Messa in Italia!

This morning Bill and I woke up bright and early to go to mass...yay!  We are so lucky that our apartment is really close to the big Cathedral in town...it is beautiful.  Mass was really wonderful- it is so great to see such a unity between the Catholic Church everywhere.  Even though I didn't understand quite a bit of what the priest was saying, I still knew exactly what was going on and even learned a few new vocab words because mass all around the world is the same!  Incredible.  (Although, everything was a little more grandiose here...they used insense whenever possible and there were 6 servers.  One even brought the priest a glass of water in the middle of mass.  Haha you wouldn't see that in the US!) The only part that was difficult for me to understand was the homily because that is, of course, different with every service and priest.  However, it was a very interactive mass and homily and the priest even asked Bill and I a question during his homily.  When we didn't respond right away, he asked if we were Italian and when we said no, we are American, he went on with his homily to say that "...and the Americans are children of God!"  We thought that was funny.
Later on in the mass when the priest lifted up the prayers of the people, he went around the Cathedral and asked certain people if they had any prayer requests.  And guess who he asked on our part of the Cathedral?  That's right...the Americani. 
Anyway.  I thought mass was really wonderful and inspiring...faith is so universal. 
Now Bill and I have just bought train tickets to Marsala for tomorrow!  We can't wait to see a new city, and you can bet we'll be adding some new pictures!