Love is in the Air?

Now. Women are increadibly sentimental creatures who read into just about everything.
Hmm. Let me not overgeneralize.  

I am an incredibly sentimental creature who reads into just about everything.

I am also fairly good at telling when a guy doesn't like me, but not so good at figuring out when one does.

My current frustration concerning this matter is related largely to the fact that essentially every single guy I've hosted at the hospitality house recently has liked one of my friends. (In the case of the married guy there is an exception. He liked his wife.)

I have some really cute friends, I must admit. And though I know these things are largely a matter of taste and that I have my own fair share of attractiveness, my ego was pretty badly bruised by this weekend. Out of all of these visiting people there was only one guy that I was actually interested in pursuing anything with, so really I can't be upset if the others didn't like me either. One does like a little balm for a bruised ego, though. The only balm I've got is the Balm of Gilead. One of my friends told me that Jesus loves me and will always want to marry me. So there. 

All of my premature fears of turning into an old maid can now be dismissed.I've got someone who literally died to be with me.

An upside of this weekend has definitely been connecting with a college friend studying abroad in the area, and busking for reals near the Duomo on Corso Vittorio Emanuele. One of the new people I hosted played drums, and so we went out and had a lovely time. He played my guitar case for percussion and I played my guitar and sang. Cool right?

Unfortunately there are no pictures and video that I have access to, and I never shared my info with the people I saw recording and picture taking. Perhaps one day in my old age I will stumble across a video of myself and remember. Perhaps.

Let's Go to My Place!

When I moved into the apartment where I currently live I was warned not to have raucous gatherings with ten or more people. It was all a figure of speech but all the same I give myself credit for staying below the 'ten' mark. I can't make any promises about the raucous part. I mean, I've made quite a bit of friends here and if they're anything like me quiet isn't exactly their forte.

Anyway, I've been here more or less since the beginning of October and I've had people over a few times now. The point behind this huge two bedroom apartment is to be hospitable and encourage others in their walks with God. So, being the type of person that I am, I've taken to feeding anyone who will let me, and holding various worship/prayer gatherings. We've had two such gatherings, complete with homemade pasta dishes, wine, and lots of enthusiastic singing.

You see, since this apartment is paid for all right and proper I've got the same rights as anyone. As long as I don't make too much noise past about 10PM, no one can say diddly squat. Well, no one should, at least. I sing during the day sometimes but it's not as if I'm belting all the time. On the whole I'm a quiet neighbor-especially since I run around so much that I'm hardly ever home for any real length of time anyway.

Now, this second prayer and worship meeting was incredible. I mean, incredible. I think in some deeply human way this is what we were all looking for. Every single person present was an immigrant to some degree, whether they were from southern Italy, Brazil, Albania, Columbia, or the U.S., and each one of us wanted a deeper connection with these new people we found ourselves surrounded with. A text that for some reason never made it to its recipients meant that our group this evening was intimate, and we took full advantage of that with the sharing of our testimonies. We worked around language barriers, translating where it was needed and singing songs in the languages we knew best, or felt led to sing in.
There's something special about hearing "You Won't Relent" sung in English, Spanish, Portuguese and Italian all at the same time. This is what happens when the Spirit flows in us: the divisions between us are overcome, and in our reliance on God our unity is Christ-centered and thus pleasing to God. Nothing stands against a people united, which is why I think division is such a big problem in the church. But greater is He who is in us than he is of the world! To me our differences are a cause to join together in celebration of our diversity and the things we can learn from each other.

I can certainly celebrate having a chef for a friend, and this guy's carbonara pasta was soooo much better than what me and another friend had concocted two weeks earlier. I am so full of joy! Everyone who comes into the house loves the energy there and it has been dubbed a house of restoration. Hearing this is one of my greatest joys. Already people are planning prayer nights and we are all eager to meet and worship together again.

I am looking forward to continuing to serve God wherever He calls me to, and in whatever capacity He calls me to serve in. God is good and faithful to provide!

Halloween

Being American does not automatically make me fond of Halloween. However, in my family it was something that we enjoyed. My first memory of Halloween is dressing up as a nurse. One of my foster brothers was a mummy. I don't remember what anyone else was wearing, but I remember one of my cousins had a pumpkin candy holder that I was most jealous of.

Off we went walking along, warm in our sensibly layered outfits, gazing adoringly ever so often at the adults who took precious time to bring us around for this rite of passage.

We crossed a street.

All went silent.

I noticed my mother gently coaxing my foster sister to keep moving. I had not her gift for sensing danger.

In young and eager trust we went along, and we crossed the bush-shielded walkway of a house when:

"RAAAAWWWRRRRR!!!!!"

