Enchiladas

Friday was another lovely spring day, although it did end up raining a bit. In the morning, I walked up to Todis to get some tortillas and some plain Greek yogurt (Metro was out of sour cream last time) for the enchiladas for Friday night dinner. Dee walked over to a local Chinese store and got a couple of things. 

In the afternoon at the Institute, I did a little bit of final prep for my lessons, while Dee started making enchiladas.

 

 

There were three pans worth, holding 32 enchiladas. She forgot that our oven isn't quite wide enough (only 60cm, or about 24 inches) to hold all of them at once, so she ended up cooking them in two batches, which worked out ok. I sent out a photo of the enchiladas on WhatsApp to advertise the dinner and hopefully increase attendance😋😀

It being Good Friday, the schools were out, but we happily had nine kids again for Seminary Doctrinal Mastery class. We talked about the temple dedication announcement, and I had them pick a scripture at random and then figure out how to apply it to the temple. After that we had a spirited round of bingo, with them giving the clues (so they had to look up the scripture), followed by a wonderful cookie spread made by my wife. It had cream cheese, marshmallow, nuts, chocolate chips and Nutella, which they spread on the little cookies. It was a new and yummy experience for them!

 

Gabriele had wanted some cheddar cheese, so we bought him a big block at Metro last week. We know of no other place to find it here at such a good price. Last night he paid for it and was quite delighted to pick it up:

 

Our 7pm Book of Mormon class was quite reverent this time. I'm not quite sure why, but it was nice to have some really good discussion with everyone listening. We covered 3 Nephi 18-22, applying some of the stuff to the upcoming temple dedication and the chance they will have to serve and participate, as well as discussing the sacrament and how to get more out of it. There were some very good and thoughtful comments.

For dinner, my wife also prepared a carrot salad with raisins and some Spanish rice for the dinner, as well as a different cookie spread (without Nutella this time), so there was quite an offering. She was on her feet all day, but she really enjoyed the cooking and got lots of rave reviews. It was the first time she had ever made enchiladas, and a new taste for some of the kids.

 

 

 

 

My wife learned that Dario's mom (he is on the lower right of the photo above) is now in hospice; she's too weak to do chemo anymore. So when he asked for thirds on the enchiladas, Dee just gave him some. He is a great kid with a tough situation. We got home a bit late, after a lot of dish washing and some general cleanup, but the party was still going strong there. My wife's feet were killing her from seven hours in the kitchen, despite comfortable shoes. I got a nice email from Eric, a long-time friend from Richmond, saying how much he enjoys our blog. It's good to record these memories for the future, to help us recall how blessed we are to serve.

Temple dedication announced!!

Thursday was a big day for Mormons in Italy: the church announced official dates for the temple open house (Jan 28 - Feb 16, 2019) and dedication (Mar 10-17, 2019).  The press release apparently went out in the mid to late morning here, middle of the night SLC time, which was nice in that the Italians got to learn about it here first, not from calls or messages from the US. I saw it on a WhatsApp group and got to tell my wife, then had the fun of calling a number of our young missionaries pairs to break the news to them. There was a huge flurry of excited messages on several of our WhatsApp groups. Everyone was so excited, Italians and missionaries alike! The great part for us two is that we will still be here for the dedication, just barely. We knew about the announcement before we finally posted the blog entry for Wednesday, but we decided to keep that news out of Wednesday's post since it actually happened on Thursday.

The temple completion has been a long time coming, and the temple workers were under strict orders not to ever talk about schedule, including at our dinner last Sunday night. Rumors have been flying for years about why it took so long with little basis in fact, but those of us who know and love Italy are not surprised -- things just take a long time to get completed here. I told people many years ago not to hold their breath.

The weather is great now, with spring in full force. High temps are in the mid-60s, and lows above 50 degrees (we have converted to Celsius ourselves, so that would be 10-20C :-) It might rain a bit in coming days, and it is certainly possible that we will still get a bit of cold, but it is so nice to be outside without a heavy jacket after months of winter. Ugo said that this winter has been unusually long and strong. In a few months we'll be complaining about how hot it is here!

In the morning I walked down to Conad to get some fresh fruit for me, plus a bunch of (heavy) stuff for Dee to experiment with different enchilada dishes for the Friday night dinner. She spent most of the afternoon and evening trying different things, several of which didn't turn out to her standards, but several of us loved trying and eating it all anyway! Dee writes: I thought I would have some time to study and prep for next week's family history class, but I spent the whole day in the kitchen. I enjoy it, which is a good thing!

