Savona to Florence to Genova

Things have been moving swiftly along for us. We find ourselves busier than we were the previous month. We had the opportunity to go to Florence to meet another Senior Missionary Couple, the Ferrara’s, as we delivered a church keyboard to them. It was so great to finally meet another couple who had more time and experience in the mission field. They shared good advice and suggestions on how to become an amazing missionary couple. We rode the train from Savona to Florence, through the beautiful Tuscany countryside. I took way too many pictures, but I was like a kid in a candy store. I couldn’t take my eyes away from the train window as we traveled. We passed nearby Carrara, known for its marble quarries. The white markings on the mountains look like there is snow, but it is where they have quarried the marble. We rode near Pisa and I saw a brief glimpse of the “Leaning Tower.” We had a whirlwind one-day visit through the city of Florence, as we joined a walking tour, hitting on the highlights of this incredible city.  

Yes, we carried this keyboard on the train with us!  We got some funny looks, but we always get that so we're getting used to it! 

In front of Ponte Vecchio with our friends, the Ferrara's.  They took us all over the city. We walked almost 7 miles that day! 

 For those of you who LOVE gelato, this is the place!  Oh my goodness!  Such in incredible choice of flavor combinations!  It was divine!

In front of the Duomo at the Piazza della Signoria

 We saw this car parked on a beautiful little terrace off one of the side streets.  Its called a Twizy!  I thought it was hysterical!  Basically a motorscooter with doors and a roof.  But they could park anywhere they wanted to!  Here in Italy, that is a big plus!

 We came across a fabulous little shop filled with "homemade books, stationary, and cards."  It looked like Geppetto's workshop.  Tara, you would LOVE it!

Teeny tiny stairway leading to the 2nd floor.

Italy makes all of it’s foreigners apply for a “Permesso”, which is essentially a card saying that you have permission to stay in the country for a certain period of time. All of the missionaries need to apply for one. This entails filing out paperwork, paying fees (of course), taking your fingerprints, and on occasion, you are randomly chosen to take a “culture class.” I was excited about this, as I pictured learning all about cool things in Italy, such as food, holidays, native dress and dances, tourist sites, etc. Boy, were we ever disappointed! Five hours of watching a video where two people sat at a desk and discussed the Italian constitution! Not once did they deviate to show any pictures or cute videos. Just five hours of this:

This is not staged. I looked over and there he was! The lady instructor actually falls alseep on the video! That's when you know it's really boring! The perfect remedy for insomnia!

The most interesting part of the culture class was the diversity of people taking the class! The majority were from Albania, with the remainder including Africa, France, Egypt, South America, Saudi Arabia, India, and us! The only Americans! We’ve been surprised at the number of foreigners from other countries living here in Italy. 

  It can take months to finally receive your permesso, but both Miles and I got ours within a week of finishing our culture class!  YAY!

One of Italy’s many holidays they celebrate is “Festa della Donna” or “Women’s Day.” Not to be confused with Mother’s Day, which is another holiday. But the tradition here is to give yellow flowers to all the women. This is the time of year that the mimosa trees are in bloom. 

They have a very subtle sweet clean fragrance that I just love. I remember it from when I lived here as a young girl. On every street corner there was a man selling small bouquets of mimosas. 

The tradition is to give the women a bouquet of yellow flowers.  I think I really love this holiday!

 The other tradition is for women to all go out and celebrate together or some other event. Our Relief Society joined together at a pizza place. I never knew how many things you can include on pizza! The strangest to me was the tuna pizza. (They put tuna on everything) But I had to admit it was pretty tasty! 

To top it off, they brought us Nutella pizza! Hey, why not!?!

We stayed busy having various members and missionaries to our house for lunch and dinner. It’s been fun to try out certain American recipes to see what goes over best. By far, the favorites have been the Ham and Cheese sliders, my Orzo Pasta Salad, and my homemade brownies (which I have perfected after several tries). 

Our sweet sister missionaries, on the outside, with our wild and crazy friend Maria!

Lunch with the African refugees, Victory and Joseph (who loved the Sloppy Joes) and the elder missionaries.

One of our duties as a senior missionary couple is to help and support the young missionaries. Twice a year we are asked to go and inspect each of their apartments to make sure things are kept clean and tidy. This was to be a “white glove” inspection. We were assigned 12 apartments to inspect around our zone of Genova. It was so much fun to go to each apartment and get to know the missionaries better. Some apartments were better than others, naturally. I brought plates of brownies to each of the missionaries as a peace offering, and then proceeded to tell them how to really clean!

  And the best news of the blog is that after waiting for four months to move to Genova, our apartment finally was ready for us to move in! 

  I couldn’t really believe it until we had the keys in hand and we turned to lock 
on the door! Stay tuned for more pictures and adventures from Genova!

February 14th-People and Things We LOVE!

Happy Valentine’s Day to all our dear family and friends! I love my family and friends all year long, every single day. But having one day dedicated to LOVE does make us think about how blessed we are to have the wonderful people in our lives that we LOVE! We have to come to LOVE so many people and things here in Italy. We wanted share some of them with you!

This elderly couple really touched my heart. It isn’t something you see everyday, older couples showing their real affection for one another. 

 These are all the missionaries in the Genova Zone. There are about ten zones in the Italy Milan Mission, each zone taking in four or five cities. There are about 200 missionaries in our mission. Mostly from the United States, but there are about 20 native Italians, a few from France, Spain, and one from Hungary.

These are our two missionaries that we have been working with in Savona. We sure LOVE them! They are very hard workers. Elder Jones (second from right) was recently transferred up to Milano. We miss him already!

