As I mentioned before at this point of the trip jaims was pretty ill with giardia and so we decided to see and experience all of Rome in one day. So we threw on our running shoes, packed a skirt for the vatican and took off running.
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| *Same photo as before just different lighting- both taken by jaims and I like each of them for different reasons* |
We saw everything we wanted to see and ate everything we wanted to eat and then spent the next day on Lake Gandolfo. We rented a paddle boat and spent the last day of our around the world trip on clear blue water as we talked about the future, the cute boy at home who I wanted to marry, and another boy that Jaims wanted to marry but whom she hadn't yet met. We talked about life after college, and who we want to become. Rome is an amazing city with beautiful buildings, great food and remarkable history, but none of that was as amazing as the hours spent with my best friend in the middle of the lake dreaming about the future and enjoying those precious hours together before our lives went back to busy schedules, boys, school and reality. Thank you for being my best friend Jaims. I look forward to the days when we get to travel together again. Hopefully sooner than later.
last letter written from this adventure *sigh*
Hey everyone! Thank you so much for your prayers and for putting my name in the temple. What an amazing blessing it is to have such a loving and involved family. you guys are wonderful! So the rest of Italy was wonderful! I kept praying that God would just take away the sick feeling I had so that I could enjoy the rest of the trip but then I realized that the principles that apply to praying to be better are the same principles that apply to praying for anything, once you get off your knees, you've got to do everything in your power to make it happen, and I wasn't slowing down enough and giving my body the rest it needed to heal. So I decided that day to stay in all day, and I slept a lot, emailed a lot, almost read an entire book, and you know what? the next day I felt better, not great, still not much of an appetite, but much better. So we went to church in Sienna to a branch which usually consists of about 5-7 people not including missionaries and BYU students doing their studies abroad, but this day the chapel was full! at least 30 people were there that day bc there was a general authority from France traveling with his family who happened to be the brother in law of one of the women in the ward I attended in Lille when I was living there nannying, and guess what?! they were there too! It was so neat to walk in and see her and her husband and their kids who were practically unrecognizable. So so neat. I got to talk to her a bit about the other ward members and her other family members that were also in the ward at that time. her family was such a huge blessing to me when I was there and they took such good care of me. so neat to see them
We went to Pisa that day - very very neat - laughed about all the people doing the generic pose of pushing against the leaning tower - took a bit of a nap on the grass - and went back to sienna for the night. We left for Rome early Monday morning, got in around 1:00, found a cheap bed and breakfast place near the Colosseum and walked around Rome for the next 8 hours seeing everything we could possibly think of. My favorite was Michelangelo's David and also the Rape of the Sabine Women. Really amazing sculptures with so so much detail, I mean the imprints of the fingers on her leg and then the veins in David's arms and hands - you forget that he was carving it from hard marble. SO COOL!!! We were pretty beat when we got back home and slept pretty well that night and woke up pretty sore from walking so much....oh this body isn't what it once was :)
Tuesday = Vatican! Went to St. Peter's Basilica and wow it is beautiful. My favourite was finally getting to see Michelangelo's Pieta. I just loved the emotion - the motherly love and the grief that he was able to show on the sculpture. Also went to the Vatican museum after standing in a massive line for about an hour and a half that was surprisingly not all that boring. The Sistine chapel and School of Athens was really really neat to see - i just can't get over the amount of talent that one person can posses.
So I'm home now! and I brought back a few little stowaways in my small intestine, little sneakers. Was feeling pretty okay when I got home, still no appetite though and feeling pretty tired, and thanks to my mom's encouragement I went in to the health clinic to make sure all was okay. I had to go to the lab and talk to the cute lab tech about stool samples and my inability to produce one on the spot (does that ever really even work? i mean do people actually do that? honestly) So I took my little container into the bathroom, attempted, failed, walked back out dejected, and when I walked back into the lab and the lab tech greeted me with a hopeful face and asked "Success?" with a thumbs up I felt for a brief moment that I was back on the trip with Cami - I had answered "no" to her asking me that question so many times before ha! So the next day I brought a sample in and turns out that it came back positive for giardia - great news! I'm grateful that's what it was so it can just be taken care of with a prescription. I'm already feeling quite a bit better!
It's pretty good to be back with full access to all the water my body can possibly handle, make my own food, and get my clothes out of a drawer instead of a bag. There is something about having a home base to come back to that is really nice, and I just think utah is beautiful. Love you guys so much and count you as a very significant blessing in my life. Looking at my life it's really a neat thing to see how much the Lord has blessed my life with good people. I've just been surrounded by them always and have just been so well taken care of. What a neat thing.
Take good care and hope you all are healthy and happy! Love hearing about how everyone is doing and miss you all a lot!
much love,
jaim
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