I spent the entire afternoon working on my lessons for Friday (and letting people know about the temple 😀). Thursday is our light day, and this was no exception. We had almost nobody there until late afternoon, and then a small handful of people for English class, all of whom enjoyed taste testing Dee's culinary experiments.

A minor question came up about the small consulting job I finished for my former employer before leaving on our mission. I was able to make a call or two and get the issue explained and taken care of.

My experiment with the Italian keyboard is going ok. It definitely is taking some getting used to. I used my US physical laptop keyboard all day at the Institute, but of course with the Italian layout enabled I couldn't always see what I was typing. Still, it was nice to have the accented characters available (àèéìòù). My replacement laptop keyboard in Italian is on its way from China, so this practice time will make the transition easier.

Huge lunch, plus refugee dinner

Wednesday was a nice day. The Magnantis had us over for lunch again, with lots of great food. They admit that they don't usually eat that much for lunch, but for company they really put on a spread! We had several kinds of fish, risotto, fried zucchini, salad, and fruit.  Dee writes: I particularly like the octopus and the risotto. So does Elia, the wife in this couple. I was absolutely stuffed and didn't eat very much the rest of the day. This is a great couple. They have such a good relationship, communicating with each other with respect and interest. They showed us the Tiffany glasswork that he does, as well as the amazing art their daughter has created. Francesca is at BYU Idaho. She is not a member of the Church, as her parents joined only ten years ago. 

After lunch I gave Sorella Magnanti the laptop, with newly installed Windows 10 and an SSD. At first it misbehaved a bit, not connecting well to their WiFi, but after a reboot it was doing much better. I also bought her a USB 3.0 case to hold the old hard drive (only 9€ on amazon.it), which she can use for backup. There is definitely a learning curve for her to use Windows 10, but overall it will be a nice upgrade for only 80€; they were pleased. Stefano, the husband, looked on and noticed a tech tip or two that he was delighted to learn.

From there, we went to the Family History center at the Rome 2 chapel, back near our house. Instead of class this week, Dee held a FH lab there, helping out all the students. Due to license restrictions, some of the images which the church has scanned can be seen only at an authorized FH center, so we were able to help the students get some work done there that they couldn't do at home. Sorella Magno from Roma 2 ward was also there to assist and invited us to return anytime. I loved the excitement of these fine people as they learned a few tricks for navigating in the online images and found the substantiation for the info they already had, and then some new things as well. They love my powerpoints, but actually putting it into practice is a wonderful experience.

 

I helped the Magnantis and Eleonora find an original document, such as this:

We were there for a couple of hours, then headed home to change clothes so we could go help serve food to the Baobab refugees. A big group of GANS (more than 20, including a bunch of BYU study-abroad kids) had already met at the Institute to prepare the pasta, and then they brought it over by car and subway. Most of the immigrants speak Arabic and maybe a little English. Elder Conatti had the idea to show them Google Maps on his tablet and ask them to point out where they were from. 

 

Given the timing, we just met them all at the refugee camp, where we had been a couple of times already. Traffic was bad on the drive over from our apartment, but it still only took about 15 minutes. While stopped in the lane waiting to get onto the freeway, we got rear-ended. Fortunately, it was a fairly gentle bump, and neither we nor the car seemed to be hurt. We both pulled over, and a girl about 20 years old came out to apologize: she had been looking at her phone. Her dad was in the car behind her, so he was there too. I suspect she got quite a lecture when they got home! We checked things out and were all happy that everything was ok. We didn't get upset, which is perhaps not the norm here for such situations, but I did say to her "this is a good lesson for you." Dee even gave them a temple card, asking them to look for the open house (no, we don't know yet when it will be!)

At the refugee camp, we parked safely but slightly illegally, along with 50 other people. The kids were great, jumping right in to help out with serving the food:

 

 

 

 

 

 

Everyone had a great time, and we finished much more quickly than last time. It was also fairly warm out, particularly compared to last time in February, which is very nice for them. It's always good to be reminded how blessed we are. We hope to do the refugee activity regularly. 

We were delighted to be home before 9pm, quite a rarity for us. I tried my new Italian USB keyboard. It will take some getting used to, as the Enter and Shift keys are slightly different in size and location, not to mention all the punctuation keys being completely changed. I will give it a week or so to see how it goes -- hopefully my brain can adapt fairly quickly. Stay tuned for updates on that.

