I THINK I still remember English....

Well, I can hardly believe it's been almost three weeks since I last posted something! The time is flying by. But at the same time, it feels like Jill and I have been here for so long - I feel so comfortable and happy here.

Jillian and I have 8 or 9 students each at this time, and all of our lessons fall on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday. We meet for an hour with each student, and I am really enjoying getting to know my students. I like figuring out what they enjoy studying, and different ways to get keep them interested. I have one female student especially who is very interested in studying the Bible and learning more about the church in Florence. She comes at 9:00pm and usually she stays for a couple of hours. I am really enjoying our time together. I invited her to come to church with me sometime so that she could see firsthand what we're about, and she was definitely open to that. Lessons are always interesting, because every student is different, and they are also all on different levels in their English abilities.

We are working on getting a service project together that the HUF students, our English students, and hopefully some Italian students can get involved in. We are having the HUF students over for a devo, meal, and AI info session on Sunday night. I have invited a few of my English students to come and practice their English, and I think a few of them want to.

Friday is Rosa's, the AI cook, 25th anniversary of working at the Bible School! She is wonderful, and she works so hard to feed us. We love her and appreciate all that she does for us.

My gramma is coming to visit! She arrives next week, and will probably stay with us for a month. Yay! Also my friend Beverly Rose will be arriving soon - the middle/end of October. It's always nice to see people from back home.

Our Thursday night Bible studies at the church have started up again. Dad is wanting to start a conversational English class at 6:30pm, have a light supper with our students, and then invite them to stay for the Bible study at 8:00pm. Hopefully we can get things in order to make that happen.

All in all things are going wonderfully here! Thank you all for your love and support - we feel it in so many ways. :)

Il primo giorno della scuola...!

Yikes! It feels like a very long time since I've had a first day of school! Jill and I are riding with Dad into Florence to drop Kyle, Liz, and Phyllis off so they can catch a train for their 7-day cruise! Then Jill and I are off to Lorenzo dei Medici to become Italians. Or at least to hopefully learn some Italian and not sound quite so American. :) I hope the teacher doesn't call on me!

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Well. Obviously, the first part of this post is from approximately one week ago. And I forgot to finish it on Monday. I was hoping to have skillfully kept you in suspense by inserting that line of asterisks, and then informing you of the rest of my day at school. So much for my clever intentions!

Nevertheless, language school is going very well! I love, love learning language. And both of our teachers are really great. We have two different teachers every day: Luca teaches us for approximately an hour and a half starting at 9am every morning, then we have "una pausa" for twenty minutes, and then enters Silvia for the remainder of our time. I find Luca's section a little more challenging, because he tends to deal more with the grammar....and also possibly because he talks a mile a minute. :) There are two other American girls in our class, and we have enjoyed getting to know them. Their names are Cecilia (yes!) and Tracey. Cecilia is from Connecticut, and Tracey is from New Jersey - they are both studying abroad through different programs, and they are just a few years younger than Jillian and me. Another fact about them that interests me is that they both also study French! I like knowing that other people share my pain of mixing up languages. :)

Another big accomplishment this week was setting up our English lessons! We will be begin meeting this week, starting tomorrow. There are many, many things going on always, and it is hard for me to remember all of them. If you want to know my schedule in more detail, send me an email at ewoodroof@harding.edu and I will share my google calendar with you. :)

We just returned this evening from the Women's Convegno/Retreat, a great weekend spent getting to know many Christian women from all over Italy. This year it was held in Aprilia, Italy, a sea-coast town near to Rome. Our theme was "Unity without Uniformity, Differences without being Divided". We prayed, studied, sang songs, played get-to-know-you games, and ATE together. I must admit, it was pretty exhausting - it's pretty tiring getting to know a whole group of new people in of itself, but even more so when they speak a different language. Luckily I was able to keep up most of the time.

Not so luckily, I seem to have forgotten all nine years of my French education. There was a French girl at the convegno with whom I became friends, and I tried to speak with her a few times, but all I could think of was Italian! This will be remedied, and I plan to brush up on my French (just a quick review of nine years) so that I can send her messages in her own language. Although, she happens to be fluent in English and speaks well in Italian too. Quelle domage.

Like I mentioned before, we have many goings-on this week, but I will write about those later. In the meantime, I am looking forward to commencing with language school and also to the arrival of the new HUF students! I realize that I have an atrocious absence of pictures since my arrival, but don't worry - I have been taking pictures and hope to get around to publishing those soon. :) Love you all, and let me know about things happening over there! Ciao ciao tutti!

Lorenzo dei Medici

Well, as I suspected, the weeks are zooming by! This week we have mostly been taking care of housekeeping items.

Monday, we had an orientation meeting for Avanti, in which several former Avanti workers that are still living in Italy came and talked to us and gave us advice. Kelly, Sarah, and Julie all had really good information for us. Chad talked to us some from a more recent perspective - about things he wishes he'd done differently, etc.

On Tuesday, we spent the day getting the packets that we needed to apply for our "permesso di sogiorno", and also Dad took Jill and I into Florence so that we could take our language test! Ahhh! I was a little bit nervous, as I think was she, because it has been over a year since we have taken Italian. This test was to determine our level and which class they would put us in. We both did well enough, apparently, because we were placed in Intermezzo 3 - the last intermediate class before the advanced.

Wednesday was full of shopping - we got groceries to last us for a while, and also we went to IKEA for things we needed for our rooms. May I just say, that one of my favorite things to eat here is the yogurt? I'm just sayin'. Bianco dolce. :) Although I'm pretty sure it's imported from Germany. Boh. We also had the pleasure of welcoming Phyllis and Liz (aka "Phiz" or "Lyllis" according to Kyle) to Florence. They travel here often, and have made several friends here over the years. They are so much fun!

Thursday was full of errands as well. Phew. We had breakfast with David Shack, who had arrived the night before. He will be around for a while, and it was good to see him here. We put Chad on the plane back to Catania, had a panino and then filed our permesso di soggiorno, which is done at the post office here along with paying bills and many other different things. That done, Jill and I went back to Florence to officially register with Lorenzo dei Medici language school - also to pay for it. ha. We begin classes bright and early on Monday morning. We have two two-hour sessions - the first with Luca, and the second with Silvia. I don't know them yet, but we are on a first name basis already.

We spent most of today cleaning up around the Bible School. We had to clean all the rooms upstairs, since we had many guests from the Convegno staying here. Also, Dad is in the middle of repainting the walls of the classroom downstairs, which is quite a job here. You have to scrape the former paint and plaster off, re-plaster, then sand, brush the walls down, primer, then paint. So far we have two walls down to the "brushing the walls down", so next time we will be able to primer. Woohoo!

Mona and Jonathan Shackelford are both set to arrive this week, so we are excited for that. Also the HUF students are due in about two weeks I believe. Jill and I are hoping to do a few service projects with them every semester to get involved more with the Scandicci community. Anyway, big things are happening soon, and we appreciate all your prayers, thoughts, and support. Love to everyone!