Welcome back, Josh!

Last Thursday through Monday while the Woodworth/Arthur ladies were out dancing and carrying on in Tokyo, I flew to Italy for a romantic weekend for one - not ideal, but we figured keeping Rebecca within a 1,000 mile radius of home was probably a good idea, at least for the first month!

My buddy Bryan from college (now living in Paris) was concluding a whirlwind 7 month romance with a gorgeous wedding in the hills of Tuscany. He married a great Italian woman he met less than a year ago when she translated for him as he visited her church in Italy (good work, Bryan!). She is from Siena, Italy and the villa where the wedding was held was about half an hour from her house.

I arrived in Siena almost exactly 24 hours after leaving my house in Japan to find my friend Ed, whom I hadn't seen in years, waiting in the Piazza Gramerci for Bryan to pick him up. After the overworked bride and groom (doubling as taxi drivers for all of their French and American friends) finally picked us up, we met up with Bryan's family and had an afternoon tour of Siena. Siena is a beautiful small medieval city with 7 huge stone gates, several castles and large sculptures, cathedrals and tall stone buildings lining the narrow, cobblestone streets. For the latter portion of the afternoon, Ed and I trailed along as Bryan and Aida made wedding arrangements while Bryan's family returned to the airport to pick up family members and lost luggage. Our generous hosts treated us to some delicious gelato (yum!) and we stopped at a little shop buried deep in the brick Siena walls to relax with some Italian red wine.

That night, the rehearsal was scheduled for 7 pm with dinner at 9 pm. As was to be the trend for the weekend, the rehearsal never happened (Bryan and Aida were still rushing all over to pick people up since no one else could drive or knew where anything was) and dinner didn't end up happening until 10:30 pm or so - but when it did - what a dinner it was! We ate meat, cheese, bread, wine, pasta and more meat until I almost exploded. Then we ate a beautiful cake that Aida's cute mom (who spoke no English) made and I did explode - just kidding. I hear some people ate vegetables too, but I didn't really have any part in that. Well after midnight, we finally went to sleep in the villa, fat and happy.

The next morning, we woke up for the 10 am wedding. It was about that time we remembered that we had forgotten about the rehearsal. No worries though - as the most recent wedding participant, I got to play junior wedding planner. Since most of the bridesmaids and Aida's parents didn't speak English and had never seen an American wedding (with wedding music, processionals, seating of mothers, recessionals etc.) - this proved a little more complex that I had originally supposed. However, I think it ended up working out fine. The wedding was in Italian, French and a little English. I think I picked up most of it though. Some differences from an American wedding: 1. It started an hour late and lasted an hour. 2. Part of the ceremony was signing the actual marriage paperwork with ceremonial witnesses - interesting. 3. The wedding music was just a 30 second CD clip of "here comes the bride" on loop - for the entire processional. 4. In addition to the actual wedding photographers, there were at least 10 junior photographers - and no area was off limits, including behind the pastor - check out the guy standing with his digital camera between the pastor and translator. This guy went on to maneuver objects on the altar during the ceremony for "artsy shots;" a high (or low, depending on who you ask) point of the ceremony was when he was arranging the cloth and flowers hanging from the threshhold for the "perfect" shot and managed to pull them all to the ground right next to the bride and groom. Classic! Anyway, due to his boldness, all of the other amateur photographers figured they could do the same thing (thankfully that included Jeff who had my camera!), so the front of the ceremony was a bit cluttered with people. 5. The recessional must not be part of their wedding tradition; my carefully planned line-up of groomsmen and bridesmaids was ruined when the guests immediately clogged the aisle after the wedding; so we just kind of stood around in a line until giving up.

After the wedding, there was another delicious meal with wine, cheese, meat, bread, photos and cries of "bacho, bacho, bacho" ("kiss, kiss, kiss" - I think, unless it had something to do with nachos). That afternoon, most of the folks hung out by the pool; I rented a bike and rode about 10 miles up and down the steep hills of Tuscany in the 75 degree sun; it looked like a movie set.

That night, we had another meal. I learned how to sing "Awesome God" in Albanian (one of the 5 languages spoken by Aida - her native tongue, in fact), which was fun - although I forgot it already. The next morning, Aida's father drove me to the bus stop in Siena - and I practiced my Span-Ital-English; we managed to communicate a little and he insisted that Rebecca and I stay at his house if we return. Score! I rode a bus to Florence, walked around with my luggage until I found a nice hotel and explored Florence for the rest of the day. What an amazing city! That evening, I grabbed pizza and beer with David, Bryan's brother, who was in a different hotel in Florence. The next morning, I began the 24 hour voyage home to see my beautiful family. I have now visited Bryan for skiing in Salt Lake City, touring Paris (with Rebecca), lunch in New York City (also with Rebecca) and a wedding in Siena. Bryan and Aida will be moving to Geneva in a few months. Stay tuned for our next trip!