Italy Again

As I sit here in the internet cafe in Rome I am thankful for wonderful pasta, wonderful cheese, wonderful gelato and yes, wonderful cafe latte. We leave tomorrow for Florence to see Berninis and other wonderful statuary and then off to Venice for New Years Eve. Should be loads of fun. We got to Rome last Sunday and have visited all the normal sites; the coloseum, the roman forum, palantine hill, the vatican musuem (add another patch to my bag), st peters basilica, the cattacombs and the national roman musuem. Pretty average but still cool.
We spent Christmas day on the train and then in Vernazza which is a tiny, 500 people, town on the coast of italy. As a wonderful Christmas surprise we saw over a dozen cats in the little town which helped to make up for missing my Mo cat in Oregon.
The first week of our Continental Tour was spent lazily in Provence and the French Riviera. We had a condo to come back to every night and a laid back feeling pervaded the trips to Nice, Cannes, Monoco (another patch if I can find one), Marseile, Arle, Avignon, etc, etc. We found several antigue markets and I got a tea service for 12 for €35. It is gorgeous, simple white china with a gold trim and some gold flowers. Elegent and anything but busy. My dad took it home with him so I think my first use of it will be for tea at my birthday party in June. Well, gotta run now.

Grace

I just finished my first final, economics. It wasn't to bad considering it is the one I was least worried about but maybe I should have been a little more worried. I, who had been the one to correct someone that our final was Friday instead of Wednesday, was absolutely sure that the final went from 9:30-11:30. So I'm sitting in the computer lab at about 8:25, about to go do a little last minute studying when my econ teacher, Marinko, steps in to tell me that the test was actually at 8:30. Big rush of adrenaline on that one. I almost missed half of my first final and if it hadn't been for a fellow student who mentioned it to Marinko and tried to call me my score would have left much to be desired simply from lack of being able to finish it. I do not believe this was luck, I believe this was divine intervention and grace and I am very greatful for it.