Although Siena is an often skipped city by tourists, it is a beautiful place filled with tradition and cultural pride. We arrived a week before the famous
Palio, a famous horse race in the city. After learning more about the event I added it to my bucket list! You probably should too.
We were blessed to spend time with Layne and some new friends as we went on a fun adventure through Tuscany to a few quaint towns and sites where the film Life is Beautiful was filmed.
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| *another couch we spent time on* |
jaims
mama! this will be another quick one bc i don't want to use too much time on lanes computer in case she needs it but.....
slovenija was wonderful! it was such a neat experience to walk those streets again with cam i nthe city we served four months together in, to show her parents around and take them around to the members' homes and to church in celje. i jsut kept wishing that you guys were there too and i could be showing you everything adn telling you about everything. it wasnt' nearly enough time though, only one weeek and it rushed by so fast. but i loved being there so much. it was a beautiful, hard, emotional, visit and being there with cam meant a lot. it was wonderful to see the people we served with and their progress, and the missionaries there who we taught in the mtc doing so so well, and to sit in the same branch that i spent 8 months in with those beautiful members. it was so hard bc i wanted to badly for just a momment to be there again, to be on my mission again and it was hard to know that I will never be there the way i was in that exact same experience as it was on my mission, i kind of had to let that feeling wash over me, feel it, let it hurt a bit, and then let it go and accept it and move on, and that was a bit of a hard moment but i think a necessary one. aaaaah the mission, so many feelings about it!
we're in italy right now, we spent two days in london visiting rosie and one o fthose days in cambridge visiting another friend whose studying there. he showed us around the colleges and we went punting on the river adn i even punted...awesome! it was crazy to go from india to london...rupees to pounds..ouch! luckilywe didn't have to pay for hardly anything there. the strets were so quiet without hte sound of cinsistent horns, and they were so clean with no poop or piles of garbage everywhere..really weird transition! we had to stop ourselves a couple of time from taking and hoarding toilet paper and napkins whenever we got a chance to, ha!
we're in sienna itly now, spent yesterday in florence, saw the david which was really really amazing! (understatement!) and are nnow visiting a friend here from school whose doing our field study. I felt super sick all day yesterday like i was going ot throw up, had those nasaty egg like burps, supe rconsipated, and after drinking two of those teas i finally pooped a bit hise monring and am already feeling a tad better.
i can't beleive we're going to be home in less than a week! crazy!
love you so much mom and love hearing from you, dont worry about rome, we'll get something figured out, or will just pay for a hostel or soemthing, thank so much for trying though!!! i can'twait to see you and give you a huge hug nad talk to you till 2, 3, 4 in the morning! I can't neva get enough of you! :)
cam says hello and she loves you! her parents were awesome, really great to get to know, you'd love them, her mom reminded me a lot of you, and it made me miss oy even more!
love jaimo
one mo
Hey guys! update from the last couple of weeks:
we went to london from delhi, got to visit and stay with my friend that i met in ghana in 2006 and who i visited a few times while living in france which was wonderful, so great to see those friends again from really neat experiences who you don't really know if you'll ever see again. then we went to cambridge for one day to visit another friend of ours doing a semester there, he showed us around a couple of the colleges there, and since our timing has been impecable with everything and the Lord is just blessing us far beyond what we deserve, he was showing a couple professors around a bit who are in charge of the honors program of which he is a part, and he was taking them punting on the river and he said we're more than welcome to come along if not too many other byu students show up, so we went and since only one other girl came who just so happens to have recently received her mission call TO SLOVENIJA we got to go punting with them and i got to do it too, almost fell off the back of the boat when another knocked into us, but managed to stay dry that day. it was pretty fun seeing as how to get a tour of the colleges and go punting could amount up to about 10 pounds, and we got it all for free! awesome. we also got some fish and chips there - seeing as how cam had never had them IN HER LIFE we had to.
it was a bit of a shock to go from india to london...rupees to pounds (ouch), poop and garbage covered streets to clean streets and recycling, horns and constantly breathing Co2 to quiet streets and semi clean air, being looked at and called after all the time to being just another invisible person among the crowds, and trading stray dogs and cows for pigeons. i think the biggest shock was the lack of noise outside - even being surrounded by people and on busy streets, it still seemed so so quiet. it was weird.
