Sugar cube temple

Wednesday morning we got confirmation of our appointment in October at the Vatican excavation sites for the four of us when my sister and her husband visit. I went online and paid, but the website then hit an error, so it is not clear whether I was supposed to get tickets to download, or whether they will just let us in by name using our IDs. Also, our start time is 9am, which means we would have to leave here pretty early. I sent a followup email about the time and the tickets, and hopefully soon all will be clarified. If you want to read a bit about the excavations, there are two books to recommend:
  The Bones of St Peter, by Walsh (published in 1982)
  St. Peter's Bones, by Craughwell (published in 2014)
I read the first one a few years ago and thoroughly enjoyed it. The second one was written more recently and might have updated information.

In the morning I walked down to get a haircut, which was definitely needed. We spent the entire morning at home otherwise, including some lesson prep and a quite a bit of messaging back and forth about various Institute events and classes.

At noon we left to drive the Knieses down to the Institute to start their Wednesday afternoon stints there. Usually they will take the subway, but we wanted to show them around the place a bit, so it was easier to drive down together this time. They brought two huge containers of gelato (one hazelnut, one strawberry) to share with whoever shows up, so we will see how big a draw that is. We gave them the tour and pointed out about 50 things to remember :) It is wonderful to have them there when we can't be.

We came home from the Institute, and I dropped Dee off at our apartment to work on her lesson, while I went on to Lidl to buy a bunch of food, almost entirely for us. Their bread is really wonderful, so I bought a few loaves and froze most of it so we can pull it out later when needed.

My wife bought a vertical mouse to try. Supposedly, by not twisting your hand horizontally to hold the mouse, you are less likely to incur RSI. There are inexpensive models by several different vendors. This one seems perhaps too big for her, so I am trying it for a while. Thus far the learning curve doesn't seem very bad; we will see how it goes.

The Knieses had four kids show up and enjoy the ice cream, which is a very good showing for Wednesday afternoon. It is a nice start, and they are wonderful. We arrived back down there just before 6pm, and they left soon thereafter. Our weekly evening activity this time was to construct a miniature temple using sugar cubes. I didn't have high hopes, but it turned out very nice, and they had a lot of fun designing and building it together.  Dee writes: The Rome temple is elliptical in shape, which means every stone was cut individually (maybe that's why it took so long!) This doesn't lend itself to sugar cube construction, but Sheyla managed to build a Rome temple replica anyway, on the right in the final photo below. The larger structure was designed entirely the GANS.

The designers: Anziano Wijesundera and Claudia

 

 

 

 

 

My wife spent some time on the phone in the evening with folks back home, checking on the possible dryer repair, plus talking to her dad who is having some bad back pain these days.  I want to do whatever I can to help my parents, but they don't want to bother us, so I miss the opportunity a lot. I'm so glad to have a local number that the doctors can phone easily. I also spent some time online shopping for a washer and dryer, just in case. Rich was willing to go to Sears to buy one on Saturday if needed. This week, he also has a dishwasher recall repair. He is doing a good job of taking care of things at home! Things are always busy here. Exactly seven months ago we started our mission -- it is going too fast!