Weight lifting

Thursday morning again involved a lot of errands. I walked to the Chinese store for a few things, then up to Todis to get some food items for the big dinner Friday night. There were also two large loads of dishes to wash, thanks to all the cooking Dee had done in her chairiot, plus a trip down to empty our trash into the big bins outside our complex. I was exhausted even before leaving for the Institute! 

We had a big and heavy load of stuff to carry down to the car: two big shopping bags and a thermal bag filled with food and blue ice, not to mention our shoulder bags. The car was parked way down by Conad, so I dropped off Dee and the bags at the curb, then walked down to get the car and drive it around the big block to pull up in front of Dee. She wondered why it took so long, but she hadn't realized how far away I had to go the night before to find a parking spot. There were also a shopping bag and six two-liter bottles of water (about 25 pounds) in the trunk from my Lidl shopping trip the day before. 

When we got to the Institute, I was able to get everything upstairs with only two trips up the elevator, though Dee had to go separately first because we couldn't both fit with her scooter and my bags. The elevators here are quite small, holding 3 or 4 people only in a pinch; usually we fill it with just the two of us and our bags. Here is a photo of everything that I carried into the Institute.

Doug's weightlifting for one day

Thankfully we have a reserved parking spot in the courtyard downstairs. I don't think we could do our calling without that, as walking several blocks with all those bags would be a killer. Some readers may ask why we make so many shopping trips. That is actually a good question, and there are several factors in play. First of all, we buy a lot of fresh produce which needs to be replenished frequently. Second, we don't have much storage here, so we often need to go buy something that we would already have in our pantry or tool chest back at home. Perhaps most importantly, we have to carry stuff a long way. The local markets involve walking a block or two each way, and are not amenable to driving. Our little rolling cart can only hold a bag or two of groceries. When we drive to a supermarket such as Lidl (which has parking), even a good parking spot near our apartment involves over 100 yards of walking, so we are limited by what we can carry. There have been studies showing that some areas of Italy have longer life spans than the US, which the authors often attribute to the Mediterranean diet. However, correlation is not causation, and we instead believe that folks may be healthier here because they have to walk and carry stuff a lot more.

At the Institute during the afternoon, I worked on my lesson for Friday, and handled a bunch of other housekeeping items. On Wednesday night at Baobab, I met a women named Bette who wants some help with a refugee catering service she is try to get started on her own nickel. The goal is not to make money for herself, but to get some refugees trained to do food service and start their own business. She was wondering if any of our kids could help her with the website and marketing. Her parents are from Africa, she was raised in New York (and so speaks English natively), and her husband is an Italian. We spoke on the phone during the afternoon for a while. I asked her to write up a one-page description of what she had in mind, and I will then see if any of our kids want to help out, as a service project.

I also invited both stake presidents to our upcoming Mosiah marathon on the 27th, where the GANS will gather to read the entire book of Mosiah out loud together. Dee writes: Claudia, Ugo and I had fun coming up with this: Mamma Mia Ma Mica Mancherai alla Meravigliosa Maratona di Mosia per Molti Mormoni Magnifici nel Mese di Maggio 
aka MMMMMMMMMMMMM We want the presidents to show up for a bit as "guest readers", giving them a chance to hang with the kids. One of them already responded that he would love to be there.

The Canfields, the senior couple here working at the new Friendship Center down the street, want a parking spot as well, so I got in touch with our landlord who says he has one available in our courtyard. He will drop by on Friday to discuss it further. The church pays about 135€ per month for our spot, and it is money very well spent for our calling.

Thursdays there are no scheduled activities, and we had only a handful of GANS. Missionary transfers also happened, so we had a number of young elders in and out during the day. The fact that our campus is so near to Termini (the main train station) makes it a natural gathering and resting spot while waiting for a train to arrive or depart. Nobody showed up for English class, which I would have had to teach since the new Ganziano's train from Palermo ran late. We did get to meet Ganziano Papritz briefly, on his way to the apartment from the train with all his luggage. He got the quick tour of the place. My wife explained that we have three different WiFi access points, each with a different name, and Anziano Wijesundera didn't even know that after six weeks here! Anziano Jensen, our new DL in Roma 3 ward, also came by for a while. He is a former Ganziano, here when the campus opened, and is well known to be a wonderful and very upbeat guy.

In the morning, I did all the floors. There is so much dust here. I'm glad I can do it all from my chairiot, because they really needed it. Sometimes I lift some weights from my chair, but I certainly don't move much, so the floor cleaning was a pleasant change, actually.

To get ready for Friday's dinner of Crack Chicken, I've been crockpotting all week. The elders and GANS all asked about it yearningly.

Since I had some freer time on Thursday, I took the opportunity to gather all my Italian genealogy helps in one place. Anziano Balzotti had asked for them a few times (especially the Latin helps), and I was glad for the nudge to get it all organized. He brought over a ONE GIG flash drive to put it all on. How old is it?? We had a lot of fun kidding him about it.