language is still only oral, and there is a thirst for the development of an alphabet in their tongue and literacy in their village. This vision tugs my compassion, my knowledge (of the darkness I experience without Christ’s words as my haven and tower), and my hope (in God’s use of our silly gifts and hobbies to further His Kingdom).

What I mean to share though is that I get to begin training this summer!~ Where there were only 3 schools I could find that offer both the Linguistics and Biblical Exegesis parts together, each of these schools’ schedules require me to quit my job and to move across country—both things that are not yet financially wise for me, if I am to take responsibility for my school debt and to pay everything off before my leaving and needing support ever enter this missions-equation. In fear and twisty hope, I started applying to programs for this fall anyway, and asked God to reveal how I could make this work—ha!—my foolish forcing~ Instead, spring break brought me time to speak to people from Wycliffe and the schools, and opened a new door to begin my first semester of courses now, in an intensive 2-month semester at a school in North Dakota…then return in the fall to teach another year. As everything has fallen in place swiftly, my parents, too, have been the most gracious encouragers, and came alongside me to pray and figure out the practical side—Four weeks ago, I moved back in to their home, and with this gift, I can be done with all college and car debt within a little over a year and truly free to finish training and be assigned to a language project (!!).

The other change I will come home to is that my county has had to shift around a lot of their teachers due to budget changes and a hiring freeze, and I am one of the surplussed teachers, so I will be teaching at an elementary school for next year instead of Sprayberry~ This will be a new adventure for me as well, and I figured with all of the paragraphs I was sending your way, I could throw this in as well :). I have no experience with Elementary Special Ed. yet, but have also come to know that I finally trust God, and will not resist this change, but please pray for my capacity to learn to teach and love these new kids well. SO much new learning for me…

I know this is long now; but I think this is the catch-up :). I get on a plane in just a few hours now…

I love you and so deeply appreciate that no matter how verbose and lengthy this is, or even whether we share the beliefs that are catalyst to my going, there was enough confidence in me of your care and place in my life that I knew I could send it… So PLEASE, keep me this summer (by email or facebook, or blog since I don’t know that each of you want blubbering emails from me often :), I won’t inundate you, but rather, will post here) Hope you sleep so well, and that I hear from you soon, truly.
With love, Monica

Posted on 6 June 2009 at 2:14 AM Comments (0)

Nov. 21, 2008 - Reflections on an odd day, without reflecting on the day at all, but rather adding some small part of it to this place..

So today was a lot.
In a lot of different ways.
But as I was lying down to close it, I smiled at the way the class-part of my day went.. Fun students, and a room full of people trying to turn their memories into metaphors!~ Maybe only a scene an english-nerd could love.. but it was enjoyable.

Today was "I Am" Poem day;.. something I've done since my second semester of teaching with the first co-teacher I ever really clicked with...It's a very structured poem. Only now we were tying it to The House on Mango Street.. how Esperanze (hope!) is told that she cannot erase her memories... "you are Mango Street".. The concept that you are, in some powerful ways, the sum of all your history; all your vivid memories--good or bad--combining to form someone made of dust and sunny days and kinship and cold.

So from a list of topics, each student had to take notes on the most vivid memory they had for each of the categories we gave them. These range from "a pet memory" to "a time you were scared" and "your first crush".. Then we read our examples--To give them an idea of how to re-present their memories as quick images, small sentences, packed polaroids, so much memory pushed into a corner with the hope that there the squeaze-out may be something interesting.. So as an offering to the pillow before me, here's mine (written back the first time we taught the assignment though):


I AM
I am the growing shout of “go-----oal!” husking from my father’s otherwise gentle voice
I am letters written to the love I haven’t met yet I am shove, tear, fight through feeling rawness and weariness, to resplendent joy
I am the single thunder lamp lighting literacy lessons for the Ghanaian village
I am the silly first story written without any expectations
I am glinting Christmas lights squinted at from the base of 20 feet of green
I am the cracking concussion of a head on a swing as I slump to the grass after the fall
I am the apple orchard, bending wide my arms to gather in cousins, juice-pith, and seeds
I am a red-haired chow-chow, dashing at the first glimpse of an accidentally-open door
I am drenched boots and dramatic conclusions cracking through the ice on lake Jenushka
I am whispers to my sister between the bunk bed and wall until stars are yawning, gape-mouthed
I am the summer of 2002, ill, feeling like death and puddles
I am the daughter of Brazilian rhythm laced between the oompa-pa’s
I am the lead foot on the accelerator, trembling for 1,000 miles to see the scars on his wrists
I am red sleds pitched around snowy gutters, playing house with my kindred sis
I am struggling eye sight, blinking, staring, longing for what’s next

Posted on 21 November 2008 at 12:26 AM Comments (0)

July 31, 2008 -- A [long overdue] monica update

31 July 2008
A [long overdue] monica update

Dearhearts, friends and family~
So… I know I’m off the appropriate time for “Christmas and what-I’m-doing-now letters” by about 7 months (or I’m 4 months early! Depending on how you look at it :), but this summer I found myself at my first huge pause in a very long time, and waves of love and missing people hit me as I finished something that felt difficult to me, and I found the largest emotion in me was an ache to reach out and say hello, and ask for prayer, and re-open my side of all these relationships that I haven’t poured into as I’d like to by default… Please know that I am sorry for my lack of communication, and that you have been thought of much in this lapsed time~ I began trying to write all of you in a little house on the Carolina shore… Erik and Mom and Dad were all able to take off work, and we escaped for a whole week, which has never happened, as far back as I can remember. It was beautiful to watch everyone decompress; some of the complexity of the last few years for my family sloughing off, puddling somewhere gracious. I cannot describe how great and poignant it was to have “guitar under the stars time” with my brother, and to have the time to read books just for me, while bathed in sunlight! Right before we left (vacation was in June), I received word that I am now, after two years of teaching High School, finally a “real” teacher :). The last time I wrote to some of you was after Berry and right before Ghana (oh, heart!)… So much has happened since, but I returned to Georgia after Africa and took an office job in the name of getting rid of my school debt so that returning to the mission field could come sooner. God’s plans for the time being were different for me though, and a challenge to my heart. Instead, through some bizarre orchestrations, I fell head-first into teaching English/Literature, mostly in the Special Ed. environment, at my old high school (!) and taking evening classes to get my teaching and Special Ed. certificates. The program allowed me to work in the capacity of a true teacher for two years with the understanding that I would complete all the classes and state tests by the end, and turn in a culminating “digital portfolio” with all kinds of proof that at the end of that, they could trust that I knew what I was doing. Oh the stories I could tell you! The education system here has been such an odd training ground, and these two years have run the gamut from kamikaze days of driving after 7-hours of teaching to my 5-hour certification class (3 days a week!), to teaching a literacy class for a group of 15-19 year olds that were identified as unable to read or write above a 3rd grade level… It was more than I could have been prepared for, but also more than I expected. And now I find the beginning of my third year is just about to begin. It’s funny how much excitement and how much reticence can exist together! In all this time I still find how true it is that a “hope deferred makes the heart grow sick” (“…but when the desire comes, it is a tree of life” Proverbs 13:12)! and though it has been an accomplishment, my longings are as they were, and I feel as convinced of my call to full-time missions as I was before. I do not know how God’s going to use what I’ve learned this way, but I find that in the “extra time” that I have this school year (since I won’t be taking classes for myself), I want to commit to plead for His vision and for guidance for all the parts of my heart finding their way out of ‘sickness’. Please, as part of myself, pray for clarity as I embark on this next year of teaching: that God would direct my use of time, my desire to proactively get out of debt, and my continued questions about and longings for training in Linguistics and Bible Exegesis… And now you have reached the end of my run-on sentences, as this may be the best I can do to summarize where I’ve been all this time. Know that I love you, and again, that I’m sorry for my tendency to get splotchy about staying in touch. There’s so much more I could say; so many more important chapters have been folded inside these few years for me, and so much I have learned about love and heartache, but I know this is long enough. I would love to hear from each of you, and to know what’s been going on in your lives. Truly. With all my heart, Monica

Posted on 31 July 2008 at 2:21 AM Comments (0)

Archives: The ITALY posts~

2 JUNE 2003"What we call the beginning is often the end. And to make an end is to make a beginning. The end is where we start from."
-T. S. Eliot, "Four Quartets"

I have so much to tell you~ It was just the other afternoon though that I realized that I won't be able to fill in all the stories before I return~
I realize too that this page got less understandable in the past few weeks as it was just silly writings so few and far between,.

