#s 8-10 surprising things about me

O.K. maybe I can come up with the last three from the previous post..

8. I have never had a Big Mac (Robbie thinks this is so odd for some reason!?)

9. (This one is long, sorry- I'm going to put paragraphs in): I believe I saw my guardian angel personified several times.

Once, at World Youth Day in Denver one other girl and I were the only ones who opted to go on this day long trek/pilgrimage to get to the place where everyone would be camping out and hearing the Holy Father speak. It was much further and hotter than we thought and we didn't have water and there was a whole throng of people. On top of that I lost my I.D. tag which you need for everything! Out of nowhere, this Mexican guy appeared and had us talking, laughing, singing, procured bottles of water for us, and found me an I.D. tag laying on the ground. He got us all the way there and through the gates and then we arranged to meet up with him later in his section. Later when we did go to that section he was nowhere to be found again! That guy was why I decided to call my guardian angel Miguel, after him.

The other times was when I was on my semester in Rome, it was the last possible weekend to travel and I still really wanted to go see where my Grandparents were from in Italy. But because it was also exam weekend (exams on that Monday) no one was willing to go with me. I opted to travel on my own through to Southern Italy, and it seemed I had several guardian angels along the way. Though Naples was a very scary city when the train stopped there for a pit stop (there was a woman going around outside the train stop wearing no pants who had her period) there were two brothers in my train car named MARIO and LUIGI of all things! They were completely ignorant of the fact that there was an American video game with two Italian brothers of those names! They had me laughing hyterically with the whole train car of people the whole time so I wasn;'t just sitting there nervous and quiet.

I was on trains all day into the night and soon the whole train was cleared out and I was alone in the semi dark. A train conductor guy came through and asked what I was doing travelling alone! He brought me through into the conductors car where there were a couple other conductors and he quizzed me on where I was going, what I planned to do when I got there, where was I going to stay? I had NOT thought it out that well at all, and actually the town I wanted to end up at would be very far from the train station and there would be no hotels open to stay in and no taxis or buses. SO this conductor told me I needed to stop at a city right next door, stay the night there, and continue to my destination in the morning. Then he called ahead to that town, had someone from a hotel come over to meet me at the train and walk me to the hotel!!

I stayed safe and sound at that hotel all by myself, and then in the morning continued on to Cossenza. From there, I needed to go on a bus up through these tiny winding hill roads to my final destination which turned out to be a miniscule little hill town- where my Grandpa was from- Rota Greca.

There was noone out on the streets- it was Saturday, so I approached a little church and tried to open the doors- locked. I heard someone behind me ask me if I was looking for something/someone. So I met yet another guardian angel, Giacomo. I told him that I was just coming to visit the place where my Grandparents were descended.

He wanted to know my Grandpa's name, and then he was on a mission to find someone related to "Franco Gentile" despite my protests that we had no more living relatives in Italy. He took me to where pretty much all the men of the town must have been gathered on a Saturday- a town bar, and everyone was chatting and asking, who is related to Franco Gentile??? The bar was abuzz and finally one man came forward who was convinced he was related and insisted I CALL my Grandparents in America so he could talk to them! Poor Grandpa talked with him at 3AM his time and they determined they were not in fact related.

But now Giacomo decided to have me come to someone's house- he thought THEy were my relatives. It all seemed to silly, I really didn't think I'd find any living relatives, but I humored him. We showed up at this family's house and though they were sitting down to a big lunch together when Giacomo opened with "This is your American relative!" they welcomed me in so warmly and openly, without even knowing yet if it was true! There was a mom, dad and a girl about my age at home at the time. I spent hours there talking with them and sharing a delicious meal, trying to determine if we were related. They called over their Grandma, who only spoke a dialect, so we had to translate from Italian to dialect and dialect back to Italian, so it was tedious, but we finally determined she was my Grandpa's cousin?!!

The clincher was when we walked over to the old woman's house and there, in this teeny tiny little hill town, where news had already spread through so that people on the street were asking me "Are you the American girl??!", there in this woman's housze there was a framed picture of MY GRANDPARENTS WEDDING PHOTO, the same one they had hanging in their hallway, it was here in Italy!! It was amazing.

I'm sorry this was so long, but that was also one of my favorite stories ever, and I think it will also count as my #10 interesting things about me!! I have living relatives in Southern Italy my Grandparents didn't even know of. I got to be a celebrity for a day in Rota Greca, and I had the trip of my life! I have lots of photos with those people to show my children and Grandchildren and tell the story! And I made it safely back and did fine on my exams. :)