Crepi il lupo!: Savona-na-na

Hellllooooo everyone!!!

Today I can officially say hello from SAVONA!!! The Internet point we're using today is a little sketchy, but it works! I can't believe I've been here for almost two weeks now! I feel like I just got here, geez! Oh, and speaking of which, I'll try to only be just a little bit hurt that in those two weeks I haven't gotten ANY letters from anyone. Yesterday was a holiday, though, so I'll try and cut you all some slack...for now. The next time I'll get mail from Milan (that was sent to the mission office) will be the 17th of May. OH! But before that, GUESS WHAT DAY THE 13th IS??? Yeah!!!! Mother's Day!!!! Sor Jones wants to use Skype, but I feel like that will just be super confusing. However, if you all can set everything up and email me about it before next Wednesday, I think it could work.

So a cool new advancement in technology that our mission has decided to venture into...we now have texting!!! We have finally entered into the 2000-teens and can text from our phone! Before we could only receive texts. The problem, of course, is that we have a little number pad keyboard so to text you have to press 2 three times to type "c" and all that. It's like a step backward and a step forward at the same time. Which made me think of my poor little neglected phone - have you turned it off yet? It has been 8 months...

Savona is so great. Except I don't know what it is about me, but I feel like the one lasting memory of my mission will be that I was always riding my bike in the rain! It doesn't ever seem to rain when we're taking the train all day, but boy does it pour when we're having to be out on our bikes! Sheesh. Yesterday was one of those days, but luckily the sun is out today. Savona is so great. The members are really great and really willing to help us with the work here - going to lessons and stuff. And they're so funny - they always want to give us food. On Sunday we ate with our ward mission leader and his family, and before we left they were like "do you want some fruit to take home??" and then gave us a grocery bag with some fruit in it. And then, the wife was like "Oh, onions! Do you want some onions???" and held up two onions. I was like "um, onions? I think we're okay" haha. It was so funny to me, but so normal to them. It's so Italian!!! One of the things that I love the most about Savona and the members here is that there really actually aren't that many members that live in Savona, but they live in the little suburb-cities around it. Basically we have to go up in the mountains in the middle of nowhere to find where these people live and it is SO beautiful. The views are amazing. It is SO ITALIAN. Like, it's exactly what you think of when you think of a little Italian town in the woods.

I gave a talk in church on Sunday about blessings. It was really short and I would've taken a picture of what I wrote so that I could send it to you, but it was in Italian. Maybe another time...

Before my time runs out, let me explain the pictures:

1. Me and Sor B with the Gallarato family my last night in Torino! I'm wearing the Swarovski necklace they gave me as a going away present...

2. Me and Sor J in front of a church we saw in Genova last week

3.Me and Sor J in front of a fountain thing we saw in Genova last week

4. Me in front of some crazy monument to Vittorio Emmanuele III in Genova

5. Me and Sor McFadden (who is in Genova with Sor Baker) in front of the same crazy monument

6. Sor J and the view from the home of one of the members here who live in Rialto

7. What I looked like yesterday afternoon when we came home after biking in the rain. Rain jacket courtesy of the member we had eaten lunch with yesterday...I know what you're thinking: I look so cute, how could anyone resist saying no to hearing our message? Yeah. Agreed.