Tonight is Tuesday morning though :) The last chance for me to write before arrival/(re-arrival) in a foreign country- my foreign country, and the thought is stirring :) When I look at what I have been able to share, all the gaps come to my mind, and I know this site has been mainly for me to just be able to write it down (though necessarily to those who read it :)), but i think of statements that seem to be monumental for a certain period in your life and I think of a running conversation that I seemed to have with Lauren, Reagan, and Jessica at different times~ how verbalizing something tends to make it real.. Like how admission of a feeling, a thought, or a description of either and places and ideas, give them form, put them out where they weren't and so give them life, and keep them from being taken away (or taken back by the speaker :))~ In that way things that are said have weight (both significance and heaviness). Maybe that's what this is; though it hasn't been a complete anything, it's some of what I had to tell, had to get out there~ so that, when I re-arrive ;), it doesn't just sit in my head and have a chance of fading, seem less real because there are no 'witnesses', or blink in and out because it's done. [And yes, I know too that this sounds mushy :)!]

But that's that :). So the plan is now to flop, to rest, and then for morning to bring me and Julie to the station for a train to London :)!! We've two days to roam it, two more full days to be together, and Thursday brings me home. I do aim to come here some :) come here to fill in, and when I return I'll to fixing the many letters that needed to be written to you all individually~
I love I love,
mon
Posted on 2 June 2003 at 7:35 PM Comments (0)

28 MAY 2003
Hello Loved Ones!~I am sitting safely in Bristol, England at Julie's now and have been here a day :) and know it's necessary to come and say that I'm well :)
I got in late-ish last night and, I think, just kind of joyfully slumped into their home ;) and filled up on Julie-hugs and Allen grins and stayed soaking that in 'til we both figured we ought to get to bed..
Today has been filled with lovely stops and trips and I have now seen the birthplace of Cheddar Cheese! (O!, to Miss Jennifer Adams :)), a little town named Cheddar :) where there were the prettiest caves and caverns! Inside we could walk around and there were all these stalactites and -mites and lovely pools that reflected them up to you, turning them over before they got to your eyes, and making the image extend double it's depth-~ I sort of walked around wide-mouthed, and have been feeling all day that I no longer know adjectives to tell what I think~ that I just keep seeming to say that things are 'wonderful' and 'beautiful', I hear myself saying it, but it doesn't feel like I can make anyone know how much I mean it anymore; I think where before I bubbled over into fits of "I-can't-believe-I'm-here"'s, there's now this "quieter love" (as C. S. Lewis says) that just gets quiet as I see things, like this day in England, that I've wanted so long..

After we walked through Cheddar, another cave (this one with a Dragon!! :)) and through the very smelly cheese factory ;), the candy making factory, and the area.. we headed to have cream tea behind "the baby castle" (as Julie dubbed the little Banwell Castle, still lived in today).. The view was lovely!, so green and filled with several tow-headed kids playing ball and getting sun burned :), and PEACOCKS :) They manor had several, just randomly, and I managed to scare one away as I tried to sit next to him perched on the back of a bench :D! He didn't want to smile for the camera :p...
The tea came with scones and the nicest butter and jam, something twinged about sitting there, with my Julie, her sister, and it being such a day I've craved for years, and behind a castle :p
When we were leaving I saw the peacock pecking at my butter! The last glimpse I took of him was his head going in a little too quick and the butter covering his beak in a quick splatter!
Julie then drove down to a pier at Weston where Angela and her could point out places that they've seen since they were growing up, the halls where one or the other had their wedding reception :), the buildings that they know well...
Apparently the water is known for it's mud though ;), and I loved walking across this bridge that cut a part of the shore into a lake instead~~ There were children paddling out little floaty rafts and one or two covered in sand..

This evening the weather's been perfectly light and we saw a hot-air balloon cross the sky before we went to visit Julie's parents :) I was telling her how the context of where she lives and who her days are filled with that I'm now getting to see makes everything more alive and easier to place all these people within :), I’m enjoying it. It was the same with Ireland too~~ That as well went so quickly and I came with the plan to write about it first, but while today was this fresh I put it down and will come back, very soon, to spill that trip once I've re-gathered it :)

All, please know that I’m healthy, and though tired, so pleased, so thankful~
Posted on 28 May 2003 at 4:00 PM Comments (0)

24 MAY 2003
Roman HolidayAwing place! Oh so oddly a mix of old and new and so strongly a mix of what you expect it to be and it's opposite :) (I know, cryptic, but I’m trying :)) So many things in the city, the Coliseum, the Arch, were at the same time larger and smaller than i think I could expect, and then older looking and newer looking too..
Reagan and I ended up needing to arrive one day late because of budgeting, and so we planned to see the city in three whirl-win days; The first day we arrived by train a little earlier than 12 and found our hotel/hostel, checked in to a lovely room (which would prove to be too lovely-->) and then left for lunch and site seeing. Ha!, and as the first out-of-Florence experience for a while, we ended up going to the Hard Rock Cafe Rome, Reagan's treat!.. Mmmm, real burger, mmmm, such music! Hm, it made me laugh, but it was actually really nice.
From here we roamed around (roaming in rome?! :)) and she led on to the main Piazza's in Rome and the things that we could see outside that needed to be in a sort of introduction to Rome :). So much of it is so like Roman Holiday, and the Spanish steps, covered in flower pots at this time of year, and the boat shaped fountain at it's feet was lovely. Trevi fountain, and the coin tossed over the left shoulder "to ensure one's return visit to Rome" :) - and the color of the water! We kept catching Metros all afternoon to separate places in the city, and got sun-down glances of the Roman Forum, and ancient monuments to Romans and a large, white monument to the first King of Italy that united the country, Victorio Emanuele that the Romans "lovingly call "The Typewriter", "Dentures", and one other that I can't remember at the time :) Ha, I actually found it lovely, so stately and white, strong stairs, little fountains on its side, and in a part of town that surrounds it with trees and the domes of other buildings of state. And people lounging everywhere in Rome, musical buskers and tourists, metro-catchers, monks and nuns, children and so many German tourists! We returned late to the room after a good meal at Mamma Angela's :) and sore, sore feet :)
The second day we woke up with the thought that our room was too nice :). It was more a fear than a thought when we saw a plaque on the wall saying $155 next to the syrup-sweet "breakfast included".. We packed up quick!! Good-ness, I can't explain that feeling!, when budgeting had already been a problem at this end of the trip and THEN!,.. We switched immediately to dorm-style hostel rooms and figured out what we'd misunderstood in Italian :P, and it did all get worked out, but gosh it was a start to a day!,.. The day continued in that way, unaffordable mishaps if you like, as early into the day that was to be filled with cathedral-hopping and going in to the things we'd seen the day before Reagan was robbed by a band of four Gypsies on the Metro! The next seven hours were police reports and walking with a guard of the metro to try and catch them at the next stop that he hoped they'd get off at... Reagan was torn up, afraid, violated and angrier as the shock and hurt wore down.. Oh!. When we reported it, it seemed her cell phone (that of her employer!), her wallet and her camera were all taken!

The evening brought the prayed-for peace and within five minute intervals Reagan and i both came upon one article each: I recovered her camera, and she the wallet!- The cell phone than still having been swiped but being such a less worry than when for hours on hours we knew Reagan had not even the money to return to Florence..

