On the road my friend

Hi. Here I am at Riva San Vitale. My feelings are mixed, to be honest. I had a pretty cool day for most of the day, but then got discouraged later on and haven’t totally recovered yet.

The plot of the day is that early Friday morning (1am Eastern time, 7am London time), we arrived in London. We got to see the sun rise on a new continent and a great adventure, as Justin said. It was beautiful. We waited around forever to hear what gate we were supposed to go to for the flight to Milan, and at long last they told us. We hustled over, and waited. Then one of our group discovered that she had lost her passport. This is no good. So she looked and people did what they could to help, but no one could find it. It was getting pretty dire and looked like we would have to leave her there by herself, and she would probably have to fly back to the States. I was praying so much that she would find it, and I know Justin was too. We had talked to the British Airways people and they were doing what they could, when the lady at the desk received a call that they had found it! It was in the terminal we had just come from, and if they could get it to her before the plane left, she could leave with us. And amazingly, they did. :) It was an awesome answer to prayer. God is so good.

Well, that was a highlight for a long time. It was a good thing, too, because I was really pooped and didn’t feel like thinking much anymore and also our plane was delayed because of “technical difficulties” and extreme fog in Milan. Anyway, two hours later, we finally left. We had a nice uneventful flight to Milan, except for seeing the Alps, which are not, as someone once said, “trivial.” They were awesome, another testimony of God’s incredible creativity and power. Justin and I took many, many pictures of the Alps and finally began to get ridiculously giddy from being so tired. After we were completely worn and laughed out, I fell asleep and we landed.

The drive from Milan to Riva San Vitale was not what I expected. I guess I think of Italy as a rich country full of beauty and rich people and green hills. I forgot that it has winter and never thought of it as having as many old, sad, dilapidated deserted buildings as we saw on the way up. But I did like all the happy little wrought iron porches with pretty plants and laundry hanging out, and all the pretty bell/clock towers, which were everywhere. Most of the buildings we saw were yellow. We finally got to Riva, and the mountains were magnificent. It’s amazing, how high and straight up a mountain can rise out of the ground. I mean, really. Looking out our door, your eye thinks at first it’s seeing clouds, when it’s really just seeing light patches on the mountain, and there’s no sky in sight.

I did have fun this evening, in some ways, but it was actually really stressful because we have several problems to work through with trying to get our electronics to work. We planned pretty well, but still didn’t understand exactly how converters and adaptors and different things work together. That was extremely frustrating and annoying because so much that we tried to plan for didn’t work the way we expected, and it was for things we were counting on, like our laptops. We have kind of gotten them to work since, but it felt like such a waste to have lugged it across the ocean and through all the airports when it looked like we shouldn’t have even tried. *sigh* I’m not sure what I really “learned” today, except maybe to persevere. Things are usually not the way you picture, and sometimes it’s hard.

Well, anyway, it has been a pretty good day nonetheless. I don’t think any of it was wasted, though it has been stressful. Tomorrow I hope to stroll around Riva a bit and get a little more comfortable with where I am. Goodnight, all.

posted by LizC @ 1/14/2005 11:16:00 PM