When in Rome...2

Part 2
As I wrote 2 posts ago, we have started having a different activity every Friday night. We are half way through our second round and the first rounds all went pretty well. The first 2 movie nights have gone great and we had a good turnout for both of them, Despicable Me and The Blind Side. 


The cooking school, which falls on the second Friday of each month, has been a great success. The first one, Debbie demonstrated how to make sweet tea with lemon, pot roast (with potatoes, carrots, onion, and celery) and green beans with butter, salt, and pepper, rolls with butter and berry cobbler with vanilla ice cream. Oh my goodness, it was so good. I had to leave before it was over because I had band rehearsal but I got some leftovers that were awesome! The second cooking school was done by Laura, her first time to do it and she did great. The menu was meatloaf, potato casserole(the one with corn flakes on top), california cabbage and homemade chocolate chip cookies. I stayed and helped this time because Debbie was out of town and I'm not sure if we had rehearsal anyway. My contribution to this night was making the program/menu for the students to write on and take home and official title Assistant chef(which means I did what I needed to in the kitchen and then if Laura needed something during the presentation, I would get it. Ermenita also had this job.) Andrea was also assistant chef and helped a lot with the preparation of the food and she sat with students during the cooking school if there happened to be an awkward pause. Ryan and Peter were the dishwashers and they did a great job. With all of the help we finished at 10:30(which last time with just 3 people, they finished at 12ish)  Laura made this video from that night and it is great. 

Game Night is what I'm in charge of but I haven't actually gotten to do it yet. The first one I was gone to the women's covegno and this next one is tomorrow night. I think only 2 students came to the first one so they played scrabble, but I heard they had fun. Here is a picture that Ryan took  that night:

 

This past Friday the HUF students came to the game night with our Italian students. It was really exciting because we had a chili supper, a devo and then we played Pictionary(with English and Italian words). Sadly, the boys won in the lightening round but oh well. The HUF students really got into it and at the end we sang a song that Emily (and Sarah Bailey) wrote about Italy a few years ago. Here is a video of the night and of part of the song.

The fourth Friday of every month we have book club, that Andrea and Emily are in charge. This Friday they are going to Ferrara so Peter and I are in charge of the book club. We are doing the 3rd chapter of The Pearl by John Steinbeck. I haven't read it yet but the chapters aren't very long so I'll get on that. They had a good turn out of 7 or 8 at the last one and they studied the intro and the first 2 chapters of the book.


My birthday went really well and I had a great time with my friends and David even made some entertainment for us. Once again, here is a video of our entertainment and some pictures.

When in Rome...

Hello all! Has it already been over a month since I wrote last? wow. Things have been great here and SUPER busy(in a good way).

The Women's Convegno(Retreat) was near Rome and the Avanti group carpooled with the AIMers from Prato (and Heather, from Pistoia). It was on the Beatitudes and the main idea was "Siamo beati perche..." which means we are blessed because...  Throughout the weekend we played awesome games organized by Ermenita (yay Ermenita!) and rotated through groups, and of course we ate lots of desserts. For each beatitude there was a group and you would rotate to each beatitude. I'm not going to lie, I had a little bit of a hard time keeping up with all of the Italian, but I can say, at the end of the weekend, I knew the people I had spent my weekend with loved each other and loved Christ. I made some new friends and look forward to seeing them again at the next convegno.

Avanti Girls!

Amicine (Buddies)

This is one of our new friends Roxana(at the top)

AIMers and Avanti

To back up a little bit, the weekend before the convegno was Danielle's shower. Maybe I haven't mentioned her before but she is a past Avanti worker, and a great friend. Anyway, she and her husband Luli are pregnant! We threw them a shower and played fun games, such as smelling diapers and guessing what was in them, and seeing who could drink all of the liquid out of a baby bottle first. It was awesome. There is a video of the bottle race but I can't get it upload correctly. oh well.

Shortly after the Women's Convegno, Eric and Jessica left to go to Taranto. :( They will be missed so much here but the church in Taranto will be so blessed because of them. If you would like to read more about their adventure so far, here is their blog, www.receivingsight.blogspot.com . We had a party to celebrate their time here and to wish them well as they left. And instead of doing a money tree, we put the money in balloons and wrote on the balloons. Jessica popped them all and, well, hopefully you can see she had lots of fun.

Oh yeah, I went to Rome! I know, "But Angela, you've been to Rome." I've been all around Rome but not actually in it. So, Wednesday before the Harding students left, Kyle asked if I would like to go and I said sure (after asking if I could have a few days off). It was so cool! I thought, how different could it be from Florence, well the answer is really different. I don't know how to explain it but it was definitely worth it to go.

Circus Maxentius

Piazza Navona

Pantheon

The Spanish Steps

View from the top at sunset.
This picture doesn't do it justice, but I guess it will have to do.

Colosseum

I got to see Marta while I was there!

Hello Vatican/Saint Peters. The Vatican Museum and Saint Peter's was really interesting.
I know I could've spent another day there probably.

This is a bad picture of it, but, the Trevi Fountain

Anyway, that's all for now. This is post #1 of 2 so I will have more up about our Friday night events, lessons, and my birthday in a few days. As always, much love!