Yes to Italy Day One Recap

I’ve decided I want to write recaps regularly as I move through this month of adventure, but I don’t want to write too fussy, you know? I just want to write and not worry about being a writer or I’ll put off writing and then I’ll forget altogether.  So bear with me or skip the posts marked “recap”, K?  If I decide to try to be a good writer instead of an efficient one, I’ll let you know. 

DAY ONE: Weird Things Abound in This Great Big World of Ours

Day One of my Big Fat Italian Adventure begins in Portland, Oregon at 8:00 a.m. and ends in Schiphol, Amsterdam at 8:00 am. The first leg of this trip involves Tess & David and Josiah.  Tori is also coming – but she took a different flight that traverses a whole lot more of the globe than ours.  I ran to Starbucks while my kids woke up and got ready, and I ran into this weird little French/Vietnamese bistro in a strip mall and bought a breakfast sandwich there. Whatever you might be imagining right now about the wisdom of merging those two cultures into one sandwiches, you’d be right. It was not pleasant, but for some reason, it felt like the right way to launch a day of globetrotting.

Cliff took us to the airport which was so kind of him and snapped this photo as he drove away and it’s already one of those photos I know will always be dear to me.  (Josiah had just jumped through the big revolving door and missed the photo.)

Our flight from Portland to Amsterdam was ten hours and ten hours is a long time to be squished into a seat, hurtling through the air at unnatural rates of speed.

SEE?  Josiah came too! The in-flight entertainment selections included a documentary that I had really wanted to see and that would be really great news except I watched a full season of Real Housewives of New York instead.  It’s not culturally enriching, but it does make me really happy for my comparatively drama-free life.

We landed in Amsterdam at 11 pm our time and 8 am airport time.  Our flight to Florence is only 90 minutes so it would seem that we’re going to make it with our hope and happiness and sanity in tact, except –  plot twist! – we have a twelve-hour layover here.  And “here” is Schiphol Airport which is almost impossibly hip and cool, but we are TIRED. And CRABBY. And not the good kind of crabby, the “Why did I ever agree to this?” kind of crabby.  We wandered the airport in an aimless stupor for about an hour, searching desperately for any horizontal surface on which to rest our crabby heads, but alas, other savvy travelers had beaten us to them.  We ended up finding a little hotel in the airport that was equal parts weird and wonderful.  We got rooms there, where ‘rooms’ = ‘sleep pods”.  Tiny climate-controlled spaces comprised mostly of a bed with excellent linens, cool lighting and a see-through bathroom.  We booked our sleep experience for four hours, which was very expensive and very, very worth it.

Upon waking, we visited Starbucks yet again (before we got Euros, so one small coffee + one small tea + international transaction fee on my card = $12 American dollars.)  One thing I’ll say about Starbucks: they’ve nailed consistency. The first sip of my coffee felt like home and at that moment, while immersed in the great unknown, a little taste of home was exactly what I needed.  We next visited a little Dutch bistro where my kids had dutch babies and I had another weird little sandwich, but this one worked somehow. Now, we’re reading, recapping and waiting for our next and last flight.  In fact, this will be my last flight for a month and if I’m honest, I’m feeling…exciety.  Some mix of excitement and nerves.  Can I do this? How will everything work? Will I love this place as much as I did the first time?  So many emotions, plus a fair amount of tiredness – but I do feel ready. Ready to see what’s next, to remember that His voice is clear and real even when my circumstances aren’t.  I’m ready.

And as I sit in this airport, surrounded by all kinds of languages and accents and people, I am nearly overcome with the beauty of this big, weird world of ours.  It’s breathtaking, really, the way we flow together and apart, moving in and out of common spaces and creaky corners, hoping to catch a glimpse of beauty and life and truth.  Because really, it’s those three things.  If I have a soul-deep awareness of those three things, then I can lose everything and still have everything. Beauty. Life. Truth. You may want to add love to the list, but I suspect that love IS the list.

So, here I am 5900 miles from all that I know best, but already seeing the ways He came ahead of me to decorate the walls of this world so I’d spot ‘home’ when I saw it. His goodness has gone before me, I know it for sure.  He left His fingerprints all over the place.

Next stop, Florence.

With hope,

Bo