slovenija was slovenija. beautiful as ever in every direction. green rolling hills, farmland and gardens everywhere, basically the shire, just as i'd remembered it, still no less stunning than th first time you see it. seeing the members there that i served with, and hte missionaries that i taught in the mtc, and walking around the streets of maribor that i walked for 8 months andthe streets of celje that i walked for the other 8 months of my mission with cam, my first companion, brought on a whole range of memories and emotions, with tears shed for a number of different reasons. when we were at a members house in maribor cami and i sang a couple of the hymns in slovene and i just lost it. don't sing too well anyway but man when you get those tears a goin there's so hope for carrying a tune :) when we'd finished singing the sweet old member commented on me crying stating that they were tears of joy, i didn't have the heart to tell her that in actuality the tears came from remembering how hard this city was and how there were many tears shed here out of frustration and lack of understanding and sadness. singing those songs in that apt. brought all those feelings and memories back and it was a bit hard. there were tears of joy shed too, and tears from realizing that i would never be here again as a missionary experiencing the same things i did then in that same way, and deciding that that's okay and that i am extremely grateful for the time that i did have there. it was a very neat week. I loved going to church in celje and loved one of the talks that was given. here's a couple things that I learned that I found really valuable from predsednik stampe's talk. he was referencing 1 nefi 17 when nefi is building the ship and his brothers mock him. two things stood out to me most about what he said:
1. nefi didn't know what kind of ship the Lord watned him to build and what kinds of obstacles the ship would have to be built to stand up against it: rough waters, winds, distance, storms, etc. however, the Lord knew, and so he relied on the Lord to show him step by step, how to build this ship bc the Lord knew what kind of a ship it needed to be in order to withstand the things it would have to go up against and so it is also with us. The Lord knows what trials we are going to face in life, and the other experiences we will have and if we count on Him and counsel with Him daily to recieve step by step isntruction on how to build ourselves, He will show us what we need to do in order to make ourselves ready to withstand the rough winds, waves, long distances etc. in our lives.
2. think of nefi's ship and compare it with that of the arc that noah built. think of the differences and why those differences existed. noah's was verijetno much larger, made primarily to float and to carry 2 of every kind of animal. Nefi's ship was different bc it was to serve a different purpose. it doesnt' mean one was better than the other. we should never compare ourselves to others because we are each building different "ships" that are meant to serve different purposes that are known to the Lord, and we should never question that purpose but rather trust it. so if you look to your neighbor and see that their ship is bigger than yours is, don't sweat it, their's is probably meant to carry a large load and float while your's perhaps is built to fight battles, or for speed. you never know for what reasons the Lord is blessing you with certain experiences to make you the way you are. i thought that was a pretty neat lesson, one i needed to learn.
oh! and i was with cam the whole time and her parents who came to visit her mission bc they are also picking up their son from his mission in Latvia and we went to this tiny village of about 30 some people called Hinje to visit a relative of camis family (her grandfather's cousin) and we stayed one night with them. it was so neat and one of the most beautiful places i'd ever seen, it was like pardise - farmland, sheep, bee boxes, green hills topped with little old churches, old simple people, it was great. they had a picnic for us the night we got in and apparently the word "picnic" in slovene means five different kinds of barbecued meat consisting of hot dog wieners, steak, pork slabs, chicken shishkebabs, sausages, and i'm sure there was goat or rabbit thrown in there somewhere too, grilled slabs of cheese, and a few tomatoes and peppers. i ate a bit of chicken so as not to offend, and lots of tomatoes and peppers :) they were delightful people, so kind and generous, just warm hearts. my favorite part was seeing the excitement of camis parents, especially her father, as he met his relatives for the first time ever that he knew existed but just didn't know where and explored the place and the house that his grandparents had lived in. so so neat.
now i'm here in sienna italy with a case of nasea, no appetite for the last 3 days, and rancid burps and farts....i think i'll be taking a little souvenier home from india with me that has stowed itself away in my intestines...do you inform customs about parasites? :) we spent a day in florence, saw the david, both donatello's and michelangelo's, michelangelo's was really really outstanding....kind of like the taj mahal, one of those wow i can't take my eyes off of it and can't stop looking back at it as i walk away type of things. it was an outstanding sight to see and it blows my mind how much talent just one person can have in his two hands.. it's amazing to me what we are/can be capable of if we discover the gifts that the Lord has blessed us with and desires that we put effort towards maximizing. When we identify those gifts and focus on developing them with the purpose of using them first to do good, to serve others and help build up the kingdom here on the earth wherever we may be, we are able to accomplish things we know we would never be able to do on our own and the Lord always qualifies us for the task at hand. so neat!
we've come to sienna to visit a friend here doing her field study. she is wonderful and has taken such great care of us. she's an angel really. we had a picnic in tuscany yesterday with a guy, a member of the church here named simone, about our age, so surreal. he drove us around tuscano and in spite of me wanting to throw up the whole time i couldn;t help keep the "wows" and "oh man that is beautifuls" from escaping my lips every two minutes as we drove past hill after hill of grape vines and the most massive sunflower fields i've ever seen. sunflowers still hold the number one position as my most favorite flower. cam and lane went back to florence for the day and night and after walking around the last two days feeling like i'm going to throw up and wanting only to lay down but not being able to lay on the only patch of grass that can be found in the city and being forced to relocate to a hard wooden bench stationed in the hot hot sun, i opted to stay here in her apt. - so lame, so boring, and such a big part of me is screaming "Jaimie are you absolutely mental???? YOU ARE IN ITALY!!! suck it up at go out and see things, explore, it's just a few more days and who cares if you puke!" but man i feel tired and sick, and i hate that, i hate being slowed down by something completely out of my control, bah! so i've got all day here, hence the excessively thorough and detail ridden email ha! hopefully i'll feel a bit better though by the time we go to pisa and rome.
love you all so much and hope you are all happy and healthy and smiling and laughing a lot!
so much love,
jaimie!