So with Blah and Thankfulness, we closed that day and Reagan prepared to leave the next morning to return to work. I spent my last day in Rome running around at crazy speeds recounting the earlier two days and trying to see as much as possible- I was out of the door by 9 or so and went inside the Coliseum! Roamed through its largeness, ancient stones, rough smooth massive caverns suggested hallways in the base, places of kept, waiting animals, worn "bleachers" and walls that needed to be touched.
I went through the Roman Forum that day or the one before too, and stood where Julius Cesar was assassinated, looked out on the Forum outside; The arch, the Forum and Coliseum are all so close too, and from on to the other is a stroll, seeing your destination from your departure point :)
I set out for St. Peters Basilica and spent most of the rest of the afternoon trying to figure out "which way to the entrance" :) and strolling through the courtyard in the center. Again, as with the hotel, my guidebook was slightly outdated though, and the hours didn't coincide with that day, and so as my only regret thusfar in Italy, I think :), The Sistine chapel closed before my arrival!! Oh mournful traveler!! :P, But I entered the Basilica and stepped softly as you're only capable of once your in the place! OH!, and peered up at the multiple statues, golden embossed ceiling, HUGE tiers of arched ceilings and monuments of Popes, Michealangelo's PIETA, smaller than you think it will be, but worlds more delicate!, Curves of shoulders, noses , knees of Christ and the solemn face of his mother.,, I climbed the Cupola (the dome atop the Basilica),.. Hmm, all 400 some steps again :) and peered over Roma!,
b e a u t i f u l
and the stretches of city that surround it. Crossing town I double-backed to the Spanish steps again, and to several of the fountains again, the large churches, four main ones each devoted to a different Apostle, and one that I loved with huge niches, each filled with a gigantic statue of one saint and usually holding a version of or symbol of the devise or way that they were martyred! Eerie, but awing, they were striking!
I closed the day with the Mouth of Truth, seen in Roman Holiday that was said to clamp down fast on your fingers if you were to place your hand in the mouth while telling a lie!! Lovely though!....
Posted on 24 May 2003 at 5:06 AM Comments (0)


15 MAY 2003
Ack :)It’s Thursday morning, around 9:30 a.m., and I've been wandering a little in the city,.. I just saw Lauren off at the train station(good-ness!) and we actually took a taxi at 6!! :) and now... ?
Oh it's an odd mix of a day for so many things are ending, and yet I've so much traveling that begins tomorrow and materializations of dreams still;
The rest of today needs to be spent saying goodbye to the city (!), taking the last few pictures of things I've continually passed,. maybe a trip to the Academia, for I've been here nearly four months and not seen the David- shhhh :P-- and then errands, and a goodbye visit to the elderly couple that lives downstairs from me (OH! They're better than Lucy and Recardo half of the time!, older, and lovely- They say "Bellina, Bellina".. I will have to take a picture of them for all of you,.. Gena and Bruno!! oh what names to suit them too, huh? :))

I'm sorry for how behind I've been on keeping up the past few weeks with the journal though! Things have been rushing by and through me and I find again it's harder to keep up with in words than I want it to be :) Too bad for me the pictures haven't been working :P!
Tonight I finagle who I’m staying with in Florence still, then I leave for Rome tomorrow with Reagan if all's go,..

Hopefully I will return this afternoon or in the next few days to speak more, but at the moment I can't justify spending the last few hours of a Florence morning in a computer lab to any of you,.. :)
Loving you,
monalisa

Posted on 15 May 2003 at 9:47 AM Comments (0)

23 APRIL 2003
a quick picture of what today is like :)It's beautiful outside!!
Today it seems like tourist season has let loose, and the sun is massive, and people were actually complaining about the heat. There have been crowds of people everywhere, and I've actually had a day or two of walking home inbetween classes for some reason or other so that I end up passing the Duomo at all sorts of times of day and seeing the vendors (both legal and illegal! I actually saw an undercover cop chasing several down yesterday!! The vendor ended up dropping all his wares for the cop to gather, but he did seem to get away,... That was a moment of ruckusy excitement :P) and there's children! and the crowds of gelato eaters that wait in various lines around the city too!
OHh these last few weeks actually have been full of so many sorts of fullnesses, mostly wonderful guests (and wonderful amounts of guests :)) and travel (travels that I still want to badly tell stories of!!) and the make up classes that every class here had to "fit in" since they managed to plan the semester two weeks too short! (hah!)
Tomorrow Lauren Matt and I leave for a weekend to explore Switzerland :) OH! and so for just now it will be left at that again, "until we meet again".
Just know the sun is shining here, and that I'm keeping thoughts for all of you, and trying to hold on to the images of things I'm seeing..
with love,
mon
Posted on 23 April 2003 at 10:51 AM Comments (0)

17 APRIL 2003
One more time :)ALRIGHT!,.. I've worked through the glitches of not knowing how to do this right, and now the process was done properly, but the program is down for a little bit, so you may not be able to access the pictures right away, but try these links every few days, and you should actually get to see the pictures this time :) The message that comes up is actually a good sign.. (better than a black box with an X in it like last time, eh? :))
I have to catch a bus, but I've devoted some of tomorrow to coming to write, so soon soon, beloveds,..
Moni
Photos
A fisherman's village in Procida..
A view from the island of Vulcano of the other Aeolean Islands (Im on top of a vulcano named
My new favorite tree :)
One view of the Valley of the Temples (Southern Sicily!)
The three girls (I know, it's dark, but I'll get one of our faces soon :))
Posted on 17 April 2003 at 2:34 PM Comments (0)

7 APRIL 2003
Return to you, a little bit o' Pisa, and the beginnings of Sicily
SO much has been going on and it's been such a blessed few weeks with so much travel in them and now there's the hardness of relating it :) But I guess since I've been able to really tell you anything it's been since I tried to begin telling about Venice.. It seems like the Venice weekend really was the beginning point of traveling weekends; it's begun the string of trips that will be what the weekends are until I leave for Great Britain at the end(!) There are a million and one little things that I pray will come out when I've the pictures of things in front of me to tell you all about- the little stories that have to be called out of a muddle of wonderful. Ask me though; remember to ask, please, if you will to see the pictures and tales that succeed the (attempted) condensed version; they're probably closer to telling you what all of this is than any attempt I can conjure up all in one go like this...
(other than family ;) .. you have to!)

Of the "normal stuff" :), the school days are going well; we had a week of midterms right before we could leave for Spring Break.. There was the visible antsy-ness that is everywhere when students are ready to leave :P, and I wasn't an exception (ha!)- Everybody had places they'd been planning on for a while.. The week was a little stressful, just full of projects and tests, but it felt so good to have them done! When we got back some of the classes began as though this is a new semester- We got a new workbook/text thing for Italian for what they call the 'second half' and it's similar with the other teachers.. I feel ready for it though, but already aware of what only a few weeks left in Europe feels like-

Inbetween and around all of that "normal stuff" though is the hold-your-breath stuff!
There has been Pisa: quiet and white and actually containing grass around it's monuments(!); serenely pretty and "full of kitsch" (grin!) and the seeing-in-person of the Leaning Tower- Ohhhh. I liked it a lot, more than I guess i thought I would because of it's fame for just leaning- But the view (good-ness!) and the stealing wind that day, and the way you scale its twisting staircase and feel the weight in your legs shift and lilt, the groove in the stair under each foot that's been worn in, the gravity teasing tip-toeing that everyone does around and around.. And from the top you see how uneven! and there was wind that takes hair away and around, and really crisp color..

