Four Days of Classes

From Tuesday through Friday of last week we were on a normal class schedule. Students are busy with semester projects in some classes and simply trying to stay on top of regular assignments in others. This has not prevented them from playing soccer regularly with or without Jonathan (who took a trip down to southern Italy this weekend to visit his brother, who has a new baby).

We had a special event on Wednesday afternoon when our group made a trip to Florence to visit Harding University's villa, which houses the Harding University in Florence (HUF) program. The villa is located on the outskirts of Scandicci, a Florence suburb. Because I spent two semesters at HUF—once as a faculty child in 1986, and again as an undergraduate in 1993—this was a homecoming of sorts for me. I had not visited the villa since 1998, and there have been several changes to the grounds since then. I had a reunion with Robby and Mona Shackelford, the onsite directors, and with Renata, the lady who used to do the laundry at the villa and who came out of retirement this year to help in the kitchen.

Our group had dinner in the villa with the HUF students, and afterwards the students loaded up the bus and two vans to go down to the Scandicci soccer field for a match against each other. After dropping them off, Robby took my family and a couple of ladies visiting from Searcy over to Piazzale Michelangelo, which offers a great view of the center of Florence. We got back to Scandicci to see the end of the soccer game (our group won 4-2), but the bus didn't get us back to Citerna until after midnight, so we were all exhausted the next day. However, I think most of the group thought the experience was worth it.