Christmas in Venice, Italy

Bonjourno from Padova Italy, which is about a 45 minute train ride to Venice. Which by the way is so much cheaper than in France. It only cost 5 euros for a round trip. The same distance in France would be around 30 euros!

Happy New Year to Everyone! Yes I know it's been a long time since we last updated. I guess I really only have an excuse for 2 weeks out of the nearly 5 weeks that you haven't heard a peep. We were without internet for about 2 weeks and the rest we have been busy catching up in school and helping new missionary families get setttled in.Anyways, enough of the excuses! So what have we been up to? Good question. Well, to begin with, we didn't want to be alone during the holidays, so our friends Kurtis and Amy who are missionaries to Italy, invited us to spend Christmas with them at their home in Padova. They only live about 6 hours from us. We had a great time with them, and to top it all off, we got to go to Venice on a gloriously sunny day! (Pics to follow) Also, we were able to use our french with a Cameroonian and a man from Gabon who are immigrants to Italy. We met them at Kurtis and Amy's church which is an international church.

We returned home on the 27th of December and then on the 28th, we picked up a new missionary family at the train station and helped with getting them settled. They are really great people and will be heading to Mali after their language study here in Albertville. We haven't been up to too much here lately besides our daily routine of going to school and learning french.

Thanks to everyone for leaving comments. We always love to hear from you and also read your blogs too. And for you faithful xanga writers, I still think blogspot is the place to be! Well, we hope you enjoy some pics of Italy. Yes, we are soooo blessed!!!! Thanks for all your prayers and support. We only have five months to go before we finally get to Cameroon. Then the real adventures begin......

Venice ( The city of Gondolas ) 1

Are my eyes playing tricks on me or is that Hamburgler driving that gondola? No its not Hamburgler. For some reason these guys where outfits that look like they're straight out of the old McDonalds commercials. I thought they look pretty funny!

Here is my CIA or James Bond photo. They look like their in that typical European rendez-vous just about to work out some international espionage. Except Kristen looks like she's about to start praying or something...but Kurtis, he definately has the look of a 007. And the other guy, well if i told you who he was, I'd be lying.

Yes, you are looking at a canal in Venice.

If you are like me and don't know much about history, you would have thought that Venice's crest would be a gondola or cupid or something, but thanks to our good friend Kurtis I actually learned that the crest or symbol of Venice is a Lion. But I couldn't tell you why.


Europe and escpecially Vencice is always full of opportunities to take really cool photos like this one. If you click on it you might be able to see more detail. It actually turned out better than I thought.

Venice ( The city of Gondolas ) 2

Here is a nice view of the Grand Canal taken from our Gondola ride. Venice is a really nice city made of many islands. We only had enough time to see the big touristy places.

I don't think our car would have done us much good here!

Yep, that's right... That is the Ambulance... and 118 is the emergency number like 911.

Oops, we did it again, we put another mushy picture up on the blog. What do you expect, we are in the city of Love and Lions and all that stuff. Anyways, that's our Gondola guy. You can't tell from this picture but he was sporting a nice Michael Jordon jacket. He sang nice little Italien songs in between the times that he would tell us the history of Venice of which we remember approximately 1%.

Yes we actually do really have friends in Italy. This is Kurtis. He played our own personal tour guide for the whole six hours in Venice for the cost of lunch. Not a bad deal for us. Thanks Kurtis!


This is a famous bridge that Kurtis told me about. It has something to do with prisoners being exiled from the island and this would be the last the they saw before that left or died or something. Sorry Kurtis, I totally forget. It is a very interesting story though when he tells it.

Does anybody have the time? I think not. All I can say is .... Different..... but kind of interesting.


This is a nice pic of St. Marks Bascillica. It was actually pretty cool to go inside. We got in trouble by security for leaving our hats on but is was interesing for me to learn that the island is sinking. The floor was like walking on a waving ocean. The city is making efforts to rebuild the sinking parts but I say good luck.

Thes guys really freak me out. What is up with that...... it's just wierd.
Aside from these guys, Venice and Italy in general was a really nice experience for us. We got to visit friends and see a part of the world we never thought we would. I would go back if I had the opportunity.