Joyeux Noel!

Merry Christmas everyone!
We hope you all had a great Christmas.  Because it is hot like summer here all the time, Christmas sort of snuck up on us this year.  We didn't let the eternal summer stop us from celebrating though!  Tim found a five-foot-tall fake Christmas tree, a bag of ornaments, and a string of lights in our storage shed which must have been put there by previous volunteers.  After a little assembly and arranging, the tree was looking good, but the ornaments were showing their age (and dust!) and needed a facelift.  We re-covered the ornaments in bits of colored and patterned fabrics and then created some more ornaments of our own with things we found around the house.   Our tree was our only decoration for Christmas, but we were very happy with the way it looked. Even with the weather feeling nothing like we are used to for Christmas, the palm trees, the red earth, and most of the area around us not really being decorated for Christmas, a decorated Christmas tree just has a special way of making you feel a lot more like it is Christmas all on its own.
For all of us, Christmas has always been a holiday that is very family-focused.  None of us have ever spent an entire Christmas season apart from our families before, so we wanted to try to celebrate in a similar way as we do at home.  In that spirit, we invited two families and one of our friends from the hospital who was on his own for Christmas to join us for a Christmas Eve dinner that was very similar to our Thanksgiving dinner (turkey, mashed potatoes and gravy, green beans, corn cakes, mixed veggies, and Leah's "sweet potato" casserole). We ate in the dining room with music playing and our Christmas tree lit,  creating a wonderful holiday atmosphere.  Ream and Leah made cookies as gifts for everyone.  Before each person left, they received a bag of cookies tied with a gold ribbon and a handmade card.
Christmas day, we had been invited to eat lunch with the sisters. Their dining room was decorated with large bows made of ribbon, brightly patterned table cloths, our Christmas card placed at the top of their tree, and every plate on the table had cookies and candy.  They served roasted goat, mixed veggies, and fufu (a local food made from large roots called ignams - pronounced in-yam - and served with many different sauces), and, as always, fresh fruit.  Like all the celebratory meals before, they also provided sodas, beer, and wine.  After lunch they served ice cream and cake, both of which are a bit of a rare treat here.  When everyone was finished eating, we helped wash the dishes and clean the dining room, and the sisters sent us home with candy, cookies, and a present for each of us (we must have been good this year; it wasn't coal!).
The rest  of the afternoon was very relaxed as we all spent time lounging, reading, writing blog posts, and Skype-ing with family.  That evening we went to Michele and Salyne's house for dinner.  Salyne prepared a couple of Togolese dishes and even taught us how to make them.  One was fufu, which we already knew how to make, but the sauce was peanut-based and we had never tried it before.  Since we all really liked it, we will try to make that one ourselves. The other dish was made from rice flour and mixed with curry and a few other spices and had a texture similar to polenta.  It was really very good, and has been one of our favorite Togolese dishes so far.  The tomato sauce that went along with the rice-polenta-dish was made with sauteed onions and peppers and a little bit of chicken, and it was also quite delectable.  After we had all toasted, eaten, drank, and were thoroughly full and happy,  Michele and Ream went to make  bananas flambe for dessert.  The bananas were very ripe and soft, so it turned out to be a little soupy, but the flavor was  excellent.  Next time, we will try to use greener bananas and maybe a little bit less butter.  After dinner and dessert were through, we sat, played cards, chatted, and generally just enjoyed each others' company for a little while before heading home for a very welcome night of sleep.
In many ways, Christmas here was nothing like what we are used to seeing and doing for Christmas at home.  However, in the most important ways, it was exactly the same.  We were fortunate to have the opportunity to celebrate this most important of holidays with people that we care about.  It was bittersweet, seeing as we were all away from family and friends, but being able to celebrate here with newfound friends was a joyous blessing in and of itself!

