Monday

Today has been a WONDERFUL day! I laughed so hard I cried, ate fantastic food, saw beautiful things and got laughed at by Italians. It was brilliant.

I started off the day by working on a story about the history of the Villa, then had lasagna at the Bible school for lunch. Mmmmmm. We had the afternoon free to work on stories, or finish up ones that we had started that morning. My partner for the Villa history piece was out and about, so I spent the afternoon with two of our girls in Florence as they worked on a piece about the top 5 things to do in Florence. We saw the highlights of the city, like the Ponte Vecchio, the Duomo, the piggy market and a church. We had a wonderful time creating inside jokes while getting to see fantastic things, which made for my best day here as of yet. I'm falling in love with Italy, and know that I'm not going to want to go back to dinky little Searcy on Saturday.

Anyway, on to why I got laughed at by the Italians. We were standing in front of the Duomo taking pictures, and I happened to remember that Flat Stanley (a little paper doll that elementary aged children send to friends/family so that he can go on “adventures” and then return with pictures of where he's been) was in my bag...and I thought it would be nice to get a picture of him with me in front of Florence's most famous landmark. Well a group of Italian guys watched me get him out of my bag, only to hold him up and pose for the camera. They were about 3 feet away from us, laughing and pointing at me, and since I was well aware of how ridiculous I looked, I couldn't help but crack up. Today was full of laughter. :)

We had dinner back at the Bible school, and worked on stories for the rest of the night.

Tomorrow we go on Mission Impossible with people from the HUF group. I'm going to Perugia, which I know almost nothing about...but it should be a fun and busy day.