Lucca!! Really??

Well the past couple of days have been fun. We've pretty much hung out in Prato the whole time. We met one of Charise's friends, Patrizio. He's a blast. He went with us to the Monday Market, drove us around Prato some, taught me how to play an Italian card game and just hung out. It's a lot of fun having someone that was born and grew up here tell us about what he thought about Americans, how our cultures are different and so on.
Today was quite an interesting day. We had plans to go to a beautiful little city, Lucca. So we got up (pretty late) and had french toast, got ready and headed for the train station. So as luck would have it we paid for 3 tickets, the machine spit out 2 and the power died, yep the power all over the station went out! Just like that. And here we are (3 of us) with 2 tickets. We have a sneaky suspicion that the crochety old man that works there had something to do with it. So Charise (and her phenomenal skiles figures out that we need to go to a different station, speaks to the guys there, wait for quite a few minutes, and end up with no ticket. By this time it's after 3:00p and it takes an hour and half to get to Lucca so we would only have about 3 hours of daylight. Final decision- spend another day in Prato taking pictures. So some how tomorrow some one is going to call Charise and tell her to go to some place so that hopefully we'll end up with ticket number 3. So between now and then we've taken a lot of fun pictures, ate at THE BEST bakery ever!, done some window shopping and enjoyed another beautiful day in Prato, Italy. You know, it really doesn't matter where we are, just that the 3 of us get to spend these few precious days together, making memories of a life time:)

My feet are squeky

I had my first Bacio Bacio!! You know the little kiss on the cheek (both sides) with a real Italian!! I felt official, well at least cool enough to be kissed on the cheek by a native:) Today was a good day. It started out rainy and dreary, but even that was fun. Charise and I started off for church and stopped at her favorite pastry shop for breakfast. It was yummy! While we were eating it continued to rain harder and harder so we decided to go ahead and go back home. Reese said that since the AIM team was in Rome and a rainy day, that there wouldn't be many people at church because of the bad weather. So we came home, slept for a couple of more hours and eventually made our way to Florence. Here's (in a nutshell) how the day went. Sky cleared. Best gelatto. Beautiful streets. First train ride (ever). Time with my sisters. Really funny comments from a couple of Italians. Beautiful duomo. Expensive dinner. Great bridge (the ONLY one Hitler didn't destroy during his regime). Met/made friends. Learned some Italian. Lots and lots of stares. And here I am getting ready to go to bed. If I learned Italian, I could totally see myself living here. Especially if my baby sisters here! Oh PS, Italian pizza is flat, Italian guys are crazy and Italian water is not free!
Blessings to all!
Chandee:)

Want a Kabob?

Today was a great day! We walked around the town of Prato with my amazing little sister as our tour guide. We saw beautiful churches, a castle! We went to the church she goes to and she prepared the Lord's Supper. And by preparing I mean starting from scratch, with the flour and water and then baking the bread and then tomorrow she'll finish with the wine, filling the cups and what not. We went to the grocery store which ended up being about a 25 minute walk back to the apartment with the groceries in tow. We took a break during the day and had drinks at a bar, and by bar I mean restaurant. It's funny because that's what they call 'em here, anywho we had Pepsi with lemons in it (that's normal) and then went to another little place and had Kabob's, however a Kabob here is more of a pita type thing with a ton of stuff in the middle, it was scrumptious. We came home, rested for a while and then got semi fancied up and went to a great place called Antchi Sapori. Now that was fun! Mainly it was just a blast being with Reese, but she's made a few friends around here and so she was visiting with them and having fun. Her Italian is great! And, by the way, Italians are sooo loud! It was awesome to see them interacting with each other being loud and crazy. And boy did we turn heads! Apparently, it's not often that 3 tall American girls, one with blonde hair all with blue eyes walk into an Italian restaurant:) So stares are quite normal, and it feels weird! To sum today up I would have to say: relaxing, comforting, interesting and too short! Hope all you guys are doing great!
Blessings!
Chandee:)

My sister is gorgeous!! Stepping off the plane and seeing her for the first time in a year...I was speechless. Flight was good, long, very long, but good. Let's see, here are some quick bullets of the last 48 hours:
-early morning butterflies
-aiplane
-Wendy's in Dulles
-airplane
-movie on airplane
-dinner on airplane
-sleeping on airplane
-fun group on mission trip (on airplane)
-Munich, Germany, beautiful but very fast, and lost baggage
-airplane
-Charise!!!!!!!!
-Italian breakfast (very yummy)
-beautiful scenery-green, colorful, flowers every where
-lots of walking (neat culture)
It's possible that I might choose to live here forever:) The food is great, people are fun, we stick out like sore thumbs so lots of stares. I love it here. We'll be here in Prato for the next week and then on to bigger cities. I'll keep y'all updated! Miss you guys
I'M IN ITALY!!!
Chandee:)