Spring break though; I feel like all descriptions must run together for you for each time there comes something that I see that I must tell of I can only put down how "it awes me" or that "I loved it" and yet I can't express by typing that I mean it. I wish there were more words-
I've seen two of the Aeolian Islands, and my first four volcanoes (oh!); we (Jessica Malone, Lauren, Matt, and I) rented a car and drove around Sicily!, I've seen ruins, somehow acquired an emotional attachment to Lemons from the groves on groves all over Sicily, Procida,.. landscapes that I haven't thought of as possible combinations before...
Oh Oh :)
It's Monday now, I need so to write more, but I've a class in a second; there are letters that need to be written so badly, and I know it so know its all of you I've slacked in writing (if that helps any?!, weird way of thinking, I know :)) I miss you, friends and family all!! Oh know my heart in this constant hit and run writing, but I love you..
soon more :)
Please keep writing, despite me? They really are what are keeping a place for me at home-
xoxox
Posted on 7 April 2003 at 11:49 AM Comments (0)

2 APRIL 2003
I'm alive!It's Wednesday night, nearly nine and the lab is about to close, but I actually just got out of class and done with a meeting for a trip I'm taking with the school this weekend (!), so it's back to the apartment for me, but I did want to mention quickly that I'm well and returned, that I was on spring break ( it was the most wonderful thing! and I will try and fill it all in),.. Just know that I'm healthy and thinking of you all and will return tomorrow to talk,..
xoxo
Posted on 2 April 2003 at 12:00 AM Comments (0)

14 MARCH 2003
Venice!! (hey hey, my my)Here I am! Here I am!~~ The week's been odd preparation for next week's MIDTERMS! and I kept not knowing how to write in the quick moments that were given me,... SO despite this long leaving it of writing about Venice and everything since, I wanted to come back soon and work through all the things I wanted to remember to tell you...

The most coherent of the thoughts that keeps coming through is a clinched and flashing, simple,
I love Venice!! Though it would be hard to really specify what "must be seen there", ohhh it's enchanting! Venice is more a mood than just a site to see and I can't help but think it will remain that way for me,.. one of those moods you desire to bring on, to carry and unfold and look at often-
It was b e a u t i f u l , watery, lyrical..
It's funny, we really just spent Saturday night walking around Venice: roaming, getting turned about and lost just enough to really know where you are (yes, that makes sense!! :)) and crossing and recrossing bridges over the little causeways, searching for the three bridges that cross the Grande Canal...
Saturday afternoon was mostly spent getting to the mainland before Venice, and then once we arrived, there was a boat awaiting the group to take us first to the Island of Burano, then Murano, and then to Venice itself.. The ride was so living; that mix of breeze and sun over water and the scent, the wake behind the boat, sails beside you and glimpses of the islands ahead.. and the joy you can't explain that comes from their mixture. We stopped to eat lunch at Burano and it felt like home. Burano too is more a life than a tour-spot. In very few words laur and I both expressed feeling like we could stay there- "really stay" she says. It was colorsplashed,.. one of the only fishermen towns left in the traditional way of bright colors "for some reason or other", more than likely so that the fishermen could pick out the shoreline easily,... but OH! Blues and bright pink, and homes of yellow and boxes and stripes of color on shutters,.. little canals winding through and old men on fold out chairs by the bars.. There was laundry as bright as the homes hung outside some of them, and light linens and cats.. and the sound of water hitting upside the stone walls that the boats tie to. We ate PBJ's and talked and walked around with just enough time to get back to the bus for Murano.. There could have been so much more time there.


Hhh. I have to leave again, but at least this is something,.. I'll come soon again, but I pray your weekends are beautiful..
Posted on 14 March 2003 at 12:00 AM Comments (0)

6 MARCH 2003
Four days of Julie!>..Thursday! A warm sunny day here, making all the buildings shoot back the glow of their orange paint!..
I've just ended one class (actually ballet, but under no circumstances is there to be laughing!! ;) Very hard~! and I think my "natural grace" is decreasing rather than increasing! SO much fun, but very difficult!:)) and waiting for another class, so I have another little chunk of time wherein I can try to smooth over my ungraceful journal-break of last time ;)- I'm sorry that happens so often on this thing,... Lauren and I were discussing the other day how there is no chronological time here, that Italian time is episodic and that chunks of unattached events and moments make up a day here instead of a line of hours,.. I don't know if that makes any sense written down to you, but i can only say that if you were here it would..
SO- I come once again for a chunk, a moment, to try again :)...

I mentioned Siena last time! And lunch in the main piazza.. The Piazza was round and was divided into 9 regions, like pie slices that converged into a middle point at the bottom of the sloping brick ground. The nine pieces had been designed for the nine regions of the city and the peoples that formed the citizens of Siena. Later on a crest was created that assimilated them all into one people, but they weren't really united until many centuries later. Today the piazza is used for intense horse races in the summer! There were little paintings in shops that depicted the races showing taut horses galloping around the outer ring between the now cafe's and the brick pie sections!
From here we roamed in the Palace behind the piazza were there were the ancient frescoes of Good and Bad Government and several rooms of other themes and intricate designs on the walls and the chairs, several busts of generals (busts that actually interested me, for usually they're so stoic and boring, and these generals and such had expression and amusement on their faces!) and two statues of little girls...
Lauren and I stayed here for a while, she sketching and I trying to write what I was seeing, the things on the walls that I recognized and the way everything was, just not forget. And I guess there remain the pages of detail on the subject ;)
We met up with Julie and Ellie in a small cafe and then headed for Siena's cathedral... Ahk, there's so much I could say on it and then there's too that line between interesting and boring for loved ones at home reading about it, and it's actually a hard line to find :), but it was beautiful in such a different way-
The cathedral itself seems a mix of Renaissance architecture with Etruscan, romanesque, and Egyptian influences! Something about it looks slightly oriental too.. Much of the ceiling is done in the same pattern I found in the palace; green blue background with golden stars.. And on the inner rim of the ceiling are the busts of all the Popes! (motorcycle madness, Julie :)) At the outside of the church we could see one huge unfinished wall, the original outline of the how large the cathedral was supposed to be. Apparently from Medieval times to present day (though less active now), Siena and Florence have been rivals for architectural greatness and greatness in other areas,.. (basically kids wanting to see who's gonna be first- A bit of "I can do anything better than you can, anything you can do I can do too" syndrome?? :))) And so there was a contest~ Out of this contest, Florence got it's Duomo!; and Siena, who's plans were actually much larger than Florence's, would have won if nearly all of their city hadn't been hit by the Plague! and so, there sits the beginnings of a wall and church that was beyond anything ever tried before, but half there, and growing vines, because of History... (rather awe-striking!)

The rest of the day was full of walking about the outside of Siena and seeing the colors and the oldness that does linger there. It began to rain and we made it back on an evening train to feast on Ellie's homemade Curry! Saturday I was to meet a class of mine at the Uffizi museum, and so Ellie and Julie planned to go to Pisa and would meet us back in Florence for a dinner that we would cook them :).. I never found the class though! Something was mixed up about the meeting place, and I ended up running errands until their return and our roasting chickens! The rest of Saturday night though I savored! Walking with Rita and Laur and Julie and Ellie, and a grand tour of the 70 flavors gelato place ! and taking them to Ponte Vecchio before they departed in the morning!..
That's all I want to say about goodbyes. But truly know how the week was special..

Sunday, I saw the Mediterranean for the first time! It was cold :). But I had to feel it.. We went to Viareggio for Carnivale with our school's program, and it was so much fun! THe weather was indecisive all afternoon, so there were moments of drizzle on costumed people! But lovely!~ in a weird way :P!,.... Everyone was in costume and there were neon colored floats, all political in theme and message, and huge groups of dancing people on them, pom-poming it to the popular Italian songs of right now! Lauren painted my face in the morning and she wore a gorilla mask that her brother had given her for Christmas :) and you just walked in and out of crazy amounts of people and children and pets while confetti was thrown by them .. There were all sorts of sweets stands and cotton candy (all white here! no dyes to make them colored), and so many marching bands and hundreds of people in bunny costumes! (was that one on sale from last year?? :)) The kids were beautiful and the sea so gray, just like Sara Plain and Tall described oceans to be,.. gray and blue and merging with the sky...

