Ciao, Come stai? (hi, how are you)

Well, it's been over a week I've been here now. I was quite amazed as I was sitting in church this morning at how completely lost I was and overwhelmed by the Italian language and now I can actually understand a portion of the words people say. Honestly, I do believe it's a gift, Cindy and Carmen have both expressed that I'm picking up on the language much faster than most people would. It is very exciting to me that I can partially track with a conversation. Part of that is that Italian is a Latin based language and English has some Latin roots, but most of it is repetition and asking lots of question, I'm very blessed that Carmen hasn't become tired of my incessant, "what is é?" "is", "while e is the, right." They both sound like our letter "a" but it's the context in which it's used, it only looks different on the page, it doesn't sound any different. I fall asleep and wake up thinking about simple Italian words and trying to remember what everything means. As I said, Carmen has been very patient with me and she's excited to teach me

We went into Venice yesterday, as we were on the bus on the way Carmen was trying to teach me some Italian verbs, she says I'll be able to understand a lot more once I can get them into my head, I'm not convinced yet, but I'm trying to track with what she's trying to teach me. This Italian man in the bus heard Carmen trying to teach me these verbs and he asks in English if she's a teacher. So we started talking, he spoke very good English and he said that Carmen spoke better Italian than he did! We were having a wonderful conversation until he realized what Carmen had been saying when she said she worked with the Evangelical church and then he got a bit hostile about how he had a right to his opinion and we had a right ours and he respected ours, but he'd done everthing in his life by his brain and his muscle and when he died that was it, finito. I was quite taken aback, Carmen had told me about that kind of response, and it's not that I didn't believe her, but it's one thing to hear about that sort of situation, it's totally different to experience it.

We're half way done with the quilting classes, I actually have hope that the ladies might be able to get the quilts done! We had one lady that came the first day and hasn't been able to come back, I think it's something to do with her child, but I could only pick out a few words in her explanation to Cindy, she was speaking Italian. Other than that all the ladies have been coming faithfully. Some of them listen during the devotionals, but it's hard to know if anything is getting through, and a soft heart would be an exception among the Italians. By and large they are good people and therefore they don't see the need for a Savior to forgive their sins. It's really very sad, but the workers here are still faithfully sowing seeds and praying that one day, whether they're here to see it or not, they will bear fruit.

The food is amazing. I've been eating so much it's a wonder my clothes still fit, but when you factor in walking and longer spaces between meals I guess it all evens out.

It really cracks me up, you see pictures of Italy with laundry hanging on lines outside of windows and think it's kinda weird, but it quite typical, very few people have dryers and everyone really does hang their laundry out the window.

I will write more when I get the chance, but for now I feel like I just need to post this as I started it yesterday and it doesn't seem very likely I'll get time to finish it today. Here's the link to my photo album on facebook, you can view it even if you aren't on facebook.
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=97033&id=522107441&l=2fedb42526