La Laboratoire...and Leah's other experiences working in Togo

Nothing about working in the lab at the dispensary is anything like the work I was doing at UGA.  The only knowledge I had that was useful in the beginning was my basic bench top skills.  This started out a a big challenge, but I am having a lot of fun learning new things.  Although the guys in the lab all speak at least a bit of English, the language barrier is still there when it comes to technical terminology.  When I first arrived, I was very surprised by the level of technology in this third world village.  The dispensary was started and funded by Italians so most of the lab equipment is Italian.  Just another thing to add to the language barrier.  On the bright side, I'm learning A LOT of French and Italian!
All of our work in the lab is body fluid analysis.  It is mostly blood work, but we do tests on urine and other things as well.  In regards to blood, we do basic counts and levels, but also we do blood typing, tests for HIV/AIDS, typhoid, malaria, and Hep A, B, and C.   I learned how to do blood draws on patients.  Most of the adults are pretty easy.  I have only drawn blood on one child, and he was 10 years old.  Watching the children scream, cry, and flail when we are trying to draw blood breaks my heart and is not confidence inspiring.  I still don't feel comfortable drawing blood on children yet.
We also do bacterial and yeast cultures in the lab.  I haven't done much with that since most of my responsibility is in the blood area.  We do fecal tests looking for worms and other parasites under the microscope.  Pregnancy tests are a daily occurrence.  One of the difficult parts for me is doing a pregnancy test and HIV test at the same time for some of these women.  Some of the girls are young and already have one or more children.  I've had pregnancy and HIV tests come back positive together.  It always puts a damper on the rest of my day.  Positive HIV tests are always a heavy emotional hit for me.  Even though I see it every day, I know it will always be difficult for me to the positive test results, especially for the babies and children.
I am reminded every day how different things are in the medical field here.  Almost NOTHING is sterile and it makes me cringe sometimes.  The only sterility is found in the surgical area.  Needles, syringes, and others things that come in processed packaging are fine but when the medical personnel don't use them properly it becomes a mute point.  Taking a needle out of a patient, placing it on the hospital bed (which is a thick plastic mat, no sheet, and not usually cleaned between patients) and then picking the needle up and using it again is not exactly clean.  Blood typing is also a little sketchy. We have reagents in the lab to do blood group testing, and although I've never seen it done in a first world setting, I can imagine it's a bit different.  The sketchiest part though is when they are about to do a transfusion.  They take a little of the patients blood and mix it in a small plastic tray with a little bit of blood from the transfusion bag.  If it doesn't agglutinate they start the transfusion.  Yikes!
One of the biggest challenges for all three of us working in this type of hospital setting is their lack of urgency.  We have been told many times that this isn't America and we need to learn that these people don't feel the urgency of some situations like we do.  These people don't really understand urgency because everything in life here is so slow.  It is difficult for us to see a patient who needs urgent care and they sit and wait or we just don't have the ability to care for them.  Patients who are beyond our medical capabilities must be told to go to Tokoin, the big hospital in Lome.  But most of them don't have transportation and can't afford the medical care, let alone the moto-taxi fee to get there.  So most of them just go home when we've done all we can do.  The reason these things are so difficult for us is because we always have that sense of urgency in certain situations...it's hard not to.  But we keep hearing from the dispensary staff, you can't come into a world you don't understand and try to change things so they fit your ideas of the way things "should be."  Even after months of being here we are still adjusting to that.
