Angels are Around Angel #1

It is not easy to live abroad as a foreigner where everything is new and often surprising. It is quite of an adventure, yet terrifying and challenging at the same time. It takes a while to adjust to so many different things such as culture, habit, rules, language, weather, environment, and people. Despite of fear whenever I thought of things that might come my way, as Christian, however, I believe that God will always help me. This is the time for me to really putting my believe into practice. I keep His promise, "I will never leave you nor forsake you!" I am learning how to live fully depend on Him and I amazed every time I found He helped me in His unique ways. It's so true that He remains faithful all the time. His love never fails. Somehow this thought came across my mind "angels are around" and every time I thought of it, I smiled and whispered,"Thank You, Lord! You are awesome!" 

Introducing angel no#1 - Angelo

After more than three weeks of waiting for Italian customs to release our personal goods, after all hassles of calling and submitting extra documents. Finally our personal effects of 23 boxes arrived in our house. 

Talk Like Italians

Talk Not Fight!

It’s a hot day in Florence that day, I checked my weather online gadget and it was 40°C! I was sitting behind my desk, trying to focus myself to learn and memorize some more new Italian vocabularies which until now are so hard to get into my old rusted brain.

Suddenly I heard cars engine stopped, car doors slammed, then men’s voices talked almost yelled to each other. Caused we lived on 2^nd floor of apartment building here in Italy, I could just popped my head out from the window behind me and looked down to the road in front of our place. Curious of what’s going on, that exactly what I did. I thought in a hot day like today, in the summer time in Italy, no wonder if most Italian is very temperamental. So I thought again, here they are, screaming and fighting right in front of our house. Great!

One Day in Sienna

Sienna

It was a hot summer. Surprisingly 40C , hot and steaming.  One of our plan was to visit Sienna during our 3 days visit in Florence with Alex before we continue to Switzerland. 

We took a bus ride from Stazione Firenze S.M.N to Sienna. The trip was pleasant, despite the heat. We arrive in Sienna about an hour later. Unfortunately, the bus stop a bit outside of the city, and we were suggested to take a local bus which will bring us to the center in about 15 minutes.  Instead of taking the bus which according to the Dutch very inefficient (in term of time; because it would take the same time compared to if we would go by foot) and unreliable (since you’ve never known whether the bus would really come or not due to strike that -we heard- happened often in Italy), so we decided to walk to the center and we got there after 30 minutes walk.

The Arrival

Finally we arrived in Florence on that afternoon of August 10th, 2012, after about 4 hours trip back from our awesome holiday in Switzerland. It was a safe and fast trip, even on the swift train that connected us from Milan to Florence. 

We were so amazed of how fast the train goes…the speed was 300km/hour. Fortunately the process of getting the house keys in a café at Porta Romana was also smooth. Plus a cup of espresso for refreshment after a long trip made the whole trip a perfecto. As we walked across the giardino pubblico next to the famous giardino di Boboli to get to our house, we felt the sunlight piercing our bare skins. It was nearly 40°C in Florence. As many have told us, August 2012 is the hottest month of the summer; and it turned out that this summer 2012 is the hottest summer in Florence. So welcome to Firenze! 

The Dutch Style of Chillin' at Lago Di Idro

The sun was high when we got up our bed. It was a good night sleep, I slept like a log. I woke up from the cute voice of a little girl who camped with her parents in front of our caravan.

That was the first daytime at Lago di Idro on the north of Italy about 2 hours drive from the border. The weather was so great that day, so Jos and Alex decided to bike around the lake and I chose to stay and relax. Sitting in front of the caravan and read a novel “A World I Never Made” by James LePore. It was not a great novel, it’s kind of Dan Brown’s style of story, but yeah it’s just me, I had to finish what I have started, so I began to read it, found it not my favorite but kept on reading and aimed to finish it.