Wednesday, October 14th
Today we took the time to savor our Italian breakfast that came with our semi-spendy hotel – according to a college student’s budget – that we had decided to splurge on. One definite difference I noticed between my Italian breakfast and, let’s say, an English breakfast (probably since I took note of it in our Florence guidebook) was the fact that Italian pastries tend to always come with some sort of filling inside; it’s hard to find a plain croissant that has nothing added to it. This fact hilariously reminded me of my family who generally seems to prefer fillings in their pastries or coffeecakes – specifically my brothers. Anyway, our breakfast was continental with several pastry options, cheese and meat, yogurt, fruit, bread, jam, etc. – fairly standard European. My favorite part, however, was the Americano I got every morning. Italian coffee is the greatest; it might have been the best European cup of coffee I had had since Germany in June. No wonder I like coffee so much – both sides of my family (German and Italian) make great coffee; it’s not my fault!
After breakfast we all went out on a walk through the streets of Florence again and made our way across town to a lookout point Emily had found in our guidebook. It was a gorgeously warm, sunny day – perfect for taking tons of scenery pictures (which I’ve already posted on facebook). Possibly the best moment on this adventure was when Emily suddenly said, “Hey guys, do you know Amanda Townley? ... I think that’s Amanda Townley from Bethel!” So we ran over to find out that this girl was indeed Amanda Townley from Bethel, and she was even wearing her Edgren homecoming shirt! Haha. And so we had a huge ‘what are you doing here!’-moment and discovered that she was currently studying abroad on Spain Term and they were on their free travel as well. I hadn’t met Amanda before this, but we all talked and walked back into town together chatting about our abroad experiences thus far.
Later that afternoon once Amanda had already went back to her own hotel and Carrie, Erin, and Tessa had left on a train back to Rome, the world got even smaller. We made our own trip to the train station in order to buy train tickets and literally ran into Corbin, Brian, Zach, and Annie who were one of the other free travel groups from England Term! It was all hugs and smiles for about 5 minutes in the middle of the train station, asking each other what the other was doing here and thinking how crazy it was that we would be in the same place at the same time. So excited to have randomly found each other, we planned to meet at 5:30 PM in a nearby plaza so that we could go to dinner together.
But just wait…not long after this run-in, Nelly and I went in to a nearby post office to mail postcards and were helped by two American-looking girls who were sitting on the floor putting together a package. (The Italian post office is ridiculously confusing, fyi – especially if you don’t speak Italian.) As Nelly and I were waiting in line I thought that one of the girls looked oddly familiar, but I just brushed it off – yet sure enough 5 min. later as the two girls stood up, one of them came over and said to me, “Hey, you lived in Lissner last year, right?” Shocked, I replied yes, that I thought she had looked familiar, and I thought she was from Bethel, but I hadn’t been sure. (About now my brain registered that she, Katrina, worked in the math lab when I took stats last interim. That’s where I “knew” her!) I’m so glad she came over to say hi! We found out that they were also both on Spain Term (one girl was from Bethel, and the other from Concordia); and since they were traveling with Amanda they knew about our meeting this morning. Long story short – we invited them to meet us all at the plaza at 5:30 PM.
5:30 PM England Term and Spain Term students spontaneously unite in Florence, Italy. Naturally, much fun, love, and laughter ensued over a wonderful Italian dinner and dessert. I really couldn’t have asked for a more special evening, for you have to know that I had been internally lamenting not having gone out for a Italian pasta dinner yet while we were in Florence, which was one of my goals/desires. The night before I had decided that I was simply going to go out by myself since I didn’t want to pass up the experience and regret it later. However, it seems like God heard my desire and plan, and didn’t want me to go alone. Seriously, I was about as accompanied as I could have been for my dinner in Florence on free travel. Talk about prayers being answered; God is so cool!
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