Sometimes I glad that I work in the lab and don't have as much direct contact with patients.  But sometimes when I'm running blood work on a patient in a critical situation, especially children, it's hard to not go look around to put a face to the name.  I have also been helping with the malnutrition program that we offer every Friday morning.  This is a free program, and we work with malnourished children over 6 months of age.  Every Friday we take the child's temperature, weight, and length/height.  We have a calculation system to determine their percentile and depending on their severity we give them a follow up appointment for further evaluation.  We distribute enriched flour and sometimes milk and supplements depending on the status of the child.  The most severely malnourished children must come every Friday, but when they start getting healthier we can have them come every two or three weeks.  Some children don't return, and you assume the worst.  Most of the time the other mothers can give us information about that child.  Sometimes it's only that the mother didn't have the money for transportation to the dispensary that day, but occasionally it's that the child passed away.  That is always heartbreaking.  When a child reaches 100% of weight to height ratio we release them from the program.  This has happened many times, and it is so satisfying to think you played a roll in helping these children become healthy.  We have become very fond of one of the little girls from the program, Marie, and her mother, Christine.  Marie is at 100% and has been released from the program, but Christine still comes by our house to visit and we are so grateful for her friendship.
Back to the lab for a couple of interesting stories.
Blood group testing...
About a month ago I was doing blood group testing and I noticed a strange pattern.  I had 5 patients, and they were all A+.  To run 5 tests and not get an O is a little odd, but also having no B's or AB's made me wonder if our anti-B reagent was working properly.   So I mentioned something to our chief of the lab and he was also concerned.  We tested one of our lab techs who is AB+ and the anti-B reagent worked fine.  Just a crazy coincidence that all 5 of my samples were A+.  But in any case, I received a huge pat on the back from the chief for my observation of a potentially hazardous situation.
Lab equipment hiccup...
Monday our machine that runs blood samples (it calculates basic levels of blood components) started giving VERY inaccurate readings.  This is the only machine we have to do these readings.  It's very important since we use it every day, and doctors need results to make a diagnosis and treat their patients.  Our chief called the technician who usually does maintenance, and he was not available until next week.  Not good enough, so other technicians were called, the director of the dispensary was notified, and more frantic phone calls were made.  In the meantime, doctors were coming in asking for test results we couldn't give them and patients were waiting for doctors to treat them.  While we were waiting for someone to come to our aid, we did everything we could to try to get it working again.  We kept flushing all the internal tubing but the readings were still bad.  Our chief finally decided to open it up and look at the inside for himself.  After 30 minutes of looking at all the components (he doesn't know what most of them are) he found a large red ant stuck in one of the tubes.  That's it...just an ant. This is so funny for us because the joke around here is that you can NEVER escape the ants.  They effect a lot of the way you do things around here.  In the kitchen you must store food in a certain way, and cook in a certain way.  You set a pan down and 3 seconds later there are ants in it.  We don't have a dryer, only a clothes line, and the ants love to crawl on drying clothes.  There are so many different species of ants here, and they are EVERYWHERE!  They range from the almost invisible and harmless to the inch-long, aggressive, attacking, and biting.  The fact that our little ant friend was the big red aggressive one made it that much more thrilling when we found the cause of the machinery hiccup.  All that stress over an ant.  When we first arrived, I said that these ants were big enough to kill someone.  Well, I didn't realize in what way that would actually happen until the incident in the lab today.  In the end, we were able to remove the ant and get the machine running smoothly again.  

