What were you grateful for this week?This week I’m grateful some girls came to Rome for the weekend so I was able to just stay here and meet up with them rather than pack up and go somewhere. So it was a little more relaxing haha. 

What was the most challenging part of this week?The most challenging part of my week was missing home! It was harder than I thought to not be with the people I love on Valentine’s Day!

Tell us about a “wow” moment you had this week. A wow moment I had with my host family this week was being able to be around for the youngest’s birthday. It was a lot of fun to experience that here and I was glad I was able to take some pictures for them together as a family. 

Tell us about your week! This week I was kind of slow and I watched a bunch of Netflix haha. Ok Thursday I took the youngest of the boys to a birthday party. It was at a typical kids’ party place with soft play and slides and games. It was kind of confusing for me showing up with everyone speaking Italian and I didn’t know what was going on haha. It was just like a party kids would have back at home so it was fun to see all the similarities cause they do a lot of things differently here so it’s fun to see when we do things the same. 

I also went shopping this week (something I’ve done too much of haha) and of course got some gelato! This weekend some of my friends in the program came to Rome. It was nice for me cause I didn’t have to pack up to go somewhere haha they got here Saturday morning and we went to the Trevi Fountain, piazza Venezia, and did some wandering — saw some street art and music in the streets. 

We also went to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints temple open house and it was so amazing! The hour long bus ride wasn’t so fun though 😉 the temple was beautiful and it was so cool to be able to go through and see what they’ve done with the temple itself as well as the grounds and the visitors center. It helped me feel at home for a little bit which was nice! 

Afterwards we went to vale gelato which I have been trying to go to forever and wow it lived up to my expectations. Best gelato I’ve had so far, the pomegranate soft serve is BOMB! We also went to another good gelato place Sunday that has 150 flavors and it was SO good too!!! Lots of gelato all the time is what my life consists of now lol