A few stories

So I've been here a little over two months now, and there's been a lot of ups and downs. Mostly ups. But it's always an adjustment in a new place, with a new language, completely different culture, and learning curves with everything. This week has been kind of a benchmark in my Italian skills; I've had a lot of forced opportunities to speak to people who know no English, in a lot of sink or swim circumstances. Although I'm not amazing, I've at least been able to survive. I'm really stoked about just that much after 2 months, and I've been a lot more optimistic about my language skills from now on.

Besides normal Italian, I've also been learning a bit of the local dialect and even, dare I say it, some French. My 6 French words were put to the test when I visited Paris for an extended weekend. I liked it even more than I thought I would; it's a completely unique and beautiful city. Some of the stereotypes are true but in a strange and beautiful way the Parisian attitude really makes sense. It also helped that on the trip to/from I read the book Sarah's Key, a touching but heavy book about an amazing story that took place in Paris during WWII, from the perspective of a present-day American woman living there. I also got to spend some fantastic time with Alix and Gwen. Oh, and I literally ran into Paris Hilton in Paris, at the too-posh-for-me store Colette.

I've been getting along really well with the kids, and we've had some opportunities to go a few places. I actually went to 6 countries in 4 days, which was a lot of driving. After a day at the Genova Aquarium, I went with the family to Nice, France for a few days. Perfect weather, we stayed very close to the beach and Elena's brother's both have restaurants there. We ate at one a couple times- Alto (http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=717151979), which is owned by Stefano. He's married to a Japanese woman, and his food is an amazingly inventive fusion of Italian food made in a Japanese way, served tapas-style. He just gave us what he thought was best for us to eat, and it was all amazing. We then drove through Monaco, along the roads where they have the Grand Prix. That city/country has way too much money but is beautiful.

               

Gill, a Canadian girl who played for a volleyball club in Austria had to go to a conference in Bregenz Austria a couple weeks ago. She was driving the 5 hours there and back alone, so I went along, after only knowing about it 10 hours before we had to leave. I had never been there, and my German is even worse than my French, but I knew enough to order some amazing apfel strudel. Twice. The coolest thing was that about a year ago I remembered seeing a picture of this crazy stage on the water online somewhere, where people performed operas and old plays. I remember looking it up to see where it was, and I knew it was relatively close to where I would be living now, but completely forgot the name of the town. As we turned the corner to the place where Gill's conference was, I saw a crazy head sticking out of the lake and knew exactly what it was. Check it out here: http://www.designboom.com/weblog/cat/10/view/16090/andre-chenier-opera-on-the-lake-at-bregenz.html. It was actually in the last Bond movie (it was a big eyeball then), but now it looks like this:

I'll have another story about Thanksgiving next week. That's been a crazy adventure already. Peace for now.

Andiamo!

I'm here! Finally arrived in Italy one week ago. It's been a little crazy so far, but everything is working out amazingly. I'm in Torre Pellice, living with an amazing family. I felt like I belonged on the first day, and I think this is going to be a great year. I'm still getting basic things taken care of like a phone, bank account, and registering for various things, and I still have to work on my visa, but it's all going very smoothly so far.

So. A little introduction to my situation now: We live in a great villa on the hill at the end of town:

We are on the ground level and basement floors. Elena is the mother, and she's Supermom. This family is very well known in town, and she especially is friends with everyone and organizes a lot. Jean is the father, and is a doctor in Torre. He is very busy some days, and others he can be around a lot. He is also the doctor for the local hockey team, which is more important than life itself. This means we have season tickets, and we know all the players and their families. There are a good amount of Canadians and Americans. Right now a lot of the wives don't have much to do, so a few of us are going to take language classes together in a nearby town. I'm learning a lot of Italian already, although sometimes I get Spanish and Italian words confused. I think a class will help, and it will be great to know the hockey families better.

Elsa, a girl from Cameroon, also lives here and studies languages in Torino. We share a room and it's been great getting to know her and having someone who speaks Italian help me out with a lot of things. The kids are Rebecca, Zoe, and Jacopo.

They're a lot of fun, and a lot of chaos at times. So my days will consist of helping them before/after school, thinking up new ways to teach them English, and helping around the house. Different people are always over here, and every day is a bit different. Besides that I'm free to travel a bit and work out things with other children and teams in the valley. As soon as my shoulder is recuperated I really want to try to play again, and Jean knows an orthopedic doctor here who used to work for the Italian national soccer team, so I think I have a good shot at playing again! Right now I'm still just working on getting situated here and learning the language, but there's a lot that can happen in the future. So, to be continued..........

