Tuesday, March 13, 2007

EUROPE: Day 3 (Florence, Italy)

So we got to the airport when we needed to, but once again, complications slowed us down. Thanks to the weight charge difference, we ended up having to deal with a difficult situation that I can't really talk about right now. Long story short, we ended up getting on our plane...barely...but we weren't the last people on. After running through a fairly crowded Frankfurt airport and cutting in front of some nice German people, we got through a slow security station and ran to the bus that was waiting for us. Problem was that there was no driver. I guess that's a good thing because another group or two of people got on the bus after we did. The bus took us to a pretty small plane, along with several other people, including a basketball team.

We got to Florence where we met our first promoter, Robbie Shakelford (head of the HUF program) and went to the Harding University, Florence (HUF) villa. We spent some time meeting people associated with HUF and then we went to our housing site which was the Florence Bible School located a few minutes from the HUF villa. After we got our stuff put away, Robbie took us to the Piazzale Michelangelo which overlooks Florence. What a breath-taking view! We could see the majority of the city from there. We got to visit a nearby church and listen to the monks do vespers (Gregorian Chant - very soothing, especially when you haven't slept much in the previous couple of days). We capped that portion of the day with some wonderfully tasty gellato (YUM!).

Next, we returned to the school so we could clean up and change for our first European performance. We went back to the HUF villa and sang for the 40 college students and probably 25-30 other local folk (and a couple of American parents). We sang off mics and it was a super-fun 45 minute concert. We had a great time hanging out with the Harding students and eating and fellowshipping with them.

We finally got to go to bed and sleep for a full 6 hours or so (wish it could've been longer, but that's the life of musicianaries).

Keep the prayers going up!

Peace, Love, and Chocolate

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