MMM

Tuesday morning at 8:30am we did an inspection of the apartment of the Sorelle beneath us. With four of them now, it seems they were inspired to arrange things a bit better, and it was very clean and well organized. We were able to fix a few things, such as burned out light bulbs in the bathroom mirror (I gave them mine and then Dee bought me replacements later), some newer pillows to replace a couple of lumpy old ones (we gave them some from our guest bedroom), cementing on a piece of marble baseboard that had broken off, and snaking out a bathtub drain. It was definitely a productive visit.

Having free time for the first time in several weeks, Dee went out to buy me a few things at the Chinese store and also to the open market to look at yarn :) I was home for what was left of the morning after all the handyman stuff (including some in our own apartment), working on my lesson. We got to the Institute in plenty of time to prepare for Taco Tuesday. After a few weeks of crazy attendance numbers, we're down to more normal levels, still up a good bit from several months ago. Alkmini, our nonmember from Greece, brought her sister, visiting from Luxembourg, and a friend from Malta. We love that.

After lunch, I holed up in the library for the rest of the afternoon, finishing my PowerPoint slides for the Institute lesson on the Mountain Meadows Massacre. It is always a lot of work translating, trying to get the language right. I even had to skip choir practice because I wasn't quite done, but there was a pretty good group singing.

 

The Institute class went pretty well. Ugo took the first half hour or so, finishing his lesson from the prior week, and then I took about 45 minutes to discuss the Mountain Meadows Massacre. I started out with the statement that I was going to discuss the ugliest incident in the history of the church, then read a few paragraphs from the introduction to Juanita Brooks' biography of John D. Lee, where she didn't get around to interviewing one of the last surviving participants in the massacre when she was young. It's a complicated and horrible story, a perfect storm of tragedy, even though you can kind of understand (though not excuse) how it happened, given the historical context. Everyone seemed quite engaged, with a number of good questions and comments afterwards. I tried to give some examples of lessons we can learn.  For example, I recommended that, when you are in a group and somebody suggests doing something dumb or cruel, you should speak up forcefully and say "that's stupid!" and/or just leave. They really liked my quote that for every (young) man you add to a group, the collective IQ drops 10%.

When we got home, the SSD for Sister Magnanti's laptop had arrived, so I installed it and restored the image from a backup of the prior hard drive. Wednesday we are going to lunch at their place again, and I will give her the much faster (SSD-powered) laptop. Pretty fair trade for a good meal!

Dee writes: I tried a couple of new recipes. I like to have a treat after choir to help the young people hang around and socialize. First, I made a mixture of melted butter with parmesan, garlic powder and coarse salt and tossed it with a bag of potato chips, then baked it. They couldn't believe the hot chips and ate every crumb.
Then, I made Sunburst Lemon Bars, with a few modifications. They have a lemon glaze, and are soo delicious. Choir was very fast. We barely go over our individual parts, and I enjoy the challenge. It's just too bad we don't have enough girls. We usually have one young woman singing soprano, but who should probably be an alto. I sing the alto part alone. Five tenors, three bass. We need some females here, and not just for choir!

The bald ones

Monday we had an entire morning at home, which was wonderful. Dee spent a bunch of time cleaning floors and bathrooms, while I emptied the trash, worked on my lesson, and did a few things to the Magnanti laptop. Dee writes: We've been so busy that it's been two weeks since I cleaned. In truth, that apartment looks dirty in three days. We don't know why, but there's an incredible accumulation of dust on the floors in a short time. The raspberry-colored towels I love are STILL leaving lint on every bathroom surface and even shows up in the shower drain. So, that's why you see so many posts about me cleaning. Doug does the dishes and lots of paperwork while I fight the invading dust bunnies.  It was sunny and somewhat warm outside, though inside the Institute I was pretty chilly. Thank goodness that I could go into the library and turn on the overhead heater there. 

I spent almost the entire afternoon working on my lesson for Tuesday evening, on the Mountain Meadows Massacre. Ugo normally runs that class, but I volunteered to teach this one because John D. Lee, who was tried and executed for his part in the massacre, is my great-great-grandfather (my middle name is Lee). Over the years I have taught this topic many times in Seminary, and I bring some family connections and perspective to it. It's such a horrible tale, but I try to explain some lessons we can learn from it. 