This man jumps out in a gorilla suit and all is a blur. We take off running and screaming our little heads off, and I distinctly remember the sound of my mother's laughter. I remember looking back and my cousin with the pumpkin candy holder had stopped to pick up the pieces of candy we had all dropped running away. Opportunist, that one.

Considering this start to Halloween I should not be so upset that it is no great tradition here, and that all of my Christian friends dissuade me from doing anything to celebrate. I understand their hesitancy in joining me for any festivities. Looking at the origins of the traditions makes it clear that there is nothing Christ-centered about the holiday. All the same, I find myself hesitant to give it up. I find myself wondering what I will do with my children. Will it matter to them? It did to me. I loved the fun of wandering around in the dark, picking up free candy, and meeting new people.

So while I personally love seeing little kids dressed like pumpkins and snow peas, I can avoid the holiday for the sake of being a kind sister in Christ, instead of being a stumbling block.

In what should be no surprise, I am noticing that the closer I get to God, the further away I get from the world.

Motor Scooters

I absolutely LOVE riding on the backs of motor scooters in Italy. (Some of the delirious joy and novelty is lost if one rides on a scooter outside of an Italian context.)

Having ridden multiple times on the backs of no less than two different motor scooters in the (and again, this is important) Italian context, I consider myself to be quite the accomplished American visitor. Ever since watching that Mary-Kate and Ashley film in Italy the desire to try this for myself was planted within me. Upon arriving to Italy and realizing that this desire was shared with an American friend of mine who had gotten the privilege of this tourist rite of passage before me and assured me it was worth it, I set out to experience this for myself.

Opportunity struck when I had to meet a student for English and we decided he should pick me up at a meeting point. I was woefully unprepared for a scooter ride, but after picking up a pair of 5€ pants from a street vendor and classily putting them on in the middle of the sidewalk, I was ready to ride. He went easy on me and didn't go too fast, and my first ride on a motor scooter in Italy finally happened! This student of mine went to the same cell group as me the year before, and so ride number two was to the train station after one of our Bible studies.
Rides number three to roughly six occurred in Loano, and here I had the experience of riding with an actual Italian (my student is Brazilian). Awesome, and much more frightening. We were chugging along on high mountainous roads with no railings and once the scooter swiveled and I freaked before bursting into hysterical frightened laughter. My Italian friend promptly responded with, "What's so funny?! We almost died!"

Ride number seven was an exhilarating dash through city streets on the way to a birthday party. That ride is by far my favorite. I had gotten abandoned by one car ride and had to abandon another because we were going to different destinations, when my student pulled up on his motor scooter. Yaaaaay. All ill will against the first ride who had abandoned me flew out the window as I hopped on the back of my super-hot-holds-my-wrist-too-long-in-public student's motor scooter while artfully hiding the hole in the crotch of my jeggings. Helmet in place and jacket secured against the eventual cold, we took off.

I realized there were six of us in total whizzing along, dipping and swerving and breaking suddenly, and at one point one of the other guys drove up behind us, then beside us, and his passenger held onto the back of the scooter I was on. After praying for our safety for what must have been the tenth time, I let the speed fiend in me enjoy the ride. It was fabulous. Here are some pics of the action.

Immodest Proposal

In life, many things are asked of us...

On Facebook I recently saw a lot of buzz around an engagement. Wistfully, I looked around me and said, "I want to get proposed to." It doesn't take much work to imagine the folded arms and two-year-old pout that accompanied this statement. Well, as it turns out, dreams do come true.

Later that same day I was speaking to an Italian friend via Skype, telling him about the annoyance of the permit to stay here, and explaining that if God has called me to Italy long-term something is going to have to be done about that. He shifts a little, looks me in the eye as best as one can through Skype, and says, "Here's my idea Allegra. Why don't we get married, consummate the marriage-because it's important to consummate the marriage- and then we can go to the immigration office and fill out all the forms".

Maybe I should have been more specific in my request.

I mean, I've never had someone older than my mother propose to me for what seems like just to get into my pants. I mean, who emphasizes consummating a marriage when they propose to someone!? I don't care if it was a "joke"! My friend D. (sensitive missionary info, so I won't say her name or location here) says that every joke contains some truth. Needless to say, I did not expect my first marriage proposal to happen under quite these circumstances.

Then the next day I was hanging out with some new friends, telling them the story. One of my buddies says, "You know who you should marry? You should marry P." (just gonna go ahead and leave out names...)

Does this count as proposal number two?
Either way, it was awkward. I mean, the guy is cute and we've got a lot in common, but he doesn't like girls with short hair and I'm not putting in extensions and crap just to make my hair look longer until it grows out more. Perhaps as a protective style, if I get around to it, for the winter.