Life Plans

Oh, flowers. I haven't updated in a long time. I didn't do so because I was going through a lot of ups and downs and never could really tell where things would land. They finally have, as much as my life can "land", and I actually have a plan for once! There were times when I thought I would never get back, and that I might have to stay in Indiana forever, or come up with a completely new career. These kind of times can take a real toll on my spirits and idealism, but things are getting a lot better.

I'm currently working in fiber optics engineering where I used to help out during a few summers. The work itself I'm not really a big fan of, but the environment is great, I'm friends with the guys who work in our tiny cubicle quad in the basement, and I actually have something to do every day instead of sitting at home wondering what I'm doing with my life. And this allows me to make enough money for the next stage in my life.

This all came about in a very crazy way. Before I started working I was looking into other options. I thought if I couldn't get on the original plan I might as well try to make a difference somehow. So I was looking into trying to get back to Europe in other ways to try to hook up with OM, even if it couldn't be in Italy. I looked into being an au pair, and had things set up to try this in Spain. Sidestep to Rebecca, one of the little girls who was at the volleyball camp, who I have been emailing with every once in a while. I let her know that I might be going to Spain, and she told me that I should do the same with her family! This actually works out ridiculously perfectly. They live in the same valley in Italy where I was last summer and where our ministry is based, they don't need me until September so that gives me time to raise the money to pay off my student loans for a year, and living with this family will be the perfect way to get involved in the community.

It almost seems too good to be true, and after going through a rough time being stuck at home I can see how this was the best plan all along. So I'm working with the family to get the visa, and saving money. Also, due to the fact that I'm graduated, roughly 87% of the people I know are getting married this summer. So if I work constantly I would have enough money to go back to Italy in July, but I wouldn't be of as much use then. So in order to go to all the weddings I'm going to take a vacation earlier and then work longer into August. I have my tickets to go to Spain June 11 - July 11, and for the first two weeks my mom, Molly, Doyle, and her mom are will be with me just traveling around Spain. After they leave I get to spend some time in Madrid with some great friends and going to a wedding. I'll also be going back to Italy for a week to help out with this summer's Impact interns. I'll come back to the states just in time for a few more weddings, and I'll continue working until I fly to Italy sometime in August.

I'm still looking for people who would like to support me, even though I don't need financial support for the first year. If anyone knows of anyone else who's interested, please pass on my blog and/or email address.

So excite!

Let's Limbo!

So I haven't updated in a long time because I was hoping to give some sort of actual news. But that has not really happened. I returned to the States as soon as my tourist visa was up, and it's been a series of ups and downs ever since then. I've really enjoyed spending time with friends and family, but I really don't feel like my place is here and I want to get back. I just have to keep in mind that it's not in my time or in my hands.

I'm here until I can get a visa and my full support raised. We still have to find a loophole for the visa, but that's all irrelevant unless I can get support. That's the one glaring obstacle right now. I have absolutely no idea where it's coming from or when. All I know is that I really feel like this is where I've been called to go, even when it doesn't look like that will ever happen all I can do is hold onto the hope that I have in Christ.

Long story short, if anyone knows of anyone who's super interested in sports and/or missions, send them my way! I think that after the holidays if I'm not any closer I might have to change locations. No idea really what's going on still, but Roxanne told me about an internship at her church in California that pays for housing and food, and I could do sports ministry. The only downside is that it has to be for a full year.

The saga continues. I feel like something's going to happen soon, I just have no idea what.

Crazy Travels

So I finally have internet access and a little bit o free time. The last weekish of training was crazy- we all finally ¨stormed¨ and had our breakthroughs, breakdowns, and whatnot. I realized I would actually miss this family like crazy once they´re gone, and it really has been hard being without them. Saying goodbye was rough, but we´re all working on keeping in touch and updated.

I had gotten hardly any sleep when I went to the Milan airport with a German and an Albanian to drop of a Singaporean. Due to certain (long) difficulties, we had to pick up a certain Moldovan, drive to Switzerland and then to Germany. We arrived at 3am, then I had to rush to a train in the morning and go all the way to the north to Teenstreet. This camp was insanely awesome, with like 3000 teenagers from all over Europe. This included about 1% of the population of the Faroe Islands, a ton of Dutch kids, Egyptians, and various others. I worked the sports section during the day, with a lot of beach volleyball, some dodgeball, rock climbing, and various other things.

