In (Dee) and Out (Doug)

Wednesday was our sort-of-off day. In the morning I went down to the local bank to discuss getting a Bancomat card. The lady was very nice, but said that she could only get me a prepaid credit card. Apparently we do not have the right kind of permesso to open a bank account, which seems very odd to me, but there it is. I also picked up a few things at the Chinese store; it is amazing how often we need to go there for this or that. Dee wanted Ace bandages for her foot, but they didn't have the right kind there, so she will order some on Amazon. Her hands also hurt some from where she needs to put her weight on the crutch handles, but they didn't have any padded gloves that might have helped. 

I also walked to Conad for some more food for us and for the Baobab refugee dinner in the evening. In the afternoon, I drove over to Lidl and got a bunch of other stuff, but it was only three big bags, plus some stuff left in the trunk to take to the Institute, so I was able to do it all in one heavy load from the car. Basically, my day at home became a day out shopping. 😀

Dee received two packages in the mail. Our doorman, Paolo, who accepts the packages laughed that he was getting concerned because it had been several days since a package arrived for us! She got two things for her scooter: a memory foam pad for the knee rest and a padlock to keep it out of the hands of the GANS. Dee writes: The concept of the scooter is great, but it's less than comfy to put all my weight on the air cast. I attached a cushion to it, but this memory foam pad is specifically for the scooter and is a quantum leap up in comfort. BTW, we have named her scooter "Gino" because she rolls on her knee (ginocchio). She is perhaps getting too used to her condition: a couple of times she got up to move about on her crutches at home, when she could have much more easily rolled on her chairiot. And a couple of times, I have almost walked without any support at all--eek, bad idea!

Sorella Muce is getting transferred to Messina (Sicily) on Thursday, so she asked me to make a backup copy of her photos onto a USB hard drive for her. It took only a few minutes, and I kept a copy for her in case she somehow manages to lose both. We preach the gospel of backup to all the young missionaries we know.

I usually cut my own hair, standing up in front of the bathroom mirror. Now, that's just too hard. So I decided to have the adventure of going to an Italian beauty salon. There is a large one right in our complex. Sister Thacker told us they were expensive, charging her 24€ for a haircut, but the location made it my best choice. When I phoned, they told me they don't make appointments for haircuts, but rather that I should just come on in. When I got there, they were all very surprised to see me on my scooter. Then, the woman told me she was going to grab a quick lunch and would be right back (!). Then, a different woman started washing my hair. Before she did it, I told her what I wanted. Then she silently washed my hair. Her name was Sabrina, around 50 years old. When we moved to her station, I tried to engage her in conversation, but I got monsyllabic responses. She started by trimming the sides and back the way I had explained, and then she lopped off a big section on the top and I knew I was in for a new look. It's a couple of inches shorted than I had in mind, and she was willing to go even shortr than that! It ended up costing 28.50€ plus a tip. It turns out there is an extra charge for using conditioner and one for using mousse. Wow. Well, this cut should last me a loonng time.

In the afternoon, Dee cooked three batches of Spanish rice for the refugee dinner at Baobab in our home kitchen, adding the leftover taco meat and some beans, filling a rather large pan for me to take. I also brought about 40 oranges, which we cut in half to give out. Normally they only get pasta, so we liked the idea of doing something a bit different, and it was quite tasty. In the late afternoon there were a bunch of kids at the Institute cooking pasta. They came over to the camp on the subway with the Knieses, who had also cooked pasta.  Ugo and Jenna showed up a little later with pasta and vegetables. All in all, I think our group provided over 8kg of pasta and rice, plus fruits and vegetables. There were a number of other volunteers there who brought a bunch of food and helped serve with us. Somebody also provided huge quantities of fresh veggies which a group of the refugees cut up into a big bin of salad. Below are a bunch of photos of this very nice event. The red-haired guy to my right in the group photo is from Kurdistan; he recognized me from last time and was quite friendly.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

My wife was at home all evening, because it would have been a long and difficult walk to the refugee camp for her. She wrote an email to President Pickerd, asking for a release date right after the temple dedication week next March, which is an extension of only about a week. The President said that was no problem, and he even called my wife to see how she is doing. We may go visit some friends up north for a few days before going home, and/or our daughter may come visit and see Italy for the first time. Dee also called her cousin Lynn, whose mom Bette (my mother-in-law's sister) recently passed away at age 90, and they had a good chat. After I got home from Baobab about 8:30pm, we also spoke with our good friend Helen from home. Dee had some good couch time, and even iced her foot twice, which is just what the doctor ordered. I've been wearing a compression stocking on that leg as well, but it's too long, and folding it over makes it too tight. I took it off for the day, which was a relief.

There was a very nice news piece on lds.org about the Herways and their work with the refugees in Italy as part of their LDS Charities mission. You can read it here. We know the Herways fairly well, and they are awesome folks. The story even includes a short paragraph about the fact that our GANS go serve food at the camp once a month, so I guess we are famous.