Miracles that passed us by

Here she is!

September 6

I'm belated in sharing the events of Saturday evening into Sunday because the events of Monday overshadowed all. No worries, but I'll get to that later.

Back to Saturday afternoon and the Miracle of Santa Rosa. The crowded streets looked like this all day (save the parades which I included in my last post).

And then, at 8 PM, the police cleared the streets and every piece of trash was picked up by street cleaners.

Another parade followed, but this time it was really just the Santa Rosa carriers who were preparing themselves for the big event. I was in a second story window (Neil's school) taking these photos.

I took this photo to show how close people got to each other. That little ally was filled with people and was exactly the position we were in on Thursday night, watching the little machine go by. A bit claustrophobic...

9:15. The lights went out as the machine approached. You can just see the statue over the rooftops, turning the corner here. In many respects, it was like a Godzilla movie.

And then, the machine stopped and the carriers changed places. Here she is at the top.

These are real candles on here. Seriously? It's not enough to carry this five ton pedestal over a mile. Add some major fire hazard to the mix.

She passed by our window all too quickly.

Unlike most of the crowd who followed Santa Rosa, we went home around 10 PM. The streets were trashed.

I had hopes of sleeping, but that was a rather far fetched concept. The bar near our apartment showed the televised newscast of the rest of the path. At 11:44, almost 2 and 1/2 hours later, Santa Rosa made it her resting place. We watched the final push where they actually RUN the statue to the church. I don't know what adjectives to use to explain how powerful this was. Then we heard at least half an hour worth of fireworks which sounded more like cannon fire because we couldn't see them. Followed by...yes, they showed the movie Grease (in Italian) on the wall across from us. A true cult following?

The next day, the center of Viterbo was a market square. Miles of stalls filled the roads; definitely a medieval feeling, as there were no cars.

Marzapan!

We walked to the church so we could see the Santa Rosa machine up close. The church, square and her house were filled with people listening to the church service on the loud speakers. Alex got into the spirit of it, "She must have powers. It rained today." Indeed, it did rain. Our first rain in Italy! We were hoping that the miracle for us would be uplifted spirits though...

We wandered through the streets. This was an odd sight?

And of course, after all of this walking, celebration, and hoping for miracles, we needed some gelato! We got this smile in before the rain started.

All good. But, the miracle that we were really hoping for didn't really happen.

Monday was the first day of school for the kids and we were hoping this would solve the intense homesickness phase they are in right now. All right, I never thought it would completely change their minds, but I was hoping for a positive distraction. The 20 minute walk to school in the morning was great: they were beside themselves and bursting with joy. They ran in the school and never even looked back to say goodbye.

But, when we picked them up in the afternoon, one was delighted and the other one in full depression mode. Five minutes out the door Alex said, "I hate this place. We have to go home now." Ugh. Naturally, this rubbed off on the delighted one, too. So, ten minutes later Eleni shared her tales of woe, "We had to go to Italian class and she wanted me to speak Italian. It was horrifying."

Really?

Walking to school this morning, Tuesday, was not as exciting, more of a forced march with lots of "come on - keep moving" from me.

I know it will get better; we don't really need a miracle. This is just part of the process. It's hard for them to make this adjustment when they were so content back home and they know their schools at home are beginning without them there. It will take some time.

We've got that.