home sweet home

I just wanted to say a quick thank you to everyone who made my trip home so special. It was great to relax, speak English, and get to catch up with all of you. To all of you I wasn't able to see, I'm sorry we didn't make it happen this time around but there will be much celebrating my move home in September so I'm sure we'll see each other then. Here are a couple shots from New York and there will be more pictures from home to come.

Thanks Aniko and Scott! It was amazing, un bacio fortissimo e grazie tanto.

I'm safely back at my house in Italy and trying to get my body clock adjusted after about 20 hours of travel and a 6 hour time change. Tomorrow morning will be the test.

Cinque Terre

So one of the many perks about working for Agape is that I get to do a bit of traveling around Italy. This week all of the residents and I headed south to La Sarzana and Le Cinque Terre for a few meetings and to spend sometime relaxing all togehther. I spent a few days in meetings but I also spent some time on some of the most incredibly beaches I've ever seen. It was a much needed vacation for all of us and it did us all some good to splash around like children, lay in the sun, and be in a place where there was no snow to be seen. So here's a few photos to share with you all. Hopefully I'll be able to share lots more when I see you all in less than a week!

Buon internationale giorna della donna

So here in the village it seems that international women's day is much more important than I had ever imagined. Yesterday after cooking my second meal solo in the kitchen I got my women together and we went down to our favorite, and by favorite I mean only, pub in the village. Where the men who own it made dinner for about 40 women in the village. It was absolutely fantastic! We ate lots of good food, drank lots of good wine and mimosas, and danced the night away. It was a really wonderful time for us to get to know some of the other women in the village who we don't see very often, and it wasn't just 20-30 somethings, there were old women dancing to Elvis and young women singing lyrics at the top of their lungs to the newest Italian pop songs. There are times when living in a small village is a big challenge, when you feel like you need to escape the claustraphobia, and there are moments when it's unbelievably amazing. Last night falls into the amazing category, it feels good to be included in the community of my adopted village and country, to sit with women and laugh and joke like I do with my girlfriends in the States. Not that any of you could ever be replaced but it's nice to know that my Charlie Brown accent and difficulty speaking Italian after a few glasses of wine doesn't seperate me from the women in the village. In this moment we were all Praline and enjoying each other's company.

Well it seems that alot has happened since my last post. As usual the internet is a bit of a mystery here, thus my lack of blogging. But for the moment it's here, and I have enough patience to try to upload a few things. So let's see a brief run down of the last month or so.

I've been doing alot of skiing and although I think it's safe to say I'm the worst skiier in the village I certainly have a good time. There will be ski videos to come, but for the moment they are on some one else's camera. Aside from ski adventures, I celebrated my 23rd birthday. I know that I usually have a birthday celebration with friends at Denison and then a birthday weekend at home and to some that might seem a bit excessive. But this year has certainly outdown all the rest in the amount of celebrating. The celebrations began the night before in the village with a friend who shares the same birthday, it seemed only right that we celebrate together. There was a round of genepy for all and alot of time hanging out with friends who I hadn't seen in quite some time. The night of my birthday was celebrated with a big Moroccan dinner courtesy of one of the other residence, a wonderful torta, and then a gift of brand new ski goggles. I promptly put the goggles to use to next day for a ski adventure with Francesca, Marcolino, and Valentina. The evening of the 16th was the beginning of Waldensian festivals in the valley and so the celebrations continued. The evening began with a bunch of skiiers coming down the mountain with torches to light all of the bonfires in our village and the surrounding villages.

We stopped by a couple bonfires on our way to dinner, had a couple glasses of VinBroule and then headed off to have dinner with all of the young people from the village. The grand finale was a 4 hour lunch at the church the following afternoon. After all of which we all need a big nap and not to eat for a few days. It was a great birthday and thank you all for the birthday wishes.

A brief note

A little note to all of those young cousins (Reggie, Cadence, Nate and whoever else is reading) to God-siblings (Idge and E pay attention) to children of friends (Bear and Babytoo) and whoever else this might be useful for...Pay close attention to those science lessons you think you'll never need. Especially the ones about simple machines because you never know when you might find yourself on the roof of your house shoveling 6 feet of snow and needing to know how to make the most effective lever.
Needless to say we've found ourselves with more snow and it's becoming too heavy for the roof so...today we spent the day on top of the center, rather than the normal inside the center. We shovel snow for the entired of the day and are now thoroughly destroyed. But all is good in the village and at least we are weathering the storm together. I hope whatever part of the world you all are in you are finding some sun...

finally finished digging out

For all of you who were a little worried about my existance, no need to be any more. As you may or may not know we have had the storm of my life in the mountains the past 2 weeks. About 7 feet of snow in three days, we spent several day without power and heat, and when we were finally able to get out of our house we spent the rest of the week trying to help others dig out from avalanches and things of the sort. I'm happy to report that there is now sun and the snow is melting at a slow steady pace. Here are a few pictures of the craziest snow I've ever seen. More to come...

This is the tunnel we had to dig to get out of our front door.

The view from my bedroom window

Us trying to clear a path to the center...

The snow was so high we were able to jump off of the bell tower and land safely in the snow below...

Although we all worked like never before in our lives we managedto have alot of fun too!

I wish you all a happy and wonderful holiday spent with family and friends

I miss you all.

It's beginning to look alot like Christmas

Most of the time we think of the Christmas season starting right after Thanksgiving and although we celebrated Thanksgiving here in the mountians the rest of the country didn't so it seemed a little difficult to determine the actual beginning of the season. But I'm happy to report it is officially the beginning of Christmas at our house as we have finished decorating our Christmas tree and it is proudly on display in our front hall. A few of us were in favor of taking a trip into the surrounding forest and digging up our own tree but unfortunately that got vetoed due to the highs of -3 we'd been having. In the end we settled for a fresh tree dug up by someone crazier than us. It's a little Charlie Brown Christmas but we love it all the same, it is one of those with the sharp pointy needles that the Djupe family loves so well. We hoped that this would help keep the cat away from all our hard work but in the end it didn't seem to do much good. Fortunately for a majority of the time we were decorating Jack looked alot like this:

It was only after all of the ornaments and tinsle were on that he decided the tree would be a wonderful new playground, unfortunately I couldn't get a picture of this, Jack doesn't like to share his new playground with pesky photographers it seems.

After all our lovely decorating we moved the tree into our front hall, turned off all the lights, and admired our work. It's a pretty good tree if I do say so myself. And all our hard work was promptly rewarded with a warm dinner of cabbage stew. It was a good day here in our house. I hope all of your tree and house decorating adventures bring you all the same laughter and happiness we've had at our house this year.