Sciopero

Thursday morning, I walked up to Todis and got about 70 hamburger buns for Sloppy Joes on Friday night, as well as a real find: generic cream cheese at half the price of the Philadelphia name brand, which Dee uses a lot. Nice! We had to leave a bit early to take the Balzotti's niece, Sarah, into town so she could get to her 12:30 tour of the Vatican Museum. The reason for that is that there was another sciopero (transit strike), so she couldn't take the subway. If it seems like they happen a lot, you are right! She's a  delightful gal, and we had a nice visit on the way down, dropping her off at the train station to grab a taxi from there. 

With it being Thursday, plus sciopero, it was a blessedly light day at the Institute. We both spent the afternoon working on lesson prep, and Dee gave her FH lesson online tonight, wowing the crowd with things you can do with all the different Google tools. Dee writes: I love it when I'm able to take people to another level with something they're already using, or introduce them to something new and wonderful and free. One of her students announced at the last minute that he would be there in person instead of online, which threw us into a panic because we don't have the tech to do that. She always uses a headset to suppress echoes and feedback. We tried a bit to use an audio splitter to connect two headsets without success, but finally just told him to sit in a different room and view the lesson using his phone. We will figure that out ahead of time if it happens again.

It was winter again. High temp was about 50, and it's getting down to freezing at night. Hopefully this is the last hurrah for cold weather before spring takes over for good. Our heat is on a shorter schedule at home, and will turn off completely on 31 March. We got home a bit early, which is nice, because Friday morning we have to leave early for Zone Conference.

Blog update from Tuesday from Dee: This is the office where I went for my permesso (permission to stay in Italy):

On the left, you can see a very familiar picture of Jesus. You would never see a religious picture in a USA government office, and this one is especially interesting since it's a standard LDS portrayal of Jesus. 

On the right, you can see the homemade filing system. The boxes contain the permesso paperwork for hundreds of people, all organized with hand-lettered dividers made out of a cardboard box. The office was pretty dreary and austere, but having a government job is a plum accomplishment.

Napoli

Wednesday being our "off" day at the Institute, we went to Naples for the day for some sightseeing. We had bought the tickets a few months ago, after our trip there with a big group on December 9th. If you recall, due to the holiday crowd and the large group, there was only so much we could do that day. So, we decided to try it on our own on a non-holiday. Later this year we have several visits by family members, so we also wanted to know how to get around and what to do with them. Some time after having bought the non-refundable train tickets, we learned that our zone conference was scheduled for the same day, but we decided to go ahead to Naples and attend the conference for the other Rome zone (this Friday).

We left our house at 7:40am to walk 20 minutes to the subway, taking it down to the Termini train station. Our train left on time at 8:48am, and we arrived comfortably early to get on board and find our seats. The train was half empty, and the hour-long ride down was pleasant and on time; we each napped a bit on the way. At top speed, the train hit almost 300km/h (over 180mph) -- as always, click the photo to enlarge.

It was under 50 degrees F and rainy on our 15 minute walk to the subway, and for several days it had been predicted to be cold and rainy all day in Naples. Fortunately, as the date approached, the forecast softened to scattered showers and closer to 60 degrees as the high, which is what we experienced: a bit of light rain in the morning there, but otherwise clear and only slightly chilly. Nice. It was sunny most of the way down on the train, and we saw beautiful snow-capped mountains in the distance.

Our first item of business was to figure out where the subway was and get some tickets. We had done it in December, but then we were just following the group and not paying much attention. It wasn't very difficult to follow the signs, and now we feel very comfortable getting around for future visits. Dee even had the bright idea to buy 16 subway tickets so we're set for round trips for the two visits coming up this summer. We need eight tickets for the four of us each time. Bring it on, family! I also figured out where the train for Pompeii leaves and where to buy those tickets. After four stops, we got off subway Line 1 at Piazza Dante and walked about 10 minutes to what seems to be the center of old town, where our activities were planned for the day. I got to touch the nose of the famous Pulcinella statue.

First we walked down Christmas street, where in December we were caught in the press of people, moving less than 10 feet per minute for an hour and unable to exit. This time we were able to cover the enter thing without any foot traffic in just a few minutes, though it was still raining lightly.  Dee writes: I really like the Italian nativity scenes, and they have some lovely ones there. They set the manger in a typical Italian town of a couple centuries ago, with lots of common people going about their business while Jesus is in the manger in the same scene. It's a beautiful reminder that no matter what we're doing, the Savior is there, and we need to look for him. You can buy an inexpensive background, made of cork wood, to which you add whatever figures you prefer, paying about 2-4 euros per figurine. Dee loves the bagpipers best. Yes, there are bagpipers in Italy! Unfortunately, what we realized is that it would be very expensive (if not impossible) to get one home in one piece. So we looked for a while and then went on.