Either way, I have a list I wrote out in Prof. Hucks' class that one amazing year of college, and though I don't have the physical copy, the list stays with me in my mind. I've got lots of things I want in a partner, though of course compromise is a part of any growing and joining together.

I tend to like guys who are a little older anyway. Just not older than my mother, please.

A Sense of Adventure

One day as I was walking home from something (probably work), I went a slightly different route. As I was moving along, on impulse I asked God for a little bit of adventure. "My life feels a little boring right now", I thought. "Why not spice things up a bit?" So I asked, and I immediately started looking for what the adventure would be. When I saw the homeless woman I had made friends with a week or so ago in church, it was as if I had known all along that that's all my adventure ever could have been in this moment. I went over to talk with her and see how she was doing. The time before when I had seen her I had been rushing off to catch the metro to work and we hadn't had time to stop and chat. Now, however, I was able to stay and we talked for a bit. She told me about her struggles and her joys, and I promised to keep her in my prayers.
 I wanted to leave my number with her but I didn't have a pen! At first she didn't believe that a teacher coming home from work wouldn't have a pen (I don't blame her...) but my sincerity and generally open nature in the end convinced her. Anyone who gets to know me in any depth knows that going to work without a pen is just the sort of thing I'm capable of doing. But then, God covers us and any writing I needed to do, a pen always showed up from somewhere.

But not this time. We expect however, that the next time we run into each other I will have a pen and we will be able to exchange numbers. (Her phone wasn't working at that moment, if you're wondering why we didn't just exchange numbers using our phones.)

So, for those reading this blog, please pray for my new friend Nancy. She is a refugee of the conflict in Libya, though she is originally from Nigeria. She has refugee status and all the legal documentation that goes along with it, but she has found life in Italy to be incredibly difficult, and would really love to be able to start over in France. She left the refugee camps because of the horrible way the refugees were treated. In her own words she says, "They treated us like animals!" Please, let us ask God for a miracle for her. She needs to find work, a place to stay, an affordable way to get back in contact with her family in Nigeria, and a supportive Christian community to help her on her walk with God.

I have offended her, I think, by always offering to get her something to eat or trying to give her things. She seems to me to be a person for whom independence is important, and she struggles a lot with adjusting to living on the streets. In Libya, she says, life was good. If things continue like this for much longer increased consumption of alcohol may inhibit her from moving forward.

I believe that miracles happen around us each and every day, even in our own lives, and so often we don't even realize or thank God for them. So I thank God in advance that Nancy will be taken care of, that alcohol won't become a problem, and that God will bring her where she needs to be in the way and time she needs to get there. Amen.

The Great Divide

Anyone who has ever travelled to another country (or in some cases simply to another neighborhood...) knows that there exist cultural differences between people groups. Such a cultural divide exists, in the large overarching and oversimplified sense, between the United States of America and Italy.

I will point out the often frowned upon U.S. tendency to be overly politically correct (notice I didn't simply say "American tendency"?) by saying here that no one culture is better than another. We all have areas in which we can learn from each other and grow together. That I actually believe this is besides the point, I suppose, as we are speaking politically here.

I've had ample opportunity in my time here to speak with Italians, and there are some fun differences I've noticed or that have been pointed out to me. I list them below in no particular order for your reading pleasure.


Customer Service
In Italy the customer's rightness is not a given. Contrary to what seems like a good business model to me, the goal here is not to aid the customer's consumer habits. If you have to wait half an hour for something you were told would take five minutes, well such is life.

Waiters/Waitresses
In Italy if your server is tired they are not going to grin and bear it. Oh no. If you annoy them or are a little indecisive no one is going to put in a little effort and be gracious about it. Change got thrown at you? Be glad you got any! What can you do about it? Nothing. Your tip is already part of the bill.

Electronics
Italians have a concept of equipment preservation. When I mentioned that I never restart my ipad I was met with an immediate "You're so American." Indeed.

Food
Now this right here can be it's own blog post. Heck, it can be it's own blog. In the interest of not dragging this list on any further I'll focus on one major difference here: Breakfast.

Why is there no such thing as real breakfast?! I want pre made bad-for-me egg and cheese and meat sandwiches on the go. Instead I get chocolate, cream, and jam filled brioches and cappuccinos for breakfast. I'm sorry but sugar doesn't equal long lasting healthy energy in the same way a protein filled egg does. Even if it comes with artery clogging bacon on the side. I'm too lazy to get up early enough to make myself an omelet, and by golly I am entitled to pay a few euros to have someone else do it for me faster!

This brings up a sub point: eating on the go. Despite Milan being a fast paced and rather New York like city, they have still not taken up the indigestion inducing U.S. habit of stuffing your face in public while walking or running from one meeting to the next.

Pity. It's serving us so well...