We stayed until evening and then caught our train back again,.. I loved the train rides, just the day-travel that's finally begun for me, and the seeing things that I can only play with showing you,..
Friday I go to Venice! Also with school, and get to stay on the water! Again, I will be flirting with that line of boring and interesting because of all the details that grab you when you're there, but gosh, know that my heart is glad, and that I'll write when I can again!>..
Posted on 6 March 2003 at 12:00 AM Comments (0)

4 MARCH 2003
Beginning tellings of a beautiful weekend..Tuesday! It's March and a lovely day out, and I want to tell you stuff :P, but am finding it hard to start...
Julie and Ellie! The time was wonderful! so good for me, and so much fun, in such a real sense of the word! I did get to meet them at their hotel on Wednesday night, and that sort of sincerely comfortable talking on beds and sipping juice and catching up and just speaking, about thoughts and subjects and Ellie's children!, Italy and trips to Bristol in the spring(!).. oh such a blessing to me! Such a simple, extreme joy!
On Thursday Julie and I climbed to the top of the Duomo and could see the city, flattened out wide and visible in a complete circle just beneath the spire of the massive dome! And the climb!- A steep circle of winding stairs, tight and stone, old and knowing.. Every time it would veer off for a second and we hoped with silly hope that it was near the top, it would reel again into a small hallway and then turn up into the slow knitting curls. The stairs then led to a winding platform that let you walk on the inner lining of the dome within the church just beneath the frescoes on top.. From there they're huge! The scenes depicted were very physically grotesque versions of what Hell was thought to be like during that time; mostly gruesome monsters, physical pain, skeletons and ashes,.. At the center of the painting though, where the dome meets itself at the top and curves, was a niche-like sphere of painted columns and men within the stone-looking fixtures looking so real and just about to step out of their spots!
From here Ellie climbed back down and Julie and I made the last bit of the trek through the portions of the climb that get more and more narrow.. You actually scale little stairs that are built around the cement skeleton of the Dome itself!,.. It started looking like catacombs, dim-lit and cave-like...

Friday the four of us traveled to Sienna,.. "the most beautiful representation of the Medieval period left in Italy"-- I loved it!; When you first get off the train there's that prelude to disappointment because the city looks so modern and the oldness that you crave to be there doesn't show up at first, but once you climb the upward streets you reach an old wall entrance marked on each side by a statue of the She-Wolf with the twins, Romulus and Remulous suckling (A famous theme for italian statues because of the mythological mixture of Rome's origin story). ...

But I will have to tell you more tomorrow.. ;)
Posted on 4 March 2003 at 12:00 AM Comments (0)


26 FEBRUARY 2003
Julie comes!! and so does spring...Hello, hello! Im finally back to write..
The biggest thing this week is Julie's arrival!!! :) My Julie comes sometime in these next few hours, but I've my one more class today, and once it is finally done I can wiz to the hotel by the river on the silly bicycle :) and hug my dear friend! Julie got one of the best fares I'd ever heard of from Bristol and so wrote once saying 'I think I’m coming!' and today gets to be it!..
Tomorrow I want to take them (Julie and Ellie, her friend from home) to San Miniato and to the Duomo to go up and see the view :) and Friday Lauren, Julie, Ellie and I will take a day trip to Sienna! (about an hour by train, and apparently one of the most beautiful villages from centuries ago!...) Saturday I think we'll go to the Uffizi (finally! and one of the largest museums in Florence with many original works by Boticelli and the like), where I have heard one can spend more than six hours and yet feel the need to return soon! By Sunday Julie and Ellie will have to return to Venice already, but I think they get to spend a few days there (and there will be Carnivale celebrations going on there!!) and then return to Bristol,.. Lauren and I will be spending Sunday in Via Reggio, a sea side town where Carnivale is most celebrated... The school arranged wonderful entrance prices, and so a large group of LDm students will take a train to the sea where Carnivale produces hoards of people in costume, children and parents and animals and all,.. and floats decorated in themes...
The next few days will be busy then, but my heart!, I think all along, knowing they were coming has helped-

This past week has been beautiful, and is finally beginning to feel less awkward again, and the wander lust for places and softness for people is returning.. Spring is peeking in, and we've had several days of coats getting to drip off shoulders by 12 or 1 in the afternoon, and there being the warmest sun!
This past Saturday Lauren and I took the longest stroll down the Arno, in the opposite direction that we go down for church, and in t-shirts! And Muskrats! I saw muskrats (odd animals! they looked like otters at first-glance and then like beavers, and then you see the long mousey tail!), and children everywhere!! The irises are coming out also, and Lauren purchased some tulips for our window that are becoming red little bulbs...

The loneliness from last week are alright now though, and I found myself smiling hard at the day this morning. I went to the market by myself too! and did all the shopping, the gathering of fruits in bags and price questioning! and I bought two chickens without heads or feet all by myself (half spoken Italian, and half pointing to my head and shoes!) and managed to hop some buses myself too and spend lunch time in Scandicci with some of the Avanti family (a school here that teaches English using the Bible,... all the teachers are graduated college students and we know them from Sunday at church) and still make it back for class!!
Yesterday was the one month mark, and gosh! your heart leaps at it, both for it having gone so quickly and for knowing there's only so much left!,.. I guess, though slightly cheeky:), I find myself trying to sum up "what I've learned" in that time,.. just what I've felt and to keep thinking of my time here consciously so that it doesn't pass without each bit having been used well,.. Maybe I'm learning of me, and a little more about me without it being 'me and Krissy', for I know how much of me is wrapped up in time with that favorite person of mine (oh you know),.. And I'm finally settling back into looking at people the way I do and dealing better with odd catcalls from the Italians (yah, they cat call me!).. Oh I'll think it through some more and then be actually able to articulate what I feel,...

Again, though, class calls... and then Julie :)..
I miss you all, so much,.. Please write notes! They make the days..
Soon again,
Mon
Posted on 26 February 2003 at 12:00 AM Comments (0)

20 FEBRUARY 2003
Does that count as sneaking in??
This past Sunday Lauren and I and many of the Berry students and the other schools that have Margherita as their advisor were supposed to meet outside of the stadium on the other side of town for a authentic Florentine soccer game experience! I was thinking this morning of our Sunday and how it was something I wanted to remember to recall for all of you,... And there are reasons why ;)
The paper that we received at Orientation that told us about all the planned events and where to meet for them, such as the soccer game :), said that we were to meet everyone between 2 and 2:30 at the front of the stadium, where we would receive the tickets that we had paid for, and then all enter the stadium together,...
Lauren and I had walked to church in the morning, and then walked back to Cascine Park to eat our lunch since there was plenty of time to do so and then catch our bus,... Lunch was beautiful and the day very cold so we sat bundled up and then figured out where to buy bus tickets,.. We arrived at the stadium nearly an hour early! It was a little after one, and the whole ride over on the bus we began to see people walking in that direction wearing there purple for the Florentine team, the Fiorentina Violias (Yep, that's right, the "Little Purple Flowers" :)).. There were children of all ages and older men and women wearing their Violas scarves and hats and carrying seat warmers with the teams emblem on it! By the time we got to the stadium the crowds were huge! The people were all waiting because they were early, many getting things to eat, and shuffling about..... But no Margherita. We figured we were just ultimately early, so we stayed put at out spot until 2 and then began our rounds of the outer gate of the stadium, (for, um,.. what really does the front of an ovular stadium look like?!?!... We circled once,... two o'clock. We circled again, 2:10... We circled for a full 45 minutes!,.... no Margherita,..

By this time, the crowds has gone in,.. We began to hear a loud speaker and the chanting of people.. Lauren and I had been so excited about the prospects of this, so about now the girl with arm linked into mine was emitting a slo-ow grumble... I myself had the "what's going on!?" grumble, and then I saw a small motorcycle entering the stadium with purple fireworks attached to the back!! By this time we had circled the walls of the stadium more than enough times to make them come down like Jerico! :)And all the gates had been shut leaving the streets empty of all but the ticket scalpers! ("But we already have tickets!,.. we don't even have the money to buy new ones if we wanted to!")
With little stomps to each step we decided to circle one more time in the opposite direction.. We had gotten around nearly half of the stadium again, when Lauren saw one gate ajar,.. She looked back at me and then walked up the gate and peered in for a guard; The man we were looking for came to the door, and in broken but very brave Italian, Lauren began to explain that we were part of a group of American students, studying at the institution of Lorenzo De' Medici and could not find them, and had he seen such a group, and Sir, we do not have tickets, but the group had our tickets,...
The guard followed each sentence with a nod and then shook it violently saying "yes, yes, they are inside,... speaking american, no?, yes they are inside". He said this as he pointed our way in,... Lauren again said we had no tickets without them,.. He understood, and stood cocked to one side for a minute, and then said: "to me,.. It does not mat-ter" and then just stood aside with his arm pointing!....