Hello again! We're still alive!

Hi all,
Time is flying!  Halloween and Thanksgiving passed so quickly and Christmas is rapidly approaching.  We are in a perpetual state of summer here, so it's hard to believe it's December.  We haven't posted anything in a long while, so we'll try to tell you about the important things.  Let's start with Halloween...
Adam told us his mom really loves to decorate for Halloween and that he was sad that he wouldn't be able to see his housewith all the decorations this year .  So, Ream and Leah made signs and banners and put them up to surprise him.  He was so happy and surprised when he came down in the morning and the kitchen and dining room looked like Halloween!  We also wanted to carve Jack-o-lanterns, but there aren't any pumpkins here in Togo.  However,  we did find something that looks like small round watermelons growing near the garden and thought that they might work.  Turns out, they worked just fine for carving but they taste so terrible!  They may have been oddly green, but we had Jack-o-lanterns for Halloween.  Leah even made popcorn that we tossed with cinnamon and sugar to help make it feel more like Halloween.  In the end, it may not have been just like at home, but it was really enjoyable for all of us to celebrate together.  Halloween isn't celebrated here, so people looked at us a little bit strangely when they saw our green watermelon-o-lanterns.  We attempted to explain the whole concept of Halloween and how and why it is celebrated the way it is at home, but we don't think anyone really understood much past the fact that it's a tradition for us.  It must be one of those things you have to experience to understand! And now, gli Italiani...
Two Italian surgeons, Antonio and Gabriele, arrived the first week of November.  Also, for two weeks in November, a couple from Italy, Paulo and Eva, came to teach Italian at the school.  At first, we weren't sure what it would be like to have four more people living with us, but it has turned out to be so wonderful, like having a big family!  As for our surgeon friends, Antonio is in his 70's and Gabriele is 36, and both are general surgeons.  Antonio has been coming here for one month at a time twice yearly for the last 3 years to perform surgeries for the people here.    Most of the surgeries done here are for hernias, but occasionally they will remove tumors and perform other soft tissue procedures.  All the surgeries for this year are finished and Antonio has just returned to Italy, but Gabriele has decided to stay here until the end of January to perform minor procedures that can be done with only local anesthesia.  We are very excited he is staying!  When Eva and Paulo were here,  Ream and Leah were happy to have another girl in the house, and the guys had Paulo to help them do manly things like causing mischief (ed. note: no actual "mischief" or any other trouble has been shown to have been caused.  Any mention of said mischief is solely conjecture and hearsay.  Comments or inquiries can be directed to the proper authorities.  Thank you for your time and understanding).  Thanks to Paulo's amazing cooking skills, we now know how to make gnocchi from scratch.  It has been so nice having other people living with us and sharing this experience, even if it is only temporary.  Now, on toThanksgiving...
Because it's not a holiday here and we all had to work, we decided to postpone Thanksgiving  until the following Sunday, and then because we hadn't had a chance to go shopping for the foods we needed, we postponed it again until December 1st.  When we had finally made all of the necessary preparations, we invited all of our Togolese friends and began to do the actual cooking.  We had turkey, mashed potatoes, macaroni and cheese, green bean casserole, gravy, dressing  (AKA stuffing), mixed vegetables, and "sweet potato" souffle.  Since there are no actual sweet potatoes here, we thought we would have to go without (alas, also there are no cranberries, so we didn't have the traditional cranberry relish).  However, on one of our trips to the big open market, we found a large squash that, while we had no idea what it would actually taste like, we thought we'd buy one of and just give it a try.  As it turns out, it tastes a lot like acorn or butternut squash and it made a beautiful substitute for sweet potatoes!  It was hard for all of us to be away from our families on what, for each of us, is usually a very family-centered day, but it was really fulfilling and joyous to be able to spend it with friends we have made here.  Also, we all had a chance to talk to our families on the telephone, so that made it a little easier as well.  Onwards with this narrative, toDecember...
December has been already and will continue to be a month of celebrations for our little family.  Besides the big one (Christmas), Leah's second annual 29th birthday was the 14th, Gabriele's 36th birthday was the 15th, and Ream's 24th birthday is the 31st. Of course there is also New Year's, but we'll be celebrating for Ream already.   There is not much in the way of entertainment here, at least not the types we have become accustomed to at home, but we seem to find great ways to celebrate special occassions nonetheless.  Sometimes "entertainment" can also equatae to distraction from the true reason for celebration.  The most important part of celebrating any of these holidays is to spend quality time with people that we love.  As such, we have celebrated each holiday quite well!
We are taking pictures all the time and hope to be able to post some.  Our Christmas present  to everyone, such as it is, will hopefuly be multiple blog posts (with pictures?!?) over the next few weeks.  For now, enjoy some photos that Gabriele (and also Tim) has taken over the last month.

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/nz6voi8iyu9aqzg/FQKCZ2bK9U

Look forward to posts about:
Leah's work at the dispensary
Our gardening project
Beer in Togo
Cooking and eating local food
The roof/lounge/thingamajigger of our house
Funny quotes from Africa
People we have met
And of course, photos (we hope)

As always, we love and miss you all, and your support and encouragement has been and still is so important to all of us.  Thank you for making it possible for us to be here!  God bless you all.

-Tim and Leah

This post is actually being made by Tim's parents, Joe and Diane.  We talked to Tim and Leah today, and they asked us to let everyone know that they have had no internet access for the last few weeks since they have to connect through a prepaid cell phone, and it is difficult to get to the phone store in Lome to purchase additional minutes.  They are both doing well and working hard.  They will try to make a post soon.

Food, Weddings, Work: Life in Togo So Far

We finally have a little free time to write a significant blog post.  Leah doesn’t like to use the computer from 1998 (really, it doesn’t even have a USB port), but it’s our only way to connect to the internet, and we are grateful for that.  There is so much to tell you all about our little village and the adventures we’ve been having. 

