La nostra prima bellissima giornata a Roma

Pancakes! Fiammetta asked me what my favorite pancakes were, and I told her the ones with Nutella on top. : ) I love it.

 

These are my two new friends! Wolfgang and Demetra! We had such a good time playing and they both helped me become more Italian. We loved being with this family and it was so nice to be able to stay with them.

I love getting to know Mission Presidents and their wives. They make you want to become better. President Kelly and Sister Kelly were so cool. Sister Kelly made us lunch which was delicious and we were able to talk about the  mission, missionaries and girls. We failed at the girl talk (I know what you are thinking dad….”See I’m not the only one that thinks you two are losers!”)  but they were patient with us. Visiting them made me remember how amazing my mission parents were and I can’t wait to reunite with them.

I love President and Sister Kelly. It’s great because I at least have some idea of how incredibly busy they are, but when you’re with them you can’t feel that at all. It was just like me and Anziano Garvin had gone over to do something and then Sorella Kelly offered us lunch. Sorella Kelly is so funny! Too bad we couldn’t just stay in the mission home for a night or two. Of course they made the joke that they would love to have two more missionaries in the mission like us, and I was ready to throw on my white shirt and tie.

The Valentines!!! Sister Valentine made us banana bread and cookies! It was great. You know that feeling when you;re a little kid and you hug your mom or dad and they’re just way bigger than you? That’s how I feel every time I hug Anziano Valentine. So great.

The Coliseum was so impressive. I wasn’t quite expecting how cool it would be. I love sports and I love stadiums. I don’t like people killing each other or animals (but I do want to go to a bull fight) but besides that it’s pretty radical

I’ve come to the realization that most people who haven’t been to the colosseum don’t really know how big it is. I think it’s because everyone takes pictures where you can see the whole thing (like we did). Anyway, if you look at the little people in the far background you can get a better scale of how big the colosseum is. I think they should start it back up again, but just have kickboxing or something.

Warning! Staircase without handrail! At first it seemed funny, then I realized it’s just dangerous.

When people say it would take you two months to really see all of Rome, they mean stuff like this. I’ve never even heard of this church, but it was really cool. You can see all the really big stuff in Rome in a couple days if you’re fast, but then there are random sites all over that are great.

COOOOOOOOOOOOOOOL!!!!!!!

The Pantheon is an architectural wonder. Even today it would be nearly impossible to build an open top dome using the same materials. (At least that’s what the sign said).

 

Pillars are sweeeeeeeeeeet!

So….legend has it that if you throw a coin over your shoulder into the fountain, you will be back to visit. So in other words, I need to make plans to get back here. The fountain makes a ton of money throughout the year. I think it was something like 600,000 Euro. So my new business plan is to build a fountain in St. George and say the same thing. Toss a quarter and you will surely be back to toss another!

That’s assuming that everyone will want to go back to St. George! hahaha.

 

I’ve done this a number of times now, and it’s worked every time. : )

The Spanish Stairs. I love Spanish. I love stairs.

 

This was a couple that we met at FHE. They were great. Apparently they know Penny Huang really well (a friend of mine from BYUH). I told them that she told me to do culture night, and I wanted to but ended up being too busy. They were pretty disappointed in me. haha. They were a way fun couple and we felt a good spirit that night. We also watched a cool video about seeing things with many perspectives, and it was actually using photography as the example. Basically, I learned that I need to take better photos, so hopefully you’ll start seeing that in the blog.

The guy said something about taking a photo and it just looked like something you could find on a postcard. I was thinknig to myself, that’s what I always have as my goal when I take cool photos. hahaha. He works for National Geographic (the guy in the video).

 

So here we were with Dima watching the Spain vs Croatia and Italy vs Ireland games. They were such good games but I just couldn’t take watching the Italy game on a such a small screen. This game was all or nothing. If Italy tied for lost they would have been out of the EuroCup. I had to get it bigger……

 

So I whipped out the Ipad! Italy won! It was a way intense game.