The worst 24 hours so far....

The worst 24 hours of the trip, so far, occurred in Florence. It started early. We were off and running about 8 am, first to the phone store, only to find they weren't opened on Mondays until 3 pm^, another reminder of the arbitrary times in Europe.It was when we turned around to leave that we witnessed two women get hit by a scooter! There was the screech, thump of human contact, and then bodies slamming against the asphalt. I have never witnessed such a thing, nor do I wish to, unlike Dane Cook. It sounds funny when a comedian describes it, but the real thing is far from. This woman flew off to the side, towards where Bran and I were standing. I stood there. Frozen. Everything in me screaming Go help! But my feet wouldn't move. Finally, I helped her up, carried her large day bag, and set her down on a bench. She was in the traumatic zombie stage, and communicating was difficult since I didn't know Italian. I managed through gestures to find out she was ok, her hip hurt, but she was ok. I hugged her, consoled her, patted her back. Just when I'm wondering where my husband is, he pipes up from behind me, "Are you experiencing any paralysis" She gave him a perplexed look, and after it took me a minute to figure out what he said, all I could was chuckle to myself. Oh, the rational side of men! In our best detective work, we figured the two girls were trying to cross the street, went after the bus passed, and because of the bus, did not see the scooter and got hit. The man driving seemed to have broken his ankle, and the other woman was ok.
Later that day we were so excited to meet Tina and Erik. They are a couple from our growth group back at home, and happened to be vacationing in Italy the same time we were there too. We met them at the train station, oh how wonderful to see their familiar smiling faces! After a small mix up with train stations, we all caught the next train to the station that was closest to their hotel. By now, Brandon had become a pro at navigating the train systems, buses, and streets in many towns, so he led the way. Well, as we were walking and chit chatting, an angel tapped me on the shoulder. I turned to see head phones spilling out of Tina's backpack onto the ground. We stopped, and she said she thought she zipped up her bag. She looked briefly inside, and we zipped it up and headed towards the hotel. About ten minutes later I had another tap on the shoulder, this time maybe by God Himself, and turned to see a very odd site. A woman had a map spread out over the top of Tina's entire backpack. I thought that was weird, so I ripped it off only to find her entire hand and arm all the way into Tina's backpack!!! That is when I went into RED ROSS MODE, aka crazy Jessica... I yanked her arm out and started yelling at her. "What did you take! You are a thief! Let me see your bag!" I proceeded to grab her purse and riffled through it. That is when I realized I was with Tina, this was happening to her, and I wouldn't recognize what was Tinas. So, I turned to Tina and told her to grab anything that was hers in the girls purse. Now, as we both are digging in her stuff, two thoughts occur to me: she is obviously a crooked no good girl caught stealing since she is letting us go through her purse, and why, if she is a thief, is she letting us go through her stuff, since we will only further verify her crookedness. As we are doing so, she is pretending to ask us stuff in French, playing the dumb, lost, tourist card. I wanted to beat her down to the ground. Finally, as we found nothing, we let her go. Only then did we asses the damage, and Tina's Ipod, and Louis V makeup bag were stolen. It still makes me mad, even days later writing this email, and it didn't even happen to me. In spite of all that, the rest of the day day was pleasant, touring the leaning tower of Pisa together. (Although, it turns out Florence really didn't like the Trans, cause they ended up losing all their pictures from that entire day!) We parted later that night, after we had our fill of dinner and of course gelato. It wasn't until about 3 am that I woke up throwing up everything I had consumed just a few hours ago. I managed to completely empty my stomach, in all ways possible, and couldn't even keep down pepto bismol. I am convinced it was the lasagna dinner, while Bran thinks it was the gelato. -He thinks if I admit that, then I will eat less gelato-I'm not willing to lessen my gelato consumption at this point, so who knows what it was. Our plans were then foiled, no longer able to go to Cique Terre off the coast of Italy. I spent the entire day in bed, with a fever, good thing I had the thermometer to prove to Bran I really was very sick! Bran was a surprisingly great nurse, especially since I had just nursed him back to health about 3 days prior when he had almost the exact same thing!! Funny how God works. On a good note, I will say, we were so blessed to be at Brandons friend Ian's house, not only cause it was a huge apartment right in the middle of the city, but also because of his great hospitality-he even gave up his bed for us!!-