A month is hard to summarize....

Hello to everyone who still reads this.
Please forgive how sporadic these entries have been.
This last month has been wonderfully insane. I can’t really describe it actually, and I hope that I will be able to tell many of you all my adventures and memories face to face….however, just to give you a taste, let me share some highlights from each location:

Florence (take 1)
-So much fun—went with Emily and Lara and her friend Leah and explored the city with their local friends, which was a totally different perspective. Gelato was very much involved throughout this location (and all of Italy actually).

Sardinia
-AMAZING. Ok, so we (same foursome) got there and it was rainy and gross and we all got a little bit scared. But the next day it cleared up and the next few days were incredible. The water was some of the bluest and clearest I’ve ever seen, and much saltier than I expected (you could float effortlessly). One of my favorite days was when we hiked all day just along the coast, climbing over rocks and fields and who knows where else, with no clue where we were going. Good times.
-I also almost crashed a moto and got yelled at and probably insulted in Italian, but we don’t need to talk about that part.
-Also, GOT TAN. Yay! That’s gone now, but hey, it was nice while it lasted. Oh, and they’re not kidding about naked people on the beaches in Italy. A curse upon he who invented the Speedo.

Florence (take 2)
-So we were here for a total of about 8 hours, in which we said goodbye to Leah and got a few coveted hours of sleep, but hey, it was nice.

Rome
-Rome was great—definitely not what I expected but a lot of good memories came out of this city.
-Our hostel was insane. No really. I’m pretty sure the manager could have been locked up (but he was hilarious). Also there were about 40 people there. Also the three of us were the only girls in a room containing 11 people. It was interesting.
-The monuments and everything were so cool. Didn’t get to see everything because of limited time, but it was amazing to walk around and see the timeless city.
-So Lara has great connections. She had a friend who worked at one of the nicest hotels in the cities who was probably one of the nicest people ever. He was an amazing guide and also gave us a tour of the city by car: we got to see the city from the highest of the “7 hills of Rome” and also got to see the Vatican and the Coliseum at night. Awesome.

Florence (take 3)
-this is where we lost Lara (boo), but we had a great time sending her off. We actually met up with some friends we had met in Rome and did her favorite things in the city for her last day.
-Lara had to get up super early the next early, so early there seemed to be no point in her going to bed. So…being the devoted friends that we are we all stayed up the night with her. We got to watch the sunrise over the Ponte Veccio. Good memories (:

Cinque Terre
-Wonderful weirdness: Emily and I ran into my mom and Clara on the train to Cinque Terre. What are the odds? It was nice getting settled in Manarola and having our own apartment rather than a hostel.
-This place was beautiful, very small and the weather was nice. After a couple of days we moved to Vernazza, another beautiful city (there are 5)….it was fun swimming in the Mediterranean and also taking the hike between the cities.

Paris
-had a little less than a week at a condo near Paris. Honestly I didn’t go into the city too much. The condo was so nice and it was great to have a rest after so much moving around (and there was a pool). It was nice to be back in my city though—it’s weird how familiar it is (:

Switzerland
-In a way, my favorite place. We met up with Madeleine and Francois, the family my mom lived with when she was here for a summer when she was 17. These are the nicest people ever. No really. I want to be a part of this family.
-I can’t even sum up what we did here, basically we made up a list of things we wanted to do and they bent over backwards to make it happen. I will try to share some highlights of the highlights…..
drove through the alps and had an amazing picnic in the mountains, picked strawberries and learned how to make jam out of them, made bread and tarts and watched all 25 loaves be baked in a huge stone oven the family owns, went on a motorcycle ride through Suisse countryside, watched cows being milked, rode horses, explored caves, visited chateaus dating back to the 15th century, went hiking along a waterfall, ate fondu with the whole family in the alps.
-ok, so those were the biggest things, but keep in mind this does not capture the generosity, kindness, and sweet nature of this family. It was like a dream. Oh, and also I practiced French since they don’t speak English. ; D

Ok, I’m sorry for the length of this post, but a month like the one I have is hard to describe at all, much less in a few paragraphs…

So where am I now? You may ask. Well, I have just arrived in England, actually.
I left Paris this morning ( I had a day there and then my mom and Clara flew home and I caught a train). I had absolutely no idea where I was going as communication has been a bit of a struggle these last few weeks. This is a strange and uncomfortable sensation—traveling by yourself with no clue as to your destination. Prayer is a staple to this experience.
Anyway, by some miracle of God, plus a credit card and phone booth, I got a hold of my family when I arrived in London and was told to get to another station to take a train to their suburb. I was in the glorious city for about ½ an hour, where I caught my first cab—an experience which would have made me feel very independent and sophisticated had I not been carrying 80 pounds of luggage and been so windblown and travel-worn that I resembled a dandelion puff more than a sleek world traveler. Such is life.
I took the cab to the station, took a train to “Gerrard’s Cross”, and then was picked up by the family’s cleaning woman. The family was at a “pre-Wimbeldon” party, so I unpacked and got settled—I have my own room and bathroom, very cozy. The house is fairly large and beautiful.
The family arrived around dinnertime—Antony and Deborah, and then Holly (17) and Laurence (9), who is to be my main charge. They are all very sweet and I can tell I’m going to like it already. It’s so strange though to be the “foreigner”…after dinner Holly grilled me about American culture and music and, you guessed it, politics (oh dear, my least favorite subject). It’s very cool though to see how different things are from how you perceive them. There were so many American clichés that Holly had in her mind, and I’m sure I have many ideas about the British that aren’t at all right too. Haha. But we’ll see…
So here I am, in the Motherland, where they say things like “Cheers” and “Lovely” and you are immediately charmed, where they could be cussing you out and it would still sound polite because of that darn accent, where the Pound makes the weighty Euro seem downright friendly…I’m excited to see what comes next!!

I will do my best to be more faithful to write, if anyone is still reading. Miss you all!!!
--Jess