Since getting here, I've gotten to meet a lot of interesting people. In addititon to my roomies and my classmates (some of whom are more interesting than others...) I've gotten to meet other American students that are studying in Florence too. They've been having this basketball tournament that finally ended tonight where teams played each other that were made up of American students from all over and Florentine students. On Sunday, we had a quick worship service and then we rushed off to several different basketball games. We were supposed to be meeting people, even if we wern't playing in the tournament, but when we got there, the only other spectators were more HUF students that had cought an earlier bus. (The public transportation system and I are still not very good friends.) Me and like 3 other people who were just watching had the opportunity to talk to a guy named Shawn from California in between games, and when we were ready to leave and go back to the villa, Robbie invited him and a few other California State Uniersity students to come back to the villa for lunch. California people are supposed to be real characters and these people cartainly were. It just made me think of all the cool opportunities that we have to shine God's light in Florence. It seemed easy to talk to them about our school and why we do what we do. Easier than it would have been back home even. We had common ground- Florence. And we were all American students. It was so easy to just start a conversation and begin to build a relationship. It was quite exciting for me, and I'm super grateful that God gave me that opportunity to learn from. I can do that at home. All I have to do is be real. Because my God is real. And I don't think that anyone can deny that for too long. :)
On Monday afternoon, we did a scavenger hunt in Florence. I was on a team with two other HUFfers and and 4 Italian girls- Valentina, Laura, Veronica, and one more whose name I absolutely can't remember, because I couldn't even pronounce it. They were really super sweet, even though Laura was the only one who spoke English (and her English was like my Spanish) and Valentina was smoking constantly. We had an amazing time running around the city together, taking random pictures of ourselves with the landmarks we were supposed to find. I really loved Veronica. She told me about how she went to Volterra to see them film New Moon and got to meet Stephenie Meyer and Rob Pattinson. (Jealous!) It was amazing gettting to talk to her. We could hardly understand each other, but it's amazing how a language barrier can really disappear if you just want it to badly enough.
After the scavenger hunt, we went to a pizzeria with all the Italians. We sat with the people from our group and at the other end of the table, there were some outrageously good-lookin' Italian fellas. ;) We all drank out Cokes while they had glass after glass of wine. It was quite comical... Italians drink wine with their food, and most don't drink at dinnertime to get drunk. Most of the girls in our group only had a few glasses, and Laura just had water, because she doesn't drink at all. The guys there had a differnt idea though, and they drank the house wine until every bottle on our table was completely empty. And they started to get a little silly. They kept trying to get us to try some, and because they didn't speak English, it was a little harder to get them to understand than it was to get the Californians to understand. One guy even poured a little wine into the empty water glass of the girl sitting next to me. He then filled it up the rest of the way with water. "There! It's Coke!" They kept making toasts. "To McDonalds!" was probably the most hilarious. At one point, another guy made the comment in broken English, "I've never seen American girls so...sober!", which just brings me back to what I said a while ago. The Harding students that are constantly getting cycled through this ancient and beautiful city have an amazing opportunity to show these people a new kind of American, and really just a new kind of peron in general.
Ok, they turn off the internet a midnight, so I'll go ahead and finish up now. I miss everyone at home, and I get a little lonely sometimes, but for the most part, I really like the people I'm here with and I'm definitely loving Italy so far. <3