I looked at Lauren furrowed to make sure I'd understood, and he just stood nodding,.. In a moment we were inside the half over game :P! We got there just before half time and shuffled about looking where the man had said he'd seen a group like ours,... We looked on the bottom level, then went to the stairs where more staffed men were, and as Lauren and I stood under the tier of the second level, trying to bend and see what was above, the guards asked us "what?" Again Lauren and I explained that we were looking for a group, and they said "You want to come up?", just like that?! And so again, we were let up the whatever place we needed to go to see. We never found Margherita or a single student from Berry! By half time we just sat down where they had indicated and watched the rest of the war between the teams :)
Nobody won!! The whole game was 0 to 0, and yet it was so much fun!! There were the drum beaters on both corners and one whole end of the stadium seating seemed to be filled with the people that new all the songs for the team and that came equipped with these sort of colored explosions of purple and red fog for the Florentine team!! There was a man behind us in a corduroy coat with a pipe and a cap that would get serious inflamed at the teams and the ref's calls, and then would leap to his feet and call "Idiota!!.. Ahh, StU--Upido!!" while pulling on the ends of his cap til it crunched seriously around his red face!! And the children!, little boys in groups with their faces smudged up to the glass at the foot of the stadium, and also this changing crowd of boys that seemed to be playing a game iwth the guards, running from level to level without getting a little card from them, and quickly sneaking past different areas to try and be where a ball might fall! ...
The game ended with an 'Ughhhhh' from the crowd, but as Rita said about it later, "That, for the Florentines, was at least a much better ending than if they'd lost!! Then you would have heard the sorrow of it for weeks!!"..

So,.. That, is the closest I've come to getting into something I may not have been able to prove that I had the right to be in,.. :P But ha! what a game! and fun crowd of people!...
Lauren found out later from Margherita that 'she must have made a mistake about the time she mentioned.. we met at 1:30...' But anyhow,.. :)
I've decided that I like a live soccer game very much, and that a stadium that has 15 gates should not be said to have a front, and that Sundays like this are welcome... everynow and then ..:)


The rest of the week has been odd for my feeling rather lonely for the first time here,... It hits hard, and I've begun missing people specifically now, and thinking I see people that are like them here, and things like that... It is also that there is a boy.. Lauren likes a boy named Matt, ... and Matt as well, shares that look , It's been so beautiful to watch her and him (and as he doesn't officially know that she's been told by someone of his feelings,..) things have been sweetly awkward,.. Only, for the roommate (being the said 'monalisa'), there have been moments where I've seen Matt trying to leave to catch his bus after watching a movie, and swallowing her in a hug, and there being that sincere wish lingering in the hallway that 'the roommate' wouldn't exist... Oh it was so awkward, and nothing's made me feel that way in years,.. It's strange, the odd adjustments that may be coming to this house soon,.. but after this initial week of it, I think I feel prepared to just feel glad for them and know when to disappear without being oversensitive about it :P
Heh,.. ohh,.. But yes,.. the weekend comes now, and so a few days of absence again, and then the ability to come again with some news of the Baptistery and San Miniato, :)....

Tonight, we are actually going to have our dinner party :), about ten to fifteen girls from school... So, Mon, goes home to move some tables around and put on some music, and to begin the spaghetti and meatballs! :),... The others are bringing dessert and bread and side dishes,.. This too, mmm,.. Soon, I will let you know,..
WIth love,..
ciao
Posted on 20 February 2003 at 12:00 AM Comments (0)

18 FEBRUARY 2003
I hope he has long underwear under those pantaloons!!I've just come out of the cold of one of the adjoining streets of the school buildings where there was a procession going on with old men in tights with spears and flags and fake trumpets, and drums!! They all were rather glum faced, but ha! Oh it was great just for the fact that I walked out of my class thinking,.. "I hear drums,.. like.. a prarade..?!".. And there is was,.. coming down the streets to "Rrrrat-tut-tu-tu-TUM-tum, tum,..." and all colorful and in step~~

I have yet to know what the procession in costume was for :), but it was nice to see,.. It came around the corner of the San Lorenzo Market through to stop right in front of La Cappella Medici (i think, is how it's spelled... Meaning the Medici Chappell), like there were an initiation for something within,..
The crowds around it were so interestede too though! Mostly tourists, but some locals that seemed to know what was occuring,.. and there in the midst was an old American fellow grinning to some friends and a woman that must have been his wife, saying "I hope he has long underwear under those pantaloons!!" with a chuckle! (you should have seen them tugging at those things, the tights actually being some sort of knee high, and the men yanking at them forocieously!!

Other than this too, though, it's been a nice day, full til now with classes, but brisk out and bitey cold with it twisting between gray and sunny,...

I wanted to come back and finally write of some of the cathedrals I've seen that I got delayed in mentioning because of il bronchite...
The first one I saw was Santa Maria Novella, mentioned in The Agony and the Ecstasy for the work that Michaelangelo did there when he was an apprentice at the age of 12 or so,.. Apparently he made a silly apprentice because the characters that he would attempt to portray in fresco (that his master, Ghirlandaio, had already designed) stood out as being very different from how they had been planned,.. The figures were too muscular or too real in form to fit in with the others,... I don't know, but it sounded lovely and I set out with the intention of finding the figures that he had remade,....
When you're actually in the cathedral though!... It's a very different task! The church is very large, and like all the others, cold because of the stone.. But! There are frescos everywhere! The whole atrium was full of bends of rooms where more stories are being told in painting and so we had to enter specific corners to see things,... The paintings in the very front are those by Ghirlandaio, and there were so many tales being told, and so high up, that you crank you neck,.. ben-nd it upward to watch it's plot,.. And there are characters here and there that stare right back! I found myself looking for them,.. the scribes or the laymen, the women who in every other way may be a sideplot, and the guards that gaze out of hte painting solemnly..
In this one, there are lo-ong pillars and an odd baroque centerpiece in the middle that was added to fill-in some of the spaceceousness of the place, (Lauren and I both thinking that it would have been lovelier when it was left as it was, without the "what is that?!" in the middle :)) and with very ornate designings all over the ceiling,...

I liked Santo Spirito even better though,.. Inside of it there is the most weaving pattern of diamonds, black and white checked almost, that inch up, elongated, over the dipping arches that are caused by the columns (ahh,.. don't know if that explains it at all!?) But it was lovely to look at,.. So-o high up, and windey and magestic. Within it was a work of Michaelangelo's, one of his crucifix peices hung from the ceiling, and works all around the church that were so old.. again, there was the ornate patterns and the quietness,. that lingering 'don't speak in here, but leave and speak of it' ... The outside of Santo Spirito is faceless though, left blank from when it was redone (It's designer had planned the sides to be nearly ruffle-y, bulging out on the sides and coming back together so that there would be celebrated shape to the sides and to the corners where the pieces of art would be held) However, all of the shape on the outside was covered at some later time, so the outside looks like the usual rectangle,...

Santa Croce, the one very near our apartment, has it's original facade, garnered in blues and aging stone, and carries the graves of Dante, Michaelangelo, and Gallileo.. They were serenely pretty! A tall monument to Dante stands infront of the cathedral as well,... very menacing :P, where he's surrounded by very ornery looking lions!! But the inside is huge and chilly and the ground is covered by the engraved stones and graves of well-known men of the times, some with the etched figure of a person on them so that you walk over these works of carvings, and many written over in Latin...

There are smaller ones, little other places I've seen, and even now it seems hard to tell what I can make you see with me and what just ends up being me rambling historically :P,... I wish you could all see it though,..
Soon, some more, more of everything, but again it's time for home, and homework :P, and the preparations for a movie night (we have a friend with a DVD in his computer!! and the Harding kids get extra credit for watching a movie in Italian,... so tonight, I get to indulge that part that craved a movie! since being here :P) and Thursday we may have a genuine dinner guest party at our place! Mostly with the Berry, and some new faces, and everyone to bring a dish ... Fun, fun,...
Write, please write, and know that I will try and write to individuals soon again,..
'Til then,...

