Tuesday

Today was a loooong day.

We left the bible school at 6:45a.m. to go meet our HUF group at the train station for Mission Impossible (an assignment that sends groups of students to different cities for the day. They have to take 50 different pictures based on various criteria). Let's just say that my day started off with cranky people who progressively got worse. But I tried to stay optimistic.

The HUF students were in desperate need of an attitude adjustment. Before we even got to Perugia (their assigned city), they were already griping about the photography project. It was cold, and the map that they were given wasn't what I would call sufficient...there was a lack of road names on it...which wasn't good. We literally walked in circles around the train station as they tried to figure out where to go. I could understand their frustration, but sincerely hoped that they would cheer up after figuring out a direction to travel.

Once we finally made our way into the city, they started taking pictures. You'd think that they would see it as a fun challenge, but the cold weather made hands freeze and increased the whining and crankiness of the group. And after hours of griping, bad attitudes become contagious.

Then things got even worse. We stopped to eat lunch at a little cafe, and even though it had been flurrying all morning, we didn't expect the weather to go crazy during our 30 minutes inside. We looked outside and saw that a full blown snowstorm had started. Decaying moods turned to a cesspool of misery when we had to go back outside.

But after half an hour of walking in heavy snowfall, we found the saving grace of Perugia. To warm our frozen fingers, we ducked inside a candy shop where we learned why the city is known for its chocolate. For 25 minutes, our group oogled at and purchased different kinds of chocolates. The truffles were spectacular, and probably the best thing I've tasted since getting to Italy.

After that, we got onto a bus...where we sat for two hours in traffic, watching snow fall. If not for the bags of chocolate in our possession, I might have lost my patience. I ate chocolate covered coffee beans, truffles and white chocolate wafers while writing in my journal. As we literally inched our way down the road, we saw that there had been a car accident. Our bus driver somehow became traffic control. He would get on and off the bus, clearing traffic a section at a time. When we finally got down the road we were on, our bus pulled up at a bus station rather than the train station. The driver stood up, told us that buses weren't going to run for the rest of the day, and that he wouldn't be taking us to the train station.

We then struggled to find our way to the train station. Not speaking Italian was a royal pain, but we got lucky and found a girl who was able to translate for us at a dinky train station that we came across by chance. She explained how to take the train from there over to the train station we needed. Overcoming language barriers is mentally exhausting when you are crunched for time. By the time we were on the correct train and on our way back to Florence, I think our group felt kinda accomplished.

I was excited to get back to the Bible school and finally get warm. Hopefully tomorrow will be sunny, warm and more positive.