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!