Teenstreet was crazy intense, and amazing to see people from such different background together. I made friends with lots of people on my team from Germany, Brazil, Faroe Islands, Switzerland (the French speaking part), etc. I was lucky when it came time to leave, there was a lot of confusion, and my plan was to go to Spain. So one of my new friends offered for me to stay at his house outside of Hamburg after taking like 3 trains to get there with some other Germans and Swiss. Crazy adventure, and I actually got to see a bit of Germany. I then flew out of Hamburg the next morning, after having to buy another ticket within like 3 minutes of the train boarding because of some stupidness with the ticket booking online. But I made it, and Nacho picked me up at the airport in Madrid.

Since then I´ve been seeing old friends, experiencing real Spain and amazing Spanish food, and trying to speak Spanish. It´s been hard but I´m getting better- I think if I spent a few months here I could get close to fluent with a bit of work. Right now I´m at Jorge´s- his brother is just like him (like scary similar, but we´re both bad at each other´s language so it´s a good communication mix). It´s been really interesting to see all my friends like where they´re actually from, and seeing the Miñambres house was awesome, even though Luis wasn´t there (come on). It´s kinda weird when my Spanish friends are from a bunch of different groups or years, and so they don´t know each other and it´s more difficult getting together. Everything is just a giant adventure. I´ve really been living not knowing what the next step or location is til like the last minute. It´s difficult but kind of exciting, and I´m just trusting that it all works out. So far it´s been amazing and awesome, but still working out difficulties with money situations, getting back to the states for a visa and so on. Keep praying it all works out.

Intensionally Vague

Howdy all,

I've just returned to Italy from an amazing two weeks. Due to various factors I can't really say on here where I've been or what I've been doing. Don't you want to know now! Well good news, friends. My team and I put together a delectable little report on our time away. If I have your email address I'll send it to you very soon, if you don't get one please let me know. If you're sneaky you can look on my photostream, hopefully I'll be able to get some more up with this slow connection. Peace.

Week of Craziness

The camp ended amazingly. We had olympics on the last day, with each team representing a random country. MaryHelen and I organized the Bible story station- we had the kids act out the story of the good Samaritan, complete with donkey and violent robbers (very entertaining). The parents somehow got together and gave us the most amazing spread of food to thank us for the whole week. The Italians were amazed by this; apparently this is very uncommon. When the kids were getting their medals and singing songs in front of the whole group a lot of the parents were crying- it was hard for a lot of them to believe that the whole thing was free.

This past week had a significant amount of ridiculousness. Tuesday was supposed to be one of the roughest days; the group did the "rescue" mission, where in two teams they were left on the top of a mountain and had to carry people down on some sort of stretcher they had to build, complete with people sabotaging them the whole time. I, however, had some sort of disagreement with food/drink I put inside my body. I would have liked them to stay there; they insisted they come out. So I was up for at least 24 straight hours having fun with this, and on Wednesday I was super weak but could actually get out of bed a little.

Wednesday night David read us the passage about the disciples falling asleep in the garden while Jesus was praying. We then took one hour shifts staying up praying until 6am, when we all met. From this point until 9pm, we played sports nonstop. The entire time in Italy we've been learning that to have true strength you have to make yourself weak; this is the first time I was forced to do that. I had no strength after the first run at 7am, but all I did was pray for strength for the next activity, and each time I would get just enough to continue. It was amazing, although amazingly hard. The final task was a run up the mountain to a bridge. Along the way, Gabriel had to sit down, and all of a sudden he was on the ground and barely coherent. At this exact moment, a car came by (who happened to be our neighbor) and did everything they could to help us. This was difficult because there was no cell signal on the road, and none of us really speaks Italian. We all got in the back of the goat truck, and Austin carried Gabr in the front. He was getting worse, so we stopped on the road and called an ambulance. Clayton and Brian started sprinting down the mountain to get David and Amanda to translate; we found out later that they about died after the first turn. Somehow they were able to keep this suicide pace all the way to Forterocca, and they were running in step and even in the same breathing rhythm- when they arrived they weren't even out of breath. It was a miracle how everything worked out with timing, remembering his allergies, and a million more things. It's been amazing just to see how God takes care of us daily.

So besides that we've been doing training every day, playing whatever when we can (calcio with the local kids), and world cup-ing to the max. That's super fun in the village, and it was ridiculous when Italy got out. I think the whole country will be a little angry about that for the next few years. Anyways, I uploaded some more pics, but internet is crazy slow here so the ol blogspot doesn't really wanna cooperate. Go check em out.