So it's been a pretty crazy week jumping right back in to summer classes and work, but I thought I'd do a quick wrap up of the blog. Here's a few highlights from the last week since I didn't get a chance to post after the Italia game:
- Helping at a kids fair and getting my favorite jeans painted by a cute little Italian girl
- Traversing like the entire city to get a last dinner with our physics friends who were like two hours late. (And by entire city, I mean we went back and forth between the Policlinico metro stop and San Lorenzo like fifteen times that day). Also, mastering the pay phones in the metro station to call said late friends.
- Watching the America vs Italia soccer game between our friends... and trash talking big time when America won.
- Getting lunch with our friend Pietro and being able to talk about his involvement with a Catholic fellowship type thing and what reading the Bible meant personally to me. And being able to talk about the Holy Spirit interpreting the Bible for you so that you can understand... and having a spare book of Romans in Italian on hand.
- Getting the best tiramisu in Rome/the world at Pompi with Pietro, Andrea, Francesca, Alessandra, Antonello, Daniele, and some other people and then getting HOOKAH afterwards and hanging out until like 2 in the morning without realizing it. Then being driven home and going the wrong way on one-ways because, hey, it's Rome.
- Going to get the best cup of coffee in Rome with Pietro and then instead rushing to the hospital because our friend Ben was having an allergic reaction to cherries and gum (we think?). Praise him that Pietro's dad is a doctor slash Pietro was with us so we knew where to go. So.. got to experience social medicine aka sitting in a room for a few hours once we realized Ben wasn't about to die. Turns out he just started feeling better and we left without seeing a doctor.
- Same day as the hospital incident, sitting around at the Salvo playing cards with Pietro and him telling us that God used us this summer to show him more and more how God can be involved in every aspect of his life. And that God showed his love to him through us. Woah.
- Eating an aaaammaaazzinnggg three course Italian meal at Le Fate that included like 7 appetizers (goat cheese and fresh strawberry jelly, basil tomatoes and mozzarella, bruschetta with tomatoes and zucchini, chickpea soup, random vegetables that I actually enjoyed eating, to name a few), a plate of pasta, and tiramisu. For 20 euro. Because one of the ICS staff knows the chef. A-freaking-mazing.
- Going to a beautiful farm in Tuscany for debrief that looked like it was out of a movie. Having two days to just reflect on the trip and think through what God had been teaching us and get ready to transition back into America. Also, having real, good meat for the first time in like a month.
- Coming back to Rome for one day and spending almost all of it with Pietro and his friends. Watched USA advance in the world cup at Villa Borghese, got dinner and the last gelato, and then just sat in Piazza Bologna and hung out with our friends until 2 in the morning despite having to get up at 7:30 just because we didn't want to say goodbye. Highlights of that hangout period include finally getting a picture of Pietro smiling, Andrea picking a good combination of gelato flavors for me and then getting the same two flavors together (nutella and lemon) that he had mercilessly made fun of me for getting a few nights earlier, giving friends notes that I had written for them on the train ride home from Tuscany, and seeing Pietro's "future homes" aka a 10 million euro house and two different embassies.
- Staying awake for 25 hours straight because of stupid delayed planes and stubbornness on my part. During the 10-ish hour plane ride from Rome to Chicago I watched two movies and read the whole Eclipse book.
So now you can see why I was too busy to post a blog post during that last week. Seriously though, God so so so blessed me with awesome friends in Rome and it's just beyond cool that they're not just people we met in Rome, but people I'm missing and keeping in contact with now that we're back in America. On top of that, we got to share our walks with God with them, and God used the conversations we had to show me that yeah, it's a human universal to think about purpose and hope and spiritual things and God, and it isn't actually all that weird to just bring it up in conversation.
All that being said, after this summer, I'm fairly positive I don't want to just dive straight into law school straight out of college. I would love to take a gap year, specifically a year or two on Stint (short term international) in Rome with Crusade. But that's still a few years off so for now I'm just excited to go to Lux in the fall and have the opportunity to get down to Rome at some point to see my friends.
To those of you who have read this blog and supported me through prayer or even financially, thank you so so much! I know I wrote a lot about my specific experiences, but God did a lot of other cool stuff this summer. As a team, we had 258 spiritual conversations with students, some who had probably never had someone challenge them through what they truly believe before. We got to present the gospel to 78 people! Praise him, because as we all know, the good news of what Jesus did for us is so powerful in and of itself, and it changes hearts. And then we had the great great joy of seeing one girl come to know Christ! So those of you who prayed for us or gave money, you were an essential player in God furthering his kingdom this summer. Thank you so much!
un bacio! ciao. <3
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