 The volunteer house is starting to feel a little more like home every day.  The four of us cook and clean together and get along well.  School hasn’t started yet so Adam,  who is here to teach English, comes and helps with odd jobs around the dispensary.  We work every day excluding Sunday, and Saturday is only a half day of work.  The dispensary is right around the corner and only a 3 minute walk from our house, and it’s very interesting.  There is a walk-in clinic, laboratory, pharmacy, two multi-person hospitalization rooms (mostly used for patients who require IV treatments), and a surgical suite which only operates (pun intended) when surgeons come from Italy to give their time.  Patients who require follow up and observation  must go home for the night and come back the following day, since there are no facilities to keep patients overnight.  The dispensary is not a 24 hour hospital.  Also, surgeries are only done twice a year, October and April.  There is a hospital in Lomé called Tokoin but most of the people here cannot afford it.  We occasionally have to refer patients there if we cannot treat them here. 

We live in an area where all the roads are dirt.  You don’t hit pavement until you get closer to Lomé.  Our compound is on the main road so there is a decent amount of traffic, and with that comes dust.  But it’s rained twice since we’ve been here so that helps keep the dust down.  The local language is called Ewe (pronounced Eh-vay).  It’s word for white person is “Yovo”, and we hear it all the time.  Having any skin color other than black makes you Yovo; even the Filipina sister here is considered Yovo.  The children chant at us as we walk by, “Yovo, Yovo, Bonjour!”  Some of the children are a little skittish but others run up and hold your hand and walk with you. 

Quite often, people automatically assume we are wealthy simply because we are white.  Each of the four of us gets a monthly allowance from the money that you all generously donated before we left.  Our total allowance for the year comes out to less than $1400 each.  It is still a very strange thought that we can live for an entire year on that small an amount of money, but we have successfully been doing so thus far.  Our housing and utilities are provided by the sisters, but we pay for all of our other expenses out of that money.  We buy what groceries we can in bulk (i.e. 50 kg bag of rice), and everything else, we try to eat and shop like the locals do.  We don’t eat meat very often, and we eat a lot of fruits, starches, and vegetables.  We include as much food that grows here in the compound as we can.  Everything about how we live now is radically different than at home, and it’s good for us.  You definitely learn to appreciate things more when you have a very finite amount of resources and you have to work for everything.  In spite of all that I just related, we are actually still better off than many of the people here.  A normal monthly salary here is a little bit less than what we have.  It is definitely a major perspective shift to be here.

There is a lady on the corner who sells coconuts every day.  They pick the coconuts when they are very green, so they don’t have much meat to them but they are full of milk and SO GOOD!  The sisters have a ton of fruit trees on the premises:  coconut, mango, papaya, grapefruit, orange, passion fruit, banana, mandarin, avocado, and some fresh garden veggies in the sisters’ garden.  We eat lunch with the sisters every Sunday and Sr. Agnes, Mother Superior, eats dinner with us every Wednesday.  There is a farmers market every 5 days so we try to buy our food from the local people instead of going to the supermarche (supermarket).  Some things you just can’t get at the farmers market.  Dairy products are very rare.  Anyone familiar with camping milk?  That’s the closest think to milk we can find here.  But it has been so fun eating the local food and coming up with new ways to cook it. 

We went to the US Embassy and registered with them this week.  That should set some parents at ease J.   Oh, and we were invited to a wedding!  Weddings in Togo consist of three ceremonies:  engagement ceremony, civil ceremony, and church ceremony.  Last Saturday we were invited to a traditional engagement ceremony.  It is usually a private event for the family but in attendance at this one were extended family, friends, and coworkers.  Everyone at the dispensary was invited, and since we have never seen the traditional events surrounding a wedding, we were invited too.  Tomorrow is the civil ceremony, which is like a wedding at the court house.  Next Saturday is the church ceremony.  We’ve been told that church ceremonies are very extravagant for those who can afford it.  There is a lot of food and music after every ceremony.  We had so much fun at the engagement ceremony (we were treated like family) that we can’t wait for the other two.    

Well it’s about dinner time and we need to cook something.  Hope everyone is well. 

