"...how can a man then understand his own way?"

The night that Alex, Madison and I got to Italy (a day later than everyone else) we left the SACI welcome party early (it had been a rough day) and went around the corner for gelato. While we were standing there looking over the flavors and trying to decipher all the Italian, these three girls from New Jersey walked in and started talking to us. The six of us ended up sitting together at a little table in the back, and Kim, Kristen, and Jeanne have been our buds ever since. Tonight, on our last night in Italy, we went back to that gelato place and had our final gelato for the semester! I think that of everything, I will miss them most.

Other things I will miss:
1. MUKKI. Mukki yogurt, Mukki Smuthies (strawberry is the best), Mukki milk, saying the word, “Mukki.”
2. Bueno bars…among other chocolate bars that are way better than anything you get in America.
3. My apartment. This place is old, but it is so great. I will particularly miss my bedroom window. It’s a great window.
4. Cappuccinos. You knew that was coming.
5. Running by the Arno. Doing anything by the Arno.
6. Walking to class (every day I walk by the Uffizi, Palazzo Vecchio, the Duomo, and San Lorenzo basilica…that’s incredible)
7. Quiet time. I’ve never had so much time to myself. God has been very patient with me.
8. My roommates. It hasn’t been perfect, but it’s weird to think about not living in this place with these people anymore.
9. Conad. Conad is our go-to grocery store and I will truly miss how inexpensive and wonderful it is. The produce is great. The pastries are great. The checkout people yelling, “Prego avanti, prego avanti!” are great. Walking across the Ponte Vecchio to get there is great. Yes, Conad, you will be missed.
10. SACI. It’s been a great place to learn, even though HPU will always be home.

As it turned out, I do pretty well on my own. I can actually cook pretty well (and love it now) and am dreading going back to a meal plan. When I’ve had unexpected problems, I’ve figured them out. When I got sick for a couple weeks in February, I ate a lot of oranges, drank a lot of tea, rested, and got over it. I carried that huge suitcase up three very long flights of stairs and I will carry it back down tomorrow (and then a mile to the train station!). I learned to be smart when I’m walking home from school late at night and I learned that I’m tougher than I seem. I learned to help myself.

Over Easter weekend, my normal group of friends went to the Amalfi Coast for a final weekend away together. We climbed Mt. Vesuvius, walked through the ancient streets of Pompeii, took a boat tour around Capri, hung around Sorento, and sat by the beach at Positano. I’ve been thinking…we’ve done some pretty amazing things.

It’s really hard to sum up this semester. I’ve been to so many different places (and countries) and experienced so many different people and cultures that I’m not even sure what to say about the whole thing. A lot of what I have learned here has been really personal and even sacred, perhaps so much that I can’t really explain it in such a public context. It has certainly not all been wonderful, but I don’t think it’s possible for me to go four months straight without some sort of breakdown (that might be a little embarrassing). It has, however, been an incredible experience, to say the least. Above all, I have learned (and am still learning) how astoundingly deep and wide my God is. He is huge. He is so much bigger than me.

“For since the beginning of the world
Men have not heard nor perceived by the ear,
Nor has the eye seen any God besides You,
Who acts for the one who waits for Him.”
Isaiah 64:4

"You make beautiful things out of us"

[Life] Lessons from a Batik student:

1. Patience is key. Rushing through the waxing process can end in spills…spills on silk can’t be removed until you’re finished and ready to iron ALL the wax off. This means that spills leave permanent marks. Scars, if you will. When you get ahead of yourself, you mess up and you have to find ways to integrate those mistakes into the design. It’s hard, but not impossible.

“I wait for the LORD, my soul doth wait, and in his word do I hope.”
Psalm 130:5

2. Cracks are a good thing. I don’t know how much you know about the Batik process, but, basically you:
a. Pin the silk and stretch it onto a frame.
b. Wax the silk you don’t want changed by the dye.
c. Remove your silk from frame and dip in dye.
d. Repeat, repeat, repeat until you've dipped all the colors of your design.
During this [long and sometimes tedious] process, the wax begins to crack from all the movement, allowing some dye to get through in some places. As it turns out, these cracks are part of what makes batik so distinct and beautiful.

“There’s a crack (or cracks) in everyone, that’s how the light of God gets in.” – Elizabeth Gilbert

3. There’s no way to know how things will turn out… No matter how much you plan and no matter how careful you are, the dying process is no sure thing. Some colors attach quickly to the silk (like today, when to my horror my silk came out a blindingly florescent yellow that I wasn’t expecting), others take a long time to soak in and do so unevenly (like when I tried to dye the background navy and it came out kind of two-tone). This is also very true of the Shibori dyeing techniques we’ve working on. At a certain point, you have no control over the outcome.

“Man's going are of the LORD; how can a man then understand his own way?” Proverbs 20:24

4. …but it almost always turns out to be beautiful. Even after accidental spills, cracks, and the uncertainties of the dyeing process, all of my batiks have proven themselves in the end. No matter how much I mess up, something beautiful happens. You can’t really screw everything up completely. Something comes from every step, even a stumbling one.

“For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, says the Lord, thoughts of peace and not of evil, to give you a future and a hope.” Jeremiah 29:11

[attempting to have as much faith in my own life as I do in my batiks…]

"You make beautiful things,
You make beautiful things out of the dust.
You make beautiful things,
You make beautiful things out of us."
Gungor