Tuesday was a fairly full day. Dee gave the devotional with our group, talking about the parable of the good Samaritan and not judging people. She also brought in the parable of the prodigal son a bit. There was some good participation, and the kids seemed to enjoy it. I translated for our Malta girls, TJ and Lienna, while Dee ran the whole show. Our water bottles were a big hit with the group.
After the devotional, Dee went to Assisi on the bus by herself. She took the Rick Steves tour of the two basilicas, and she also did some shopping. Meanwhile, I visited in the lobby with Ugo and some of the other adults and kids. After a while I took a light nap for less than 30 minutes.
In the afternoon we gave our final presentations. Apparently I had ten people signed up for mine, but nobody showed up at all at first. These kids are exhausted after late nights and early mornings. About ten minutes after 3pm, our three girls from Malta, only one of whom (Aisha) speaks Italian, dropped in with an Italian friend to say that they were looking for the class that was in English. I said that there was one next door, but that I could give my class in English, so they decided to do that. Thus I gave my class in English one hour, and then Italian the second hour for only a single student, Alessandra, a cousin of Stefano from Bolzano. Both classes went well, and I recorded the audio. My slides are almost all clip art, with only a little text, so changing languages was easy. Dee had bigger groups than mine, but not by a lot.
After that we had a 6:30pm meeting for the tutor couples. One of the issues that had arisen is that lunch was starting late because not everyone was there on time. The waiters actually come to our table and dish out the food, so it is difficult for them if people are coming in at different times. My wife, being a silly American, said, "but the lunch is listed as running from 1-2pm, so why is it a problem to come in late?" The whole room of Italians erupted, explaining that, in Italy, lunch from 1-2pm means that you sit down to eat at 1pm and eat for an entire hour. It does not mean that you can come anytime during that time, as it would in the US. Silly us! They told us that all the kids would just know that. Culture differences can be subtle and funny at times.
At 7:30pm there was a buffet dinner, followed by a dance with a DJ. We sat by a tutor couple, the the Benignis from Bergamo, and really enjoyed getting to know them. Dee was kinda interested in dancing after dinner, but none of the music was the type that made us want to get out and move. I think that we are just too old for this crowd! Not even the kids were getting into it at first, so the DJ said, "hey guys, come on out and dance to help you digest!" We chuckled, thinking how common such phrases are here and how they almost never happen in the US.
After a while we just headed up to our room for an early evening, which became complicated when my father-in-law's Verizon account sent out a warning that all the month's data (only 1GB for his minimal usage) was already consumed and that he was being charged extra. Yikes! That kind of bill can run up fast. But Verizon wouldn't let either of us log in anymore, saying that it didn't recognize our computers. After a phone call and a bunch of fiddling, my wife was finally able to log on. I still can't log in, and I have generally been managing the account. Not surprisingly, my father-in-law understands nothing about all this, so he has let two people -- one family and one friend -- onto the account, paying for stuff he shouldn't and not knowing that the data could run out when he adds devices. He himself uses almost nothing, but others do. Anyway, we will have to shut down the couple of extra devices involved to avoid running up a big bill, but fortunately so far the damage is minimal. We got to bed late after all. 😕