english, please?

I arrived in Siena tonight. What an experience!
The bus pulled into the bus station and we all awaited the moment that we would finally meet the people we would be spending the next 2 1/2 months with. It felt like we were being picked off for teams like 3rd grade again as one by one the families arrived and the names of the girls paired with them were called out loud. The suspense grew as more and more girls left with their hosts. Then ours arrived. Gioseppe (the father) is an older man In his 50's and came to pick us up alone in his green station wagon. Luckily our we as well as our luggage were both able to fit inside. We said our "ciao's" and that was pretty much the extent of our understandable conversation. The silence that filled the car on the way to the apartment was unlike any I had ever experienced before. It literally was almost unbearable as I sat there in the front seat knowing I would be unable to get to know this man, even a little, before we arrived to his home, due to the fact that I know NO italian and he knows NO english. This definitely presents a problem. Well maybe his daughter and his wife speak a little, right? Wrong. Not one word. Gioseppe continued to try and explain things to us in Italian but it was almost impossible to understand even the topic of what he was trying to get across. The only tool that came in handy were hand motions. Thank goodness those are pretty self explanitory. The apartment they have here in Siena is a good sized one with a nice bedroom here with two twins and a decent amount of storage space for our clothes and belongings. Luckily there is a private toilette and sink in our room that will help us be more private and give us a place to store some of our things. Gioseppe showed us to our room and motioned something to do with food and closed the door and left us to put our things away--at least we assumed that’s what we were supposed to do. Downstairs there was plenty of clinking and clanking of dishes in addition to loud and vigorous Italian being spoken. After getting almost settled we were informed that dinner was ready. This would be my first interaction with Fiorella (the mom). She had her hair rolled in curlers, pearl dangly earrings, a house dress, and red crock look-a-likes on. She came across very nice and friendly and showed us some places in our room that were ours to use- such as wall closet space for dresses and coats- then she took us downstairs to dinner. Dinner proved to be a somewhat awkward experience as well…they tried to give Autumn lessons on how to properly swirl her spaghetti pesto onto her fork. I luckily had that down and it wasn't until the second course that I had any problems. It consisted of quite spicy cooked carrots- to be eaten alone with a fork I discovered, some mystery meats that were some sort of salami types, lettuce- with no dressing other than oil?, cucumbers, and some mystery vegetable that I have never before seen in my life. The carrots were quite nice but I had some difficulty with the rest. I tried to force myself to deal with the plain lettuce and resorted to combining the bread, meat, and mystery veggie together as to not cause my gag reflexes to respond to it. It was a little green tear drop shape that could possibly belong in the squash family and was soft on the outside and filled with sweet brown gooey seeds on the inside. I think it might be a fig? However- I have never seen nor tasted one so I have no idea. Overall dinner was tasty, I enjoyed to pesto very much. We got a map out and they were able to get the point across of where we were to meet our group for church in the morning which is about a 20 minute walk away from here. We helped carry some dishes in and had a small discussion on coffee and tea in the morning where we had to describe as best we could that we don’t drink them. They showed us what I am assuming is a type of postum that they have which we said would be ok. Breakfast could be an interesting experience. I am so overwhelmed with the language barrier I don’t know how to even describe accurately how all this is playing out. I totally have sympathy for missionaries who go to foreign countries to serve- what an obstacle! I can only hope that with our 5 hours a week of Italian lessons and total immersion into the language here at home that we will pick up basics soon and start to transition into some normalcy in communication. For now we will just do our best to try and pick out words here and there in italian when we are talked to and deal with the awkwardness. It feels good though to be all moved in and unpacked which is nice. After the long 10 1/2 hour bus ride we went through today plus stopping in Paestum to see the old greek ruins my shower felt very refreshing to say the least. Tomorrow morning starts at 9 am with breakfast, leaving for the Piazza Gamchi (?) at 10 and sacrament meeting at 10:50. Hopefully we make it through this experience one day at a time until things start to flow easier.