After that we went to see the statue of Cristo Velato (Veiled Christ), which is an amazing piece of marble depicting Christ after his death covered by a thin veil. They still aren't quite sure how the artist, Giuseppe Martino, made it in 1753, because the cloth of the veil drapes in an incredibly lifelike way. Here's a photo I found on the internet of the single piece of marble:

The guy whose family owns the chapel housing the statue, Raimondo di Sangro, was quite an inventor, and some people believe that he figured out a chemical way to etch the marble to produce the draping effect. He also invented a type of paint, used for the huge scenes on the ceiling, which still maintains its vivid brightness 250 years later! There were a number of other very impressive things, such as a statue of a man  caught in a net, where the net is a single piece of marble but is a 3D actual net! Several workers at the time refused to help polish it because they were sure it would break and they didn't want to get the blame.

There was also in incredible floor mosaic in the form of a labyrinth, where the pieces were not small things fitted together, but each color was one single piece of marble! 

I know that I am using a lot of exclamation points here, but it was that impressive. We had reserved tickets online so as not to have to wait in line for an hour or two, including 5 euros to get audio headsets for the half-hour guided tour; both were great investments.

After that we took some time for lunch at a little place on the main street. Dee had salmon with grilled vegetables, and I had gnocchi. Of course we shared our entrees, which were both gorgeous and delicious.

After lunch, we went looking for the Lepoldo pastry shop, where I had inadvertently stolen a package of cookies in December. When we explained and tried several times to reimburse them, the clerks just looked at us and laughed. So we munched a few sfogliatelle to drown our sorrows. 😋😊 Just down the street were several jewelry stores, where my wife enjoyed window shopping. She found a pair of cameo earrings that she really liked for only 40 euros, so I bought them for her -- I have a long-standing tradition of buying jewelry for her on trips, which works great for both of us. You can see her wearing them here on the train ride home:

At 2pm, we took a 90-minute tour of Napoli Sotteranea (Underground Naples), taking us down to the old tunnels and wells going back to ancient Greek days. 

It was also used as a bomb shelter during WW II. The tour was available in English, French, and Italian. It was a good workout -- up and down about 300 feet, which left us all winded. We went with the English tour, because we figured they would be using a bunch of words that wouldn't be in our Italian vocabulary. That ended up being a mistake. First of all, the English group was about 20 people, versus only half a dozen in Italian. Second, our guide was a very pleasant gal, but she spoke in quiet tone, so it was hard to hear, especially with all the echoes. She also tried to talk over the Italian tour guide in the same cave a few times, which didn't help because the other guide had a much louder voice. Finally -- and this has happened to us a number of times over the years -- her English pronunciation was often bad enough that it could be hard to understand her at all. It's both an issue of cadence and of mispronunciation, not just British vs. American, though that was a part of it. For example, she was trying to say "chamber pots" at one point, but she did it as if they were French: "shambre pos", and she often put the emphasis on the wrong syllable. In retrospect, we would have been much better off taking the Italian tour and asking for a few words to be explained. In any case, the tour could have easily covered the general concept in about 10 minutes -- they stretched it out with too much of the same theme repeated.  We are glad that we took the tour and also glad that we will never do it again.

After that we slowly made our way back to the subway and the train station. We got there plenty early, exhausted after being on our feet most of the day. A few times we stopped at bookstores during the day to look for an Italian vocabulary book, similar to what we use at home for our FHE lessons. No luck -- the few we found weren't very good (a combination of very easy and very hard, not much in the middle), and in general the clerks at the store don't seem to understand what we are asking for. Maybe they don't have the SAT here! 😉 

While we were waiting in the station for our train, we walked around and window shopped a bit. There was a candy store, which had some cherry/raisin things that looked like hard candies for 30 cents each. I had three 20 cent pieces and hate to carry change, so I bought two of them and emptied my pocket. I love cherries. When I put the first one in my mouth, it was chocolate-covered and quickly opened up, pouring out some liquor onto my tongue! I spit it out, but it's a lesson that we occasionally forget: candies, pastry, and ice cream confections here often contain alcohol. I like to say that I never drink alcohol except occasionally while serving as a missionary in Italy!

Everything went smoothly on the trip back, and we walked in our door just after 8pm, very happy to have gone and equally happy to be able to relax at home.

Permesso #2

Tuesday we went to Lidl before heading downtown, buying a bunch of stuff for the Institute and for some cooking Dee will do this coming weekend. On the way back, we stopped off at the police station for Dee to get her permesso. It took longer in line than we had expected -- about 45 minutes -- but we left home plenty early so that wasn't a problem. Now we are both allowed to stay here through December, 2019, though we will be home well before that!

Our Italian vocabulary book got delivered, but was not at all what it appeared to be. Instead of including lots of vocabulary words with definitions, it seems to be a book about Italian vocabulary in some sort of theoretical/categorical sense. Not at all useful for what we had in mind. Sigh. What is interesting/frustrating here is that books on amazon.it don't seem to have the feature allowing you to look at the first few pages like they do in the US.

Taco Tuesday was back to its more typical size after some really huge events. It was definitely easier to manage, but not quite as much fun!

 

 

There were a few faces we hadn't seen much, which was nice. I overheard one of the kids ask Alkmini (a non-member from Athens) where she