13 FEBRUARY 2003
Out bron-kiy-tis, out!!
BLAHH :)! A one week's hibernation of sorts! Lauren and I got "vay-ry ba-d bron-kiy-tis" (according to the English Italian doctor!) I've been out of commission since friday of last week!! But now things are on the mend, and I finally returned to classes,.. and I am sorry to have been away and not been writing enough (BoB.. clap! :))

I guess for all that, the past few days have actually been uneventful, but I can say that you DO still want your Mommy when you're sick in another country, that my Teddy Bear should have been a must in the packing process, just in case of this sort of thing, and that once you AND your roommate are terribly ill :) it's at least more fun...

Before I got sick however, were Thursday and Friday, and some of Saturday even! (yeah, there's Mon stating the obvious :)).. But they were lovely days; I had all of my first classes last week, and really think I'll like them all,.. Photography,.. the idea even is awing me,.. I find I have to be quite alone and wandering though to be an un-shy photographer; It's funny, I don't know why,. but somehow I shy off and forget I have a camera, most of the time, if I amen't just roaming within and without my head..

The other day I saw the most beautiful thing though, that had I been ready would have been the most desirable thing to capture on film!... There was this father riding an Italian bicycle (simpler bikes, usually with a basket on front, and a long metal extension on back for groceries, parcels, etc, and often a little front baby seat over the bar of male bikes right before the handle bars....) HIS cargo though! In that front baby seat was the most beautiful Italian baby girl,.. Probably two years old actually with flying brown hair and la-arge eyes, and her daddy driving and steering behind her! And behind him!!- Another daughter, this one probably seven or so, standing on the extension on the back holding onto his shoulders- also large eyes, flying pigtails! BLISS! Oh they were so happy, sque-eeling and looking so proud of their Dad!! My heart was so light after that :P, so something right out of memories and wants and the ages I feel more often than not... But yes, truly beautiful,.. (And mon's camera, buried at the bottom of a bag :(, the unprepared captor of moments ;P)


By Thursday of last week, Lauren and I had run out of most of our groceries and thought if we could just hold on until Friday when we were class-less it would be much more convenient to restock our cereal! And so,.. we just had to go a bakery (Un forno) on the way to school for pastries, and then to another at our lunch breaks for sandwiches :)
Oh it was lovely! and we went to eat our lunch on the steps of San Lorenzo, flocked by pigeons and a juggler or two, school trips and the everywhere tourists... Birds will sit at your shoes and actually give you inquisitive looks! and sitting there was such a pleasant way to spend lunch :). I find though that I am intimidated by getting food or school supplies by myself! Still I walk in and can't express what I need, and maybe it's just the desire to not just be a point and grunt tourist that says "Uhhh,.. Per Favore" while they smudge their fingers up to the glass, but I will if it is the only way to eat :)
Worse though was needing to go into the photography shop for supplies without knowing the correct words or shapes of things in English! let alone in Italian :P!!! It was a very cute shop, somehow appearing to be the hangout/gossip spot for at least six old men :) all staring as I moved around them and bent reading labels in my broken understanding, and snickering as I brought the wrong type of paper to the counter... They too, would just turn their noses into magazines when I smiled at them, but it was very cute.
Somehow though, I left so frustrated! One of those experiences where you feel that barrier of language, and where I wished so that I could just get on with it and get what I needed, and even speak to the cute old men and leave with more than a "buongiorno!", but alas :P not yet....


For now again(!!) the lab is closing, and I must yet write family "or I will be awoken at five AM by the phone!" if I do not write before I can't during the weekend :)
Please keep writing, and thank you for the patience this week while I was non existant to all,.. I'm missing everyone so much though!
WIth love though,
mon

5 FEBRUARY 2003
~Days ago~Alright,.. Here goes for some backtracking :)...

Paris!! I only flew into Paris from Atlanta and so wasn't allowed to leave the airport for there being such a little time there, but the dissension was entrancing!! Until the day that I get to go back and explore Paris itself, it will stand in memory as the image of patchwork quilts~ Delicate greens, pistachio colored, mint green, ochre shades, deep forest greens and all the branching blue and yellow hues,... slightly irregular squares and rectangles.. the small lines inbetween.. As we got closer I could make out individual plots being pieced together.. the lines that a farmer had made as he turned the tiller around and squiggled back to the shed,.. broken fences marking out the stitching of the quilt...
We flew over this sort of visible blanket for nearly an hour,.. Until the moment we touched down, that was what I saw of Paris; beautiful, rolling, comfortable, green...

The whole flight before that had been darkness,.. My flight departed from Atlanta at about 7:30 so the little light left was meager and rosy :). I couldn't sleep any of the 9-some hours!! (Ohhhh how it was the "chnipa"!!! Nib-bl-ing!! :)) And such a travel bug was he! I just sat up people-watching and scribbling a little, and later on listening to the The Fellowship of the Rings on CD (I told you I would :)) It was lovely! And as the night went on farther, Coldplay serenaded a tired travel bug and I watched the moon st-re--etch across the wing of the plane-- long lines of 'almost the-ere"....


I had Nearly four hours in Paris' De Gaulle airport; entirely different than any airport I've ever seen! Rather confusing at some points, and then deceivingly small in others, only to walk down a hall and it open into a curved length of people to ask questions to, if you needed to ;)
Here too, I sat with my "I haven't slept in ... SO many hours" and listened to music (wonderful!). everything about me was exhausted elation, and it was so great to just wander and watch people and see all the European faces! Interesting people~ long faces, so sullen sometimes, but he children are beautiful! and the voices over the intercoms! How you feel so instantly that you ought to know a little of every language~! It was odd~ odd to feel like you recognized people among them :) and odd to know I would be off again in a bit without any trace or real conversation,...

The flight to Italy! I was GIDDY! and I could see the old man across the empty seats next to me just STAREING! It was so funny~ he would watch and grimace from under his glasses, then I would turn to him and smile wide, and he would whip his face around and read his paper! Everyone else as well was very much into books, and though I tried at times, as soon as you could see the Alps!! gosh, there wasn't anything else to do,... It made me think maybe some of these people grow up and acquire that pursed-lip tone of voice and through there heads emit their "I've seen the Alps bee-for" look,.. it was kind of sad,...
They're amazing though~~ and I only saw the Italian Alps over the border!! And they looked dusty!! It was like this thick duvets of a stream of dust lapping up and falling off the tips of mountains!... the gray clouds were so textured, and yet they were SO still!
And there were these villages! Ti-iny houses dotting areas that seemed to have NO roads and routes to them... I think I told you of them, but they were so mysterious..

AHhhh,.. Again, I've got to get to my class, but tomorrow or soon, the cathedrals!

Posted on 5 February 2003 at 12:00 AM

4 FEBRUARY 2003
Fill-ins and back-track wishesHuh,...
I was just looking out on what I've posted about each day here, and it's so hard to feel like I've told you anything really-- There are churches and cathedrals that I've visited now that I want to describe.. crazy architectural works that I find myself so impressed with, in awe of. There's yet even so much of my flight over here that holds such images of the entrance into Paris for a stayover, and flying over the Alps and villages that seemed to have not a single road to reach them, things I just don't know how to spill out of my thoughts yet, and methods about writing all the people you know at once that I don't know how to do yet :)

The snow of yesterday turned into rain by early evening but the streets have been wet since... Lauren and I walked to a spot on one of the corners by the train station to be picked-up for a woman's bible study held at the institute that teaches English to native Italians here using the Bible. We did somehow manage to drop all four of our gloves in a sludge-gray puddle on our way back :) but by now they are hanging from a radiator in our apartment like all items that must be dried :) (Ohhh how the apartment looks like a colorful Gypsy camp after we've done laundry!!)
The study was so helpful, mostly because of the setting of only a few women, and nearly all of them having a mother tongue of some other language than Italian. Carla, the woman who leads the study, is natively spanish, and there was a woman from brazil and two from Albania. Though all of them have been in italy for a while now, and know English as well, the study is in Italian;... they're all so beautifully understanding and willing to help with translations though since they've been in my spot before... It's also the most subtle and strong encouragement that I could possibly receive for knowing that it is so possible to learn this and to get through feeling so noticeable :) These women are so fluent in what they've only known for some time,... It was so cute, too, for everytime I would try to explain myself in Italian, or would ask what something meant or translated to.. ("Cosa significa___??" :)) they all grinned and would say "Bravo!" looking around at one another with pride! It was lovely :) and wonderful to have kind older women around that want to be around for my few months here!

