Ferragosto

Wednesday was Ferragosto, a major holiday in Italy, the most vacationy day in a month of vacations. Almost every business is closed all day. In the morning it was actually cool outside due to the rain the night before, so much so that we turned off the AC and opened the windows. After the sun was up for a while it started getting humid again, so windows didn't stay open for too long, but it was still refreshing. We were at home all day until the evening. Dee went for a long walk in the morning and took photos of how many empty parking spots there are all around.

The mission requested that missionaries do a "deep cleaning" of their apartments, and Dee did a nice job cleaning the bedrooms, kitchen, and bathrooms. I took out the aerators from the faucets in the kitchen and bathrooms, which were almost blocked with calcium depositsI  (the water is very hard around here), and soaked them in vinegar. After a while, the deposits were gone or easy to wipe off. Once that was done, the faucets all had very smooth water flow instead of water squirting out very hard in a few places like before.

We also traded tables with the sisters below us. I knew they had a small one, with sometimes 4 - 8 sisters staying there, while we had a big extensible one which could easily seat 8 when expanded; I used it for my desk, but it was bigger than I needed. So it made a lot sense to swap. This one is a little smaller than I thought, but I'm happy to have helped the sisters.

I mentioned that Dee has bought some new African necklaces, and here are some photos.

Purple wood beads and shells

Teal flat discs and wooden beads

Blue glass beads in brass, discs of many colors, blue, green, brown, white glass beads. My favorite.

In the evening, we drove down to Ugo's and Jenna's house for a barbecue. A few of our GANS planned to attend, as well as members of our ward. Chris, our nonmember American, also came. The drive is nearly an hour, and fortunately there was not much traffic. It was the second time I drove there, so it was somewhat easier, but many intersections are still confusing, even with good help from Google Maps. On the way down, we used my US Moto phone and a Vodafone SIM card to make sure that there was a good cellular internet connection with that phone, and it worked great. Once there, I tried using my new Iliad SIM card for internet access on my European (GSM) dual-SIM phone, but the internet wasn't working at their house, even though the signal "bars" showed it was connected. On the drive back, I tried using it for GPS navigation, without much luck. Fortunately, with a little direction from me, my techno-babe wife was able to Google on her phone how to configure the Iliad Access Point Name (APN) in the phone, and boom! -- it worked like a champ. Still more testing needed, but very promising.

Junior, our non-member from Cameroon, took the train out to Ugo's place, and we picked him up and dropped him off at the station, which is only a couple of miles away. The sky darkened as we were heading down to Ugo's and it rained most of the way. Thus, they had to barbecue on the patio underneath their second story apartment, which then filled with smoke. There was a bunch of stuff to eat: various chips and dip, pasta salad, sausage, arrosticini, steak, with lots of soft drinks. We all ate until we were stuffed, with still a ton left over, including some freshly-caught trout that got cooked after everyone was full. We left about 8:30pm and got home about an hour later, full and happy after some great visiting. Someone commented on how strange it was to see Doug in a blue shirt instead of a white shirt and tie. And I enjoyed wearing jeans!

We got to meet Nauvoo. She has been working in London, so we had never seen her before. Her father is the amazing musician who translated the hymn book. We also had Federico and Cristina, who are getting married on September 29.

 

 

 

I tried to work on the Kraken gloves, but the fair isle work is difficult. I'll figure out how to do it eventually. I think I'll have some free time on the bus to Switzerland.

Since I'll be teaching family history at the singles conference, I listened to the Genealogy Gems podcast while I cleaned out, to get geared up. If you have the slightest interest in genealogy, you should try it.

Before we left for Ugo's, I had just painted my toenails and they weren't dry. I googled ways to speed it up and learned that ice water does the trick in a couple of minutes. Who knew?