Love and miss you all,

The Yovos

Bonjour and Hello from Togo!

Bonjour and hello from Togo!  Sorry it has been so long since we posted, but things have been very very busy!  We arrived in Togo on September 6, and we have been getting settled in, meeting people, and working very hard ever since.  Internet here is not the speediest around, and we connect through cellular telephone, so we have to pay every time we connect.  Just wanted to let you all know we are here safely, we are meeting people and working hard at the dispensary!  Leah has settled right in in the lab doing blood tests and various other laboratory work, and Tim has been hard at work categorizing, sorting, and organizing all the medications and equipment in the pharmacy.  Hopefully we will be able to make a longer post later, but for now, Internet time is running out, so we will sign off.  We miss you all and thank you for your continued prayer and support!
Love,
Leah and Tim

Mini-Vacation to Firenze and Cinque Terre (with loads of pictures!)

Hello everyone!  We have been incommunicado these last few days, in large part because we were out and about travelling.  Wednesday (15 August) is a national holiday here in Italy for the Feast of the Assumption.  As such, this was the vacation time for the volunteers.  We had the weekend and the first half of the week off, so we decided to do some travelling.  A great big huge grazie mille to Mel and Peter's generosity  in sending us to Firenze (Florence) and Cinque Terre.  Both were beautiful and wonderful experiences that we could not have done without their help and support.

After going to the doctor Friday morning (no worries, Leah is ok, it was just a precautionary thing!), we got on a train after lunch to go to Firenze.  We were lucky to be able to have time off at the same time as Maureen and Stu (very good friends from back home who are now in Germany), so we got to meet up with them in Florence Friday afternoon.  It was really nice to spend some time with friends from home, and we got to see some amazing things in Firenze, as well as eat some really superb food (thanks Mel and Annie for the recommendations!).  If any of you ever visit Florence, make sure to stop by a gelateria called Vivoli.  They have the best gelato we have had in Italy, and some very interesting flavors, like sesamo nero (roasted black sesame seed), ricotta e ficche (ricotta and fig, with whole figs!), and even gorgonzola!  Florence is so full of history, art, and culture that you could spend months there and not see it all.  We did really enjoy the sights we were able to see, but we hope to be able to visit it again sometime and see some of what we missed.  Some of the highlights were the Duomo, sunset from Piazzale Michelangelo (a piazza up on a hill across the river from the main city with a breathtaking view), and all the sights and sounds of the crowded markets near the city center.  We met up with Ream (one of the volunteers who will be going to Togo with us) on Sunday.  We stayed in Florence until Monday afternooon, during which time we probably walked 20 miles all around the city.  We said goodbye to Maureen and Stu Monday morning, as they had to be back in Germany for work on Tuesday morning.

Leaving Firenze, we (Leah, Ream, and Tim) got on a train to head to Cinque Terre (literally: Five Lands), which is a national park here in Italy as well as a UNESCO heritage site.  It is a superbly beautiful area with rugged, mountainous terrain right on the seaside (of the Mediterranean) where there are five different villages (Riomaggiore, Manarola, Corniglia, Vernazza, and Monterosso, from south to north) nestled amongst the hills.  There are footpaths in between each town, and you can start at either end and hike to them all.  We started at Riomaggiore and hiked all the way through to Vernazza on Tuesday.  We originally planned to hike all five in one day, but we went to lunch at a restaurant in Vernazza called Il Pirata delle Cinque Terre (The Pirate of the Five Lands).  Il Pirata is owned and operated by two Sicilian twins (Gianluca and Massimo), and their food is amazing.  They are also very friendly and full of good humor.  If you ever find yourself in Cinque Terre, stop by; it's worth the trip up the hill.  After lunch, which took nearly two hours (Italians dine at a different pace than Americans), we needed a little siesta.  We stayed in Vernazza for the rest of the day and had a swim in the sea and jumped off of a small cliff (25 feet or so).  It was a very relaxing way to end the day before we took the train and bus back to our hotel.  We took the train straight to the fifth town the next morning (Monterosso), and then after seeing the sights there, we went back to Vernazza for lunch at Il Pirata once more.  Gianluca was pleased to see us again and even gave us a small bottle of prosecco to take home with us.  We went for a swim again and then got back on the train and came back to Rome.  Cinque Terre has been our favorite experience of Italy so far.  It is just so beautiful, the food was excellent (we ate all kinds of seafood, mussels, squid, octopus, anchovies, tuna, salmon, lots of which was all mixed into a single seafood salad), and all of the people we interacted with were friendly and funny.  We took quite a lot of pictures, and I will post a few of them here, but pictures don't do it justice.  If you ever have the chance, go visit.