For home evening tonight, we had a good group, but only one girl! Our demographics are definitely unusual. Dee taught the lesson, giving some info on six of the apostles (she chose the bald ones :-) in preparation for General Conference next weekend. She assigned one to each pair of kids and had them look up a few things on the internet to share. Everyone seemed to enjoy it. I wanted them to be able to distinguish these six men from each other and get to know something about them. Junior, one our nonmembers, took notes and was still studying them the next day.

 

Afterwards we had cookies, chips, and cake, which disappeared quickly. The best part is that Dee didn't have to spend time preparing them.

Our new quote book is working nicely for FHE. We asked Oscar if he could recommend an Italian vocabulary book for us to use, but he seemed rather puzzled by the concept, which has been the general reaction here. We hoped that, with his superb English and high intelligence, he would be helpful, but no luck.

April is back from Armenia, here for a week or so before going home. Several friends came by to see her after the lesson.

So far this week is happily shaping up as much less busy than the last one. Our district meeting got cancelled, and Dee is doing a family history lab instead of teaching a class, so there is no lesson prep, which is all much more relaxing for us.

Senior missionary dinner

Spring seems to be prevailing slowly over winter. Sunday was a fine day, sunny and with nice temperatures after being in the 30s overnight. Dee writes: It might finally get warm enough for me to send my coat to the cleaners! When I was a missionary here in the 1970s, I was told that until thirty years before, it was never cold enough in Rome to need heaters. 

At church, the Spragues each spoke. They are leaving for Malta for their final transfer, so it was their farewell. They have served and loved folks in this ward for over 16 months, and they are well loved here. It was wonderful to hear from them. The ward passed around a card to sign and write notes to them, during sacrament meeting (a little unusual, but it works! :-) For the closing hymn, Sorella Sprague, our pianist, chose "God Be With You 'til We Meet Again". This couple, in their sixties, have been living five stories up, with no elevator, for a year and a half. That means carrying up all their groceries, too. They never complained. In fact, we only found out because the sisters are moving in there when the Spragues leave and asked about it.  We also saw April Parker, one of our American GANS, back from her internship in Armenia for a bit.

After church we got to spend a fairly easy afternoon at home, which we hadn't had in a while. Dee spent most of her time in the kitchen, preparing "crack chicken" as our main course offering for the senior couple dinner at the mission home in the evening, so I guess it wasn't much down time for her. I helped with some of the dishes, and I also caught up on some paperwork, accounting, and laptop backups.

On the IT support front, the Spragues called with a small problem on their laptop, which I was able to fix using TeamViewer. I also wrote up a step-by-step procedure for forwarding all emails from the church missionary account (myldsmail.net) to our personal emails, which will be useful for the senior couples. At church, Sister Magnanti gave me her small HP x360 laptop to take home and upgrade from Windows 8.1 to Windows 10, which is a good move. I'm also going to give it a "wash and wax" while I'm at it, after backing up everything first. They also gave me the go ahead to buy and install a 250GB SSD to speed it up a bunch.

At 5pm all of the senior couples in Rome met for a potluck at the mission home, which is nearby. The Pickerds try to do this every 2-3 months, though they have slipped a bit with her cancer. Fortunately her treatment is mostly over now, but she still doesn't feel very well. It was nice to visit with a bunch of great folks, including those working on temple construction. I particularly enjoyed chatting with Rosa Calabrese, a native Italian whose husband has been volunteering in the mission office--for 17 years!! She is a really wonderful woman and I hope we get to spend some time together. I have the pleasant opportunity to be the only female senior missionary who speaks Italian. I see the Italian women my age light up when we can talk together, and I certainly love being able to do it. Sister Balzotti, who is Canadian, told Rosa she enjoyed her talk at Church. Rosa asked her if she spoke Italian. So, I said that some people have the gift of tongues, while Sister Balzotti has the gift of ears. She liked it :) After dinner, we all gathered in the living room, and the Pickerds gave an update on the state of the mission, with some Q&A, plus the couples leaving soon got to give a short farewell. We have a native Italian senior couple arriving Monday! We were home by 8pm, and it was still light outside, thanks to the DST change.

