No worries

Hello!

Delta pretty much did nothing to help us (he can't even take the return flight). But, my very clever mother found Joel a flight to Rome on AirBerlin for not too bad considering it was less than 24 hours before the flight. The people at the school were kind enough to pick me up at the airport Friday without Joel, take me to the apartment, and pick me up to meet Joel at the train station the next morning after he took a 10 hour train from Rome.

Now we're both here, have eaten lots of tasty food, been inside a fortress, relaxed, slept, etc etc etc.

Yay!

P.S. Since Delta wouldn't let Joel take the return flight either, Joel's flying back on the same flight with me! Yay!

Please pray

Joel missed his flight. He was supposed to arrive at Port Authority three hours before his flight was to leave and then take a shuttle (they leave Port Aurthority every twenty minutes) to JFK. Two problems, there are apparently two buses(?) that leave Ithaca at 12:40 on the way to NY, one arriving at 5:55 PM and the other at 6:46 PM. I'm not sure how that works (didn't read that until ten minutes ago), but suffice it to say we were assuming he would get there at 6. He didn't. Then the shuttle took an hour and a half to get to the airport so he arrived about half an hour before his international flight was supposed to leave. They made the last call for boarders before he was even close to half-way through the baggage check-in line.

He was flying into Pisa and the flying RyanAir to Lamezia and then a train to Catania...

We don't know yet when Delta can get him where. I arrive in Catania Friday around noon. I really would like him to be there already...or at least very soon afterwards...

Please pray with us for the trip and the complications and for God's glory to be evident.

Summer plans

Some of you might be wondering what we'll be up to this summer. Or not... But, if you read on you'll find out anyway.

From May 21st or so, to June 20th more or less, Joel and I will be in Catania, Sicily. Joel will be taking courses of some sort at a school there.

The dates are a bit ambiguous because Joel will be leaving a day before I do and leaving a day later (we bought his tickets before mine). He leaves the 20th and gets there on the 21st whereas I leave the 21st and get there the 22nd. I leave June 19th and he leaves on the 20th. A bit confusing, but it should work out. Funny thing, even though we bought my tickets over a month later than buying his, they were almost $500 cheaper!

Before we leave we have to pack up our apartment. Our current lease ends at the end of May and our new lease, at a new place, starts in August. A kind family from church is letting us use their basement to store all of our stuff in the interim. I took over the first load of boxes today! Mostly books but also some Christmas stuff and our tents. Since Joel still has papers to write...I'll be doing most of the packing. It was good to get started.

So, we'll pack up our stuff and put it in the basement excepting a couple of bags that will hopefully have all we'll need for the next two months. Then, off to Italy! While we're there Joel will study and I will...well, I'm not sure, exactly, but I will. :-) I'll spend at least some of the time teaching myself to knit socks. Also I'm sure we'll spend some time on the beach, maybe go on a couple of day trips to Syracuse or Palermo or Etna, cook a good deal, and hopefully have quite a nice time. We'll have our own apartment the whole time we're there, so that will be good. We're hoping to locate a church in the vicinity as we will be there for four Sundays. If you know of any...please inform us.

When we return from Italy we will wander on to Chicago to hang out with my sister and her husband. Here we come, Windy City! While there we will also go to the Ford Center/Oriental Theatre to watch Fiddler on the Roof (with Topol himself playing Tevye!). I'm really excited about that. :-)

From Chicago we will come to Oklahoma (at some point in the last few days of June). We plan on hanging out with people that we really miss, seeing babies, attending a wedding, eating at the Greek House, and other various and sundry activities.

Eventually we will leave Oklahoma and hopefully head next to Mississippi to see my brother, sister-in-law, nephew, and niece (the last of whom we have yet to meet!). We might even all go camping while we're there!

Then on to Vermont to see Joel's family and to help with a bridal shower for my brother-in-law's intended. :-)

At the end of all of this (early August) we hope to find ourselves back in Ithaca so as to move into our new apartment, settle back in, see people we will have missed, maybe plant some flowers, and get ready for the new semester. Wow...I'm tired just thinking about all of it!

What are your summer plans?

Shearing season

Earlier this year Joel and I realized that our pesto stash wouldn't last us until summer. So, we decided to take action.

We worked on two different levels. We bought a bag of hydroponically grown basil from Wegmans (roots included), a packet of basil seeds (Genovese, of course), and a bag of soil. We took cuttings from the grown plants and planted them, along with the stalks that the cutting left behind. We also started some seeds.

This (see below) is what happened.


Yay!

We decided it was pesto time. You will see the aftermath in the follwing photos:

May they triumph through this difficult season and rise again, with more leaves than they had before!

Mmm. Who can complain when they have a pile of basil this high?

The end result. Yummy!