Flooding, Knives, and Cave Bears

Hi Mom! Hi Dad!

Cool that the volleyball games went well. I'm glad to hear that Teresa got a good finish to the season.
(answering questions first):

UDINE WEATHER. It's not too cold.  We get lower temperatures in the mornings and evenings, like during the fall in Massachusetts, but nothing too bad.  Anziano Anderson, being from Arizona, says it's pretty cold but it's not all that bad.

Here are some leaf pictures. They haven't changed yet, but there was a HUGE storm last night that took down a few trees and left some orange leaves on the ground.

Anziano Gibbons, apartment-mate unlocking bikes

 Also a picture of Anziano Gibbons (in my apartment) unlocking the bikes.

Fun stuff: in Trieste, which is a coastal city, there were recent storms and flooding (nothing like in Genoa though).  It completely flooded the substreet for pedestrians under the road near the bus station.  I'm not sure if I mentioned that, but here's a picture.

Take the pedestrian substreet...or NOT?!

I haven't eaten any homemade pasta.  There's lots of pasta at the store, many types, but I haven't made or eaten it from scratch.

BAPTISMS in OUR AREA.  I don't know about any baptisms in the next few weeks. We had one a week or two ago, nothing upcoming.

A highlight at baptisms is when we can get investigators there and then they can feel the Spirit at baptism. Also food.

WEEKLY GOALS.  Each week, I pick something to work on from the Christlike Attributes section of Preach My Gospel.  And for studies, I'm re-reading the Book of Mormon, and reading Jesus the Christ, and highlighting and underlining and bookmarking pages that have good insight. My old seminary scriptures are getting a lot more use now!

Triest

APARTMENT COOKING. Oh, and we actually have a mixer at the apartment. I had to buy a cake pan, and will have to buy a pie tin, and muffin tin, but I can pick up all of that here. I bet some apartments have blenders and some don't.

So I made cinnamon rolls this week, and they came out smallish.  But still good, so everyone was happy.

David gains popularity among his apartment-mates

MISTAKEN IDENTITY. A lot of people say I look English. They see Anziano Anderson, who is "proprio Americano" ("their American"), and then they see me and I've been called English 6-7 times, Irish once and Mexican once. (Side note: David does, actually, have English and Irish roots...Mexi
can? not so much...)

knife ad translation: "The Best Knives in the Tour"

KNIVES. Today we went to Moniago, a city which is known for its knives.  It has some pretty cool knife shops. Unfortunately, we ended up there after 12:30. And everything in Italy shuts down from 12-3 as everyone takes their lunch and afternoon nap before heading back to work.  So that was silly, and I didn't end up getting anything.  How very disappointing.  Still, it was a nice day and I'm in Italy, so it can't be all that bad.

CAVES. Last week we went to caves in Trieste, the "Grotta Gigante" which has the biggest main chamber in the world open to the public.  This is part of a staircase in it.  Is it going up or down??  (It's taken from the top looking down.)  But it was pretty cool; it's the sort of activity we do as a family.  Also we listened to the tour guide in Italian and I still picked up the most part of it.  Which was a nice feeling.

Cave photos are all pretty similar, so I'll spare you most of them.

Also a picture of my friend the Cave Bear.  Or what's left of him,

Cave Bear

Endless Stair

I'll leave you with a picture of the Endless Stair.  It's not very clear, so maybe you'd be better off Googling it.

Love you!
Anziano Whitesell