Sunday I played soccer in a soccer field outside of the city (in Scandici, I think) !! It was actually also with the group of college kids from Harding and the church I've gone to for the two Sundays I've been here... There were several Italians from the church there as well as the kids I'm getting to know,.. the game was great!, so chaotic, and the first game I've played in in SO long that the idiocracy of the whole moment was laughable enough to make me smile through the whole thing!! Nobody won :P and the game ended in hoards of stinky kids pilling into vans to go back to their Villa and have dinner (It's so strange to ride in cars here! even though it's only been a week and a half away from them, they catch you off guard! We walk nearly everywhere and take buses out to the country side!).
The morning had begun with a potluck lunch as well (what the Italian church calls 'An Agape' :)), and so the entire day we were fed by the church and fellowshipping in this blend of Italians and kids like me. It's been beautiful to have that in the midst of days of roaming :)

I'm starting to know my way around and now I'm recognizing the museums I want to go see soon and the roads I need to use to get there :) We had fresh croissants for breakfast (not out in the bakery (un forno) yet, for Rita, the third roommate, brought them in this morning for us) but so much more lovely than the ones you find at Kroger!! :P

I leave now to begin shuffling about some streets to take pictures for the photography class that began Monday. My heart! And then to home for some dinner :)
Hang in there with these funny patterns of writing though :) And know that I think of you all at home
soon, soon,...

3 FEBRUARY 2003
an inbetween class update :)Boungiorno! Oh such time comes inbetween my being able to come here and write,.... Right now I'm inbetween classes-- the first day, actually!- and it's all so different...
Messages from so many of you! Oh have made me so glad, and make it not feel that far away,.. While I was sitting on the floor in here waiting for a free computer I tried thinking about what all I must catch up on, how many days this has been needing another entry, and how much time I have still to write one :)
I can't feel like I've been detailed at all yet, and yet it's all I can think to tell all of you when I'm given my few minutes to write :)....

First off, I have to say,... It's snowing!!! Apparently it is the first time since 1985 in Florence! Nothing is sticking yet, but we're all wet and white haired when we walk between school buildings, and I went to go pay rent with Lauren during my lunch break and came back soggy :) This first day of school has gone well so far; I had photography (!) for several hours (!) and now have a few minutes before Italian.

The rest of last week was wonderful, and so full of different things,.. rather patchworky :) Lauren and I had orientation, though she'd already gone through it last semester. We got to choose one free feild trip with the school and I think we're both going to go to Venice with the school and then several other weekend trips by ourselves during weekends! Ha,.. We sat down before the trips meeting with my Europe map and Ohhhhh how great it was to plan! It looks like I'll go to Southern Italy and Sicily during spring break, and possibly Corfu Island )one of the Greek islands :)) I'm waiting too to find a travel partner that hasn't been to Rome before and hope to do that this month sometime :)!

Uhhh,... I can't sort out all that I want to say!-- Saturday! Saturday we took a bus north of Florence but outside of the old walls to the town of Fiesole. The town contains roman ruins that I still need to go back to see :) and Etruscan ruins within those. Fiesole sits ontop of a large hill overlooking Florence, it is older than Florence, but actually much smaller! The day was so much colder than either of us expected, but bundled up, incredibly!, we marched up a steep street of stone to the outlooks on the top... The view is breathtaking! We arrived around 3:30, so there was just enough time to explore and then return to the outlooks by sunset :)
On the very top there is a monastery that we entered-- It was so still, wholly tranquil; and beneath it a missionary museum that held old Chinese dynasty coins, carvings and wares from when the monastery first sent out people. Down in the other wing there were Etruscan ruins of ancient pottery so delicate and a room that had an Egyptian Mummy in it!! Yeah,.. seemingly out of place :) But rather surprising, and almost fitting :)

As we left the church the sun had just reached it's golden point and we sat down to watch it... The entire sky turned a burning purple! But only after it became one perfectly measured fiery rainbow! Breath, again, seems hard to keep here (however dramatic that sounds!!) But the whole experience was wonderful! Then there was a half hour of waiting for the bus which inevitably required us to spend some of that time in a little gelateria to stand and warm up over some hot chocolate :)...

There's so much more :) These few days have been packed!... I'll try to come back to fill in, but for now I've got class :P Keep writing please! And I'm sorry if any of this is boring, it's just all jammed in to my attempts to take it in... I love you all
Krissy Im missing you like crazy, and everyone, I'll try to push through these crowds later to write you back :)
Til then,...
Posted on 3 February 2003 at 12:00 AM

30 JANUARY 2003
Gelato, roaming,.. and the arrival of scads of american students!!I finally come again to write!
It's Thursday now, and Orientation to classes was this morning,... It was similar to any other school, but with a tour of the city as well,... I ended up here again and thought it time to say I miss!!

The past few days have been full of walks! Walks everywhere- along the river, over the river,... And my first attempt at the open markets for groceries!! The vegetables are so large! (depending on where you find them,.. but gosh!) and the meat!! all of it SO fresh, but one must search with dedication :P to find a chicken without it's head and feet still on!!!

It's funny, without school having started yet, some of the most interesting moments I've had so far are just the living in another country; making foods and buying them, finding out what my city looks like,.. reading through translated cook books, and seeing the European faces! (there are beautiful people here!) You walk though the city and find works of art, just there!.. and groups of minstrels playing on the Ponte Vechio for money throughout the evening. Music just kind of wafting from the bridge the whole time we walk over it, and time to just stare over into the Arno's water and plan the next day's journeying,..


ALSO! yesterday I had my first taste of authentic Italian "gelato", their own type of ice-cream! Such wonderful stuff! SO different in a way from Ice Cream,.... It's creamier, somehow more dense; there are various flavors! so many different fruits and chocolates takes, and so the perfect blend of ice-cream and fudge!

For now, and with those thoughts, I need lunch :P,... IT's nearly 2 here, but we were up early to leave for school,... it's odd knowing it's 7:30 am for most of you!!,.. My hearts,..
take care, til then,....
Posted on 30 January 2003 at 12:00 AM

27 JANUARY 2003
InizioToday was so beautiful!! It is my third day here, though I had wanted to begin this earlier, and it has awed me so! Lauren has been showing me about the city some and it grabs you in little moment ways where you turn a corner and see just what you'd always thought it should look like,...
The past few days have been that odd mixture of tiredness and the expansion of my heart~ We sit right now in the smallest computer room I’ve ever seen, inside one of the buildings to Lorenzo De'Medici but there are these waiting students desiring to write home, i guess, as much as I do...
I think, even just from today, that it's going to be intensely hard to put down all that I've in my head at the given moment that I come here to write to everybody! Everything is still whirring from the flight's beauty, let alone what I've seen in a day and a half!! Loves, it shakes what you think of pictures! Half the time I feel like Im looking at a large pull-down poster in front of me, or just the personification of a map of the city! We sat today on the highest point we could get to quickly and saw the entire city from the vantage point of a perching hawk (though I think they perch still very infrequently :P) But good-ness! That breathless feeling of watching the outward hillside collide fast to city, or the other way around, from city-city-city to a sudden stop into the most beautiful and utterly Italian country landscape that you can imagine!!
I haven't a better way of saying it yet, any better way of capturing what Im seeing, but hope i'll learn,...
For now my brain's swept off, and it seems time to walk back soon to the apartment,... I'll try to write of all of it sooner or later, but this much I had to try for,...
Figure out the site though if you like, and write me, please if you get the chance,.... anything of home :)
Soon, soon,.
Buona sera