We are back in Rome now, continuing our lessons with the sisters.  We were sorry to leave Cinque Terre and Firenze, but it's good to get back to preparing for our mission.  Sorry for the two week absence on the blog here, but internet was very spotty along the way.  Stay tuned for further updates!

The view out of our hotel window in Firenze.

A statue of Perseus having removed Medusa's head on display outside the Uffizi.

Looking down the side of the church (Cattedrale di Santa Maria del Fiore or Cathedral of St. Mary of the Flower) from the door where you enter to climb the Duomo.

 The front of the church.

Looking back at the Duomo from the campanile (belltower).

The Duomo through a grated window during the climb up the torre (tower) of the Palazzo Vecchio (Old Palace), Florence's longstanding center of local government which now contains a museum full of Medici influence and history.

 The Duomo from the top of the Palazzo Vecchio tower.  It's framed in by the rock forming the battlements on the top of the tower.

Leah at the top of the tower with the Duomo in the background.

The center of the ceiling in the Salone dei Cinquecento (Hall of the 500), which was the place where the ruling body of the Republic of Firenze met.  The man in the center is Cosimo I, the Medici who was in charge at the time.  He had the ceiling raised and put himself right in the center.

The ceiling and wall of one of the rooms in the Museo Palazzo Vecchio.  Not fancy, ornate, or ridiculous at all.

 Niccolo Machiavelli, just chillin' over in a side hall in the Museo.

The frescoes on the inside of the Duomo.  Unlike most big, beautiful churches in Italy, most of the ceiling on the inside of this one is bare.  Only the inside of the dome itself is really decorated.

The little marina at the bottom of the first of the five villages, Riomaggiore.

Looking up the hill from the marina at Riomaggiore.

Sunset through a pine tree shot from the balcony of the little hotel we stayed at, Due Gemelli (Doo-ay Jim-ell-ee, Two Twins).

The night sky from our hotel balcony.  Sorry for the washed out/fuzzy aspect, I didn't have a tripod or a proper lens hood.  Still, you can see how clear the sky was, and how little light pollution there was. You can see in the middle on the right where there is a satellite tracking down through the picture.

The gate at the beginning of the trail from Riomaggiore to the rest of the towns.  The trail is called the Via delle Amore (the way of love).  You see people put padlocks with their names on them all over tourist attractions throughout Europe as a way to commemorate their love.

The Via delle Amore just beyond the gate, headed towards the second village (Manarola).

Looking back up the path towards Riomaggiore.

Tim and Leah sitting on the bench with the silhouette of the kissing lovers, sort of an icon for the Cinque Terre trails.

A small fence along part of the trail where you can really see how popular the padlock thing is.

The pathway leading out of Manarola.  You can see all the terraced vineyards up in the sunlight on the hill.

In the three preceding pictures, you can see the grapes and olives that grow all over the place in the hills all around Cinque Terre.

The three preceding pictures are all looking back down the trail at Riomaggiore from high up on the mountain.

Looking down at Corniglia as we are hiking towards it.

Looking down at a boat in the water on the hike towards Corniglia.  The water was beautiful.  Blue-green and just that clear as far as you could see.

Looking down the hill at Vernazza, the fourth town.  Vernazza was our favorite of the five.  Very picturesque (although aren't they all), great food, nice places to swim, delicious gelato, what's not to love?

This is the frutta di mare (literally: fruit of the sea) appetizer that the three of us split at lunch at Il Pirata.  Yes, all that fish is raw, and yes, those are anchovies.  Also, it was delicious.

Leah and Ream happily celebrating after jumping off of the small cliff in Vernazza.

