Lake Como....on the lake.

July 11, 2010
Today, although a quite interesting day was very enjoyable. For the first time this week, we got to see something other than Milan. The morning was relatively low key. It consisisted of my roommate waking up nearly an hour before me (I don’t know why..but its all good), and then breakfast, which was pretty good. They don’t cook their hard boiled eggs all the way through though, so it makes things pretty interesting ☺ But its all about the adventure! That’s what makes trips like these so fun.
We met with everyone around 10 AM and headed out for church. I guess they ended up changing the building that we were going to be going to, so we had some last minute transportation changes, and then we were off. Honestly, we spent a lot of time just going around looking for the church building. As a joke, one of the guys in the group started sing/praying “Heavenly Father...where is your building? And then one of the girls turned around and said…hey! That looks like a church building sign! And there it was. The meeting room was up a few flights, so we were a little confused…and then we had to knock and be let in. Unfortunately, because of our getting turned around and the like, we were a few minutes late. I neglected to mention…IT WAS SO HOT. I can’t even describe how hot it was as we were trying to make it to church…being dressed up with ties and everything, and then going into a hot building with no a/c…it was STILL HOT. We finally got cooled down during sacrament meeting…and the meeting was very good. I had a really significant realization during the meeting, and if you would like to ask me about it I’d be more than happy to tell you about my experience, but I don’t really want to write about it here. It’s a more one-on-one or one-on-few discussion thing ☺
Anyway, the members there were amazing, and they were really happy that we came to church at their building. We talked to a few of the members and missionaries, and then headed out. Back to the metro and back to the hotel. After changing, we grabbed something to eat and then went to Lake Como (or so we though), which is one of the most beautiful areas in Italy I’m told.
Our hotel is just about a 5 minute walk away from the central train station in Milan. Being ignorant, we thought that the tickets we bought from Milan to Lake Como left from that train station. However, we didn’t know that it actually left from a different station…and our train was scheduled to leave in about 10 minutes! It took us about 5 to figure out where we needed to go and then to jump on the train and another 8 to get to the station that we were stupposed to actually leave from. The good news is that we ran into another group (3 of our leaders and another girl) so we hung out with them and waited because they missed the train too. Haha. Ignorance is awesome…and once again, Its all part of the awesome adventure! We got all set up at the RIGHT train station and then the 3 leaders and I, and the girl started walking around the area in search of this cool castle that was nearby on the map. We went the wrong direction, but found a gelato place that was incredibly intriguing as it was called “Chocolat”. We walked in and I was in heaven. They had a few regular flavors of gelato (stracciacello, a few fruits), but they had white chocolate and about 6 or 7 different flavors of chocolate including milk, dark, and dark with chili pepper (After my pistacio experience last night, I wasn’t about to try that haha..and they don’t seem to be very willing to give free samples in most areas). So…I got the dark chocolate. 3 words…HEAVEN. (In Icecream). (If you’re thinking something right now about my choice of three words…Shut up. ;-) The dark was super dark and super good, and the white was really sweet. But the nice thing is that in a cone, its really easy to lick both at the same time which made it pure awesomeness. They even branded their cones, which made it all the cooler.
We made it on the train and began our trek out to Lake Como. The trip took longer than expected, but I had a great time chatting with some of the girls from our group. We really do have some amazing girls in our group.
After more than an hour on the train, we finally made it to the Lake. It was beautiful, and I can definitely say that I’d love to have a house there someday. Vacation of course ☺ We walked around for a while and ran into a few of the other people from our group who had made it up there an hour or so before we did. By this time, it was getting pretty hot and a few of us decided to jump overboard and into the lake. So…we did! I had to go change first, and found this nasty little bathroom to do the clothes switch, but all was well in Zion. The water was absolutely perfect. It was incredibly clear and so warm! And what could be bad about swimming with 5 girls! We swam around for a while, got out and dried off, and then a few of us got back in and swam some more. It was amazing. After that, we walked around some more around the lake (we only made it around half the lake as we only had a couple of hours to be at the Lake), took some pictures and then headed back towards the train station. Most of us were famished, so we found a nice little restaurant and sat down. Not everyone was hungry though, and the group that wasn’t went back to the hotel.
We sat down and had a few language problems at the beginning, but got everything cleared up pretty good. The group decision (by happenstance) was Lasagna. Ironically, during church one of the speakers likened the gospel to Lasagna, so I guess it made everyone hungry for it. The nice thing is that it wasn’t too expensive, and the even nicer thing was that it was very good food. I was super excited because they also had free balsamic vinegar and olive oil to go with their bread, which just makes the experience one hundred times better. I got my last few pictures of the lake and then we went back to the train station to head back to Milan.
The train was much different than the one we had on the way out. It felt much more like a school bus than anything else. We all sat together and just chatted on the whole way back, although it was pretty warm. We ran back into the teachers again, and they apparently went on a boat ride (which would have been awesome) and supposedly saw George Clooney’s House (he has a villa up there…I can’t imagine why haha. Anyway, we got back and watched the end of the World Cup…way to go Spain. Good work…I suppose you deserved it although I was secretly hoping that the Netherlands would win…I just didn’t want that freaking Octopus to be right! Haha.

Now, getting ready for bed and tomorrow we go down to Parma…home of parmesan cheese and other awesome food! (barilla pasta too). It should be fun! Then, Tuesday means we are off to China! So much going on..but don’t worry…the updates will keep on coming. Ciao!