We heard a wonderful story from Anziano Fenn, who has been here for just over six years with his wife, helping to manage the temple construction. He served in my mission from 1976-78, though I didn't know him at the time. Recently he gave a talk in their ward, Roma 2, where he started by turning to the bishop and saying "Bishop, I'm 60 years old and have now been here for 6 years -- I want you to know that I am a full tithe payer!" Time is more of a precious commodity than money, and we are delighted to be spending our time serving here.

My sister is visiting California, so we set up a video call with my mother. Donna is good with tech, so it was the perfect time. It was so fun to see each other. Jim and Donovan got in on the call too, and we'll do it again with my Dad Monday evening.

Food and Geekiness

Our Italian-only week is going pretty well so far, although we each occasionally slip up and start talking in English. Sometimes it takes us a couple of exchanges to realize that we're doing it wrong, but one of us quickly switches to Italian and the other follows suit.

Saturday was another pretty full day. At the Institute we scheduled the first meeting of my "computer club" at noon, with five guys who are interested in learning how to build a computer from scratch. Everyone showed up, although each late for different reasons, so we actually started at 12:30pm. We had Iliaro, Daniele, Francesco, plus the two Perego boys, Joshua and David.  Unfortunately I forgot to take a photo of the group. Using a short PowerPoint presentation, I went over some guiding principles and gave them some online resources to use. I had put together a list of components for a desktop computer build costing about 500 euros in a shopping cart on amazon.it, and we reviewed them and my reasoning for choosing each one. Things are definitely more expensive here, due only in part to the 22% VAT (value added tax, like a national sales tax) -- this would be considerably cheaper in the US.

My homework assignment for them was to select components for their own design, or suggest different/better ones for mine. In a couple of weeks we'll meet, maybe just online via Zoom, to discuss what everyone came up with. Then we'll decide which parts to buy for my low-end computer for the Institute and order the parts. Once everything arrives, we'll schedule a time to get together and assemble everything. It should be fun! I told them that if one of them actually wants to pay for and build their own computer, I'll be happy to help.

Dee had made a carrot cake for the group, and she was there Saturday with the assignment to go to the pizzeria around the corner and bring back some pizza to consume after our meeting, which finished just short of one hour. When she went out, she discovered that the pizzeria is not open on Saturday afternoon, just in the evening. Who knew? Even Ilario shook his head at that one. So she came back and gave them the leftover sloppy joes from the evening before, as well as sandwich fixings, with potato chips and cake. Not as good as pizza, but nobody complained. Overall, it was a successful first meeting.

When we got home, I walked down to Conad to get some fresh produce, and Dee bought a loaf of bread at the market downstairs. She spent the rest of the afternoon shredding chicken for the senior missionary potluck dinner Sunday night at the mission home.

Just before 5pm we left for the ward activity, filling up the car with gas on the way. It was a Relief Society cooking contest, where all the sisters brought some kind of homemade dish from their native country, with a national flag displayed behind it. They each would explain what they had made to the noisy and hungry crowd. We had heard both 5pm and 5:30pm for the start time; turns out that they told the Italians 5pm and the Americans 5:30pm, hoping that we'd all be there about the same time 😀. Things still didn't get started until about 6pm, with a small program in the chapel for Fathers Day, which was last Monday here (who knew?). They had a brief spiritual message, and the Primary kids sang, then they gave certificates to all the men present. Dee writes: You should have seen the young missionaries' eyebrows shoot up when they got a fatherhood award!

After that we went into the big activity room, where the women explained their food dishes. The echoes due to the hard floor (there is NO carpet here anywhere -- Italians consider it unhealthy) made it difficult to hear over the other visiting going on. 

The last picture is our Relief Society President's display. Isn't it amazing?

They had three men set up as judges (on the right in the photo above), wearing colored ribbons and taste-testing everything. They gave out 1st/2nd/3rd prizes, with the latter going to our young Anziani who had made a carrot cake. So I told the two of them that they were now honorary members of the Relief Society. The prize for the elders was a pair of dangly earrings. The sisters all posed together for a group shot. My wife's comment was "only in Italy can I stand in the second row of a photo!", because here she is of average height.

Finally about 7pm we got to start eating the food ourselves. There was a wide selection of wonderful dishes from around the world, and we also enjoyed the visiting a lot. Unfortunately, we had to leave by 7:30pm to go to Metro nearby to get some food for the coming week at Institute. We were able to restock with a bunch of meat, cheddar, and some plasticware. We were home by about 9pm, which was effectively 10pm because l'ora legale (Daylight Savings Time) was to start overnight -- it's two weeks behind the US switch. So it would be yet another short night, but the day was full of very good things. 