Looking across the water from Vernazza to Monterosso with some boats in the foreground.  Cinque Terre is a big vacation/tourist spot, but as you can see in most of the pictures, since it is a national park, it has not been overdeveloped.

Our last view of Riomaggiore before taking the train back to Rome.

First Week in Rome

We have been in Rome for a week now, and we've been so busy!  We've only made a couple of small posts, and those were mostly just to show you all some pictures.  We've got a bit of free time right now, so we thought we'd go ahead and make a longer post to let you all know what we are doing and how we are getting on here.

First off, we live in a house here on the Canossian sisters' campus.  There is a total of 6 volunteers here, including us (Marie, Michael, Adam, Ream are the others), all of which are American but one, who is Irish.  It's like having roommates all over again!  We cook, eat, grocery shop, pray, learn, clean, explore Rome, and generally have a good time together.  It is definitely challenging to share space and resources with a houseful of people again after we have gotten used to living on our own.  At least we have our own bedroom though!  

We usually get up in the mornings at 7 or 7:30 and have breakfast at 8, followed, of course, by kitchen clean-up.  We have lessons in the morning, usually with one of the sisters or a priest.  These lessons are often historical ones about figures involved in the earlier days of the Canossian order.  We have also seen some slideshows from past volunteers about their experiences in Africa.  We have a schedule set up for who cooks on what day, so one of us will cook lunch every day after morning lessons. After we eat lunch together and clean up, we usually have a couple hours before our afternoon French lesson.  This time is perfect for completing our French homework from the day before.  French lessons are about an hour and a half long, and our Filipino teacher, Digna (or Diggy, as everyone calls her), speaks only in French during lessons.  As you might imagine, it is pretty challenging to learn French while being surrounded by a whole city full of people chattering in Italian!

We do have some other events that are regularly scheduled each week.  Monday evenings, we go to help out at the local diocesan charities, which usually involves helping with their soup kitchen, but we also sometimes help out with the tasks necessary to run their dormitories, where people can get a bed to sleep in and a place to shower and wash their clothes.  We go to mass at a church here in Rome (San Luigi dei Francesi) for French Mass on Wednesdays.  Trying to follow the mass in French is always interesting, especially when the priest speaks rather quickly.  The Mass parts are easy enough to follow, but we get thoroughly lost rather quickly when it comes to the homily!  We also go to the sisters' convent every Saturday for lunch, which is wonderful.  They have a spunky little Italian woman named Rosa who cooks for them, and she is fantastic in the kitchen.    We then have the rest of Saturday and all of Sunday free to use as we see fit.  Life is very busy and definitely challenging, but we are enjoying the experience so far.

We have some more pictures for you all so you can see where we are staying.

These two pictures are of the outside of the volunteer house that we all stay in.  It has two floors, and all the bedrooms are on the top floor.  There is a porch on the roof, which is where I took the picture of St. Peter's at night.

This is the front door of our house.  The house itself is very old, as the whole campus here used to be a villa, which was willed to the sisters by the baroness who owned it. All of the doors are very short, less than 6 feet tall, and all of the windows are old wooden frames that swing open.

 This is the porch on the roof of our house.  There is usually a nice breeze and always a nice view!  We dry our clothes up there, since there is no dryer in the house.  We do have a temperamental washing machine that sort of works when it wants to.

 Looking up towards the sisters' house from our balcony.  You can see the convent building to the right of the walkway.

The Pantheon, which was originally a temple for the old Roman gods, but is now a Catholic church.

 Looking up at the oculus in the center of the roof from the inside of the Pantheon.

 The Trevi Fountain.  There are always so many people there, and most of them throw coins in.  We've been told the fountain makes 3,000 euro every day! You can see where they are doing restoration work on the left side of the photo.

 Leah in front of the Trevi Fountain.

 Looking up the Spanish Steps.

 The view back down from the top of the Spanish Steps.

Looking back towards St. Peter's (in the distance on the right in the photo) from the top of the Spanish Steps.

The Villa Doria Pamphili is the park across the road from our campus.  They have an outdoor theater there, and there was an orchestra with a vocalist on Saturday night. We sat in the grass off to the side and enjoyed a free show!