With the transfer of Elder Jones, another missionary arrives to take his place. This is Elder Petruzziello (far left) who is an Italian from Rome. He has only been a missionary for one week and he is unusually tall for an Italian. He is a professional chef! He said he would teach me how to make some wonderful Italian dishes! We LOVE him already!

We had a luncheon with our wonderful sister missionaries (left) and a mom and her daughter from the Savona Branch. It was great to get to know them better and they did LOVE my food! (Whew! I’m nervous to cook for Italians!)

This is the Robiola family. They struggle to make ends meet, yet were so generous towards us. The son is amazing. He is smart, articulate and has great potential. 

We LOVE this sweet family!

 This is the De Milato family. He was a policeman in Milano for 30 years, but has now retired to this incredible mountainside farm north of Savona. He has about 10 acres of fruit trees and gardens.

They made us a most incredible meal, typical of most Italian homes. They have raised eight children and been members of the church all their lives. Stalwart and faithful! We LOVE them!

Antipasti

Caprese salad, with eggplant, mozzarella, tomatoes, and basil.               

Fruit, nuts, and cheese pizza.

I didn’t get pictures of the fourth course pasta and the last course, chicken cutlets. I was so full my brain was going fuzzy!

10 acres of fruit trees and gardens

Our Wednesday and Thursday night English class students. We have so much fun with them. Each one is amazing in their own way, from a 

professional bicyclist, an artist, a gymnast who can do the splits, a comedian, two policemen, and a former train engineer! Lots of LOVE with this group!

We woke up to find we had been “heart-attacked” by our sweet, adorable sister missionaries last night. We felt the LOVE from them. It was beautiful!

A couple of weeks ago, we needed to find a lady in our branch and make a visit to her. We had her address, but we weren’t sure exactly where her town was located. So we decided to make a “practice run” to find her address before we actually had our appointment. It just so happened that her town is located about 30 miles to the west of Savona, where we are living. This means we HAD to drive along the Riviera coast road until we got to her town of Loano. It was one of the most incredible drives we have ever taken. The scenery was breathtaking. I remembered driving along this very same road when I lived here as a 10 year-old with my mom, dad and sisters. How strange to be here 50 years later on the same road, experiencing the same gorgeous scenery.

Earlier in the month I started seeing flashes of light in my left eye when I was in the dark. At first I thought it was from the fireworks that were going off on New Year’s Eve. But when Miles said he didn’t see anything, and the flashes continued later in the week, I started to get worried. Of course, the first thing I did was Google it and my suspicions were correct. I had a retinal tear, which if I didn’t see a doctor right away, I could lose my eyesight in that eye. I was so scared that #1. I would have to go back to the States. We worked too hard to get here. I was NOT going home. #2. That I would lose my eyesight in that eye. I was ready to do that if needed, but I really didn’t want that to happen. To make a long story short, through the help of a wonderful friend, we were able to find a top-notch eye specialist in Genova, who performed a laser procedure on my eye to “seal” the retinal tear. It wasn’t a fun procedure, but it fixed the problem, thank goodness. He did a great job! AND, we got to make several train rides into Genova. We are getting very good at riding the train and getting around that big crazy city. Here are a couple of pictures of landmarks in Genova that are right outside the eye doctors office.

Monument to Fallen Soldiers 

Train station in Genova that is becoming like our second home

Commemorative garden honoring local boy
Christopher Columbus and his three ships,
the Nina, Pinta, and Santa Maria

We are still waiting for our apartment in Genova to be ready for us to move in. It looks like it will happen in February, if all goes well. Here is a picture of the building from the outside, if all goes according to our plan!

It is still very, very cold here. In the 30s and 40s. But what makes it unbearable is this wind that blows down from the Alps. It is so freezing cold. The other thing is that I haven’t been used to being outside and walking when it is this cold. But now we walk a few miles every day. Here is a picture of me after we walked to the church.

I might look a little scary if you saw me
late at night in a dark ally

And last of all, for those who really know me well, you will appreciate this picture from today. I finally found a place to get my hair colored and cut! At half the cost of what I pay in the States! All is right with the world again!

Happy at last thanks to Alessia!

Historical Savona and Genova

There is a huge fortress here in Savona, called Priamar that we pass by when we walk to the church. On New Years Day, we had some extra time in the afternoon, so we decided to go check it out. This was a fortress built in 1542 that has been used as a castle, used by the military, and was also used as a prison until 1903, There was also a cathedral built in the 7^th century but that was demolished to make room for other edifices. This place was huge! I can see where it would have lasted for 470 years.

Priamar Fortress

We had a fun Family Home Evening with a couple of our African Refugees. My heart really goes out to these young men who are searching for a better life. Many of them have left their families in Africa and are hoping to find a job and earn enough money to reunite in Italy. I hope we can bring a little light of joy into their lives as we meet together.

Miles and I once again made the trip into Genova to look for an apartment. They want us to move there to work with the Young Single Adults in the church. We found the perfect place, but I don’t want to post pictures until it is done deal. Genova has a long history as a seaport, dating back as far as Christopher Columbus (who was born here). It is now a highly industrial seaport and also services many cruise ships that dock here. But as you move inland a bit, the city suddenly turns into hills that would rival anything we saw in San Francisco. But this hasn’t discouraged the building of huge apartments right on the hill. The cute thing is that you can take the funiculare up and down the hill, saving your legs for walking on the level ground.

Most nights when we walk home it is dark (and very cold). Yes, we have a car, but if we are lucky enough to find a parking spot in front of our apartment, we don’t want to move the car. So we walk. Its been really good for us. We figure we are walking about two to four miles each day, some days a lot more. Here are a couple of pictures of our usual walk home in the dark. I have gotten so brave! But we do walk very fast.