Just a few years in Italy.

Well, as most have assumed, the school year is over and I'm filling you in with fun things that are going on post-munchkins.

As I was going through and organizing my lesson plans and files, I found these videos from the two-year religious mission I served in northern Italy from August 2006-August 2008. A couple might interest you for the mere sake of being interesting, but others might not be funny and/or make sense, so just pass over those.

1. I found an old suit jacket in the closet of one of the apartment in which I lived. It was some type of greenish-yellowish-tanish-all-sorts-of-"ish" and it was tweed and itchy. The person who left it in the apartment is probably dead or dying by now because it was bleeding 1962. I put it on and all of the sudden felt like a 1960s missionary, so I decided to act the part. I also was making jokes about zealous missionaries from ALL religions - mine included - who automatically assume that you're a terrible person just because you're a member of another faith. This was all done on the spot while a camera was running, so it's a bit choppy at times. Enjoy the 1962 Trent Lowe.



2. In a tiny city called Merate, there is a woman who defies all logic, meaning, she's crazy. She has a long, hot-pink rat tail surrounding by really short hair that doesn't lend itself generally to females. Every time we would go there, she would shout for her son Massimo. And when I say "shout," I mean she would scream at the top of her lungs for her son, Massimo, and her other twin sons to stop playing video games and come say hi to us. I never actually saw Massimo until my last visit when he came out dressed all in black with eyeliner and a Playstation controller in his hand. He had long black hair that went over his eyes and he just mumbled that he didn't want to see us. But...before we actually met the kid, we had only heard his voice yelling back that he "didn't care about" us. We kind of imagined him being a hunchback that was allergic to sunlight and would hobble around yelling at people when he wasn't playing his Playstation or XBox.



3. The other companionship in our apartment met these two guys at the hospital in Bergamo. The guitarist is an Italian hippie who was just along for the ride. Apparently, he had an infection and was at the hospital to get it checked out. If you know anything about Italian healthcare, it's that a simple infection can take you a VEERRRRYYYY long time to fix. Socialists. The fiddler is an American kid who lives in Oregon and was, at the time, applying to world-renowned Juilliard School of Music in New York City. He goes to Europe each summer to just roam and be a street performer for money. Go Mr. Oregon.





Just a few years in Italy.