Zone conference

Friday morning was Zone Conference at the nearby Roma 2 chapel. It had gotten down to freezing overnight and was quite chilly. Fortunately my new boots kept my feet nice and warm all day 😊.  We left at 8am for the 9am start, because we're supposed to be there 30 minutes early and we had no idea how long it would take to find a parking spot. Sorella Balzotti came with us, calling just as we were leaving -- she couldn't believe how early we left, so we had to wait for her for a few minutes as many of our neighbors headed out. One was quite striking: a very well dressed women, wearing a short skirt with high heels, rolling a suitcase and wearing a motorcycle helmet. I wish we had a picture. Not sure how she was going to travel with that particular combination of items, but it looked to be very cold for her!

Turns out that we found a parking spot very close, but it was a parallel parking spot with very little extra room. Even worse, there was a van unloading stuff in front, so I couldn't get all the way past the spot to start backing up. Even though it took me about three tries, I made it fit! Here's a photo of what it looked like later when we left, after somebody else had closed us in even a bit further, by less than a foot. It was still very impressive, if I do say so myself. Take a look: 

Dee writes: It would be more impressive if the car didn't have so many scratches and dents, vbg. Actually, I'm the creator of the custom horizontal dents on the side of the car.

The conference ran until 3pm, though we had to leave at noon for the Institute, and it was not our usual zone because we skipped ours on Wednesday to go to Napoli. Still, we thoroughly enjoyed it. The Pickerds reviewed some of the mission rules, particularly for dress and grooming, and the zone leaders (and sister leaders) talked about how to improve our Italian. A bunch of us shared ideas for things that worked for us. They also challenged us to start a one-week "fast" from English, using only Italian among ourselves. We took them up on it and so far have been enjoying it, though it is difficult -- there are so many words and phrases that just roll off the tongue in English and are longer and more roundabout in Italian, and plenty of holes in our vocabulary. Fortunately we can still write the blog in English. 😉

We drove to the Institute via a different route, since we were not coming from home. For months now we've been mostly taking familiar routes, but for various reasons (construction, disallowing a left hand turn that we used to use, etc) in the past few weeks we have been forced out of our comfort zone in terms of driving routes. Thank goodness for Google Maps. It's fun to see new things along the way--well, old things that are new to us.

During the afternoon, we had a fair number of people show up. My wife baked and frosted four carrot cakes during the day, with some help from Donatella. One was for Seminary, one for Institute, one for a computer group meeting Saturday, and one for a ward activity Saturday evening. So she was busy. I did a bunch of dishes during the day, as did Dee.

 

 

 

For my Seminary class, we had a record of nine kids there! The word seems to be getting out that it's a happening place to be on Friday afternoon. We played games to help them learn their scriptures, and there was a whole bunch of laughter as we did so.

 

 

 

At our 7pm Institute class, there was a larger group than we have had in a while, which was very nice. There were some new faces, plus ones we hadn't seen in a while, such as Oscar, who has been very busy with school and other things. We discussed 3 Nephi 12-17, including Christ's sermon at the temple, which is one of my favorite lessons to teach. It explains what it means in practical terms to be a true Christian, with very high standards to meet. Everyone took turns reading verses, and we had some good discussion. One of our online students, Sarai from up near Milano, couldn't make it because she has decided to go on an internet "fast" for a couple of weeks. I told her how impressed I was that she wanted to do that, and that spending time on the internet could indeed be addictive, so we talked about how she could make up the lessons she will miss.

For the dinner afterward, my wife made Sloppy Joes, which were very well received, along with french fries, clementines (mandarin oranges), potato chips and carrot cake. We like to tell people that we are on a culinary mission. The whole place was very full and buzzing with good activity. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It was quite late when we got home after the cleanup, and we were cotti (literally "cooked"; which is what Italians say instead of "exhausted")! To top it off, the elevator in our apartment malfunctioned and wouldn't take us up to our floor (7th floor using the US numbering). It actually got stuck between floors and wouldn't go up any further, so for a few seconds we thought that we might be spending the night in the elevator. Fortunately, it took us back down to the ground floor, so we got the privilege of walking up six floors carrying a bunch of bags on our very tired feet.

The whole week has been very busy, and this weekend will be too as you will see. Still, we wouldn't give any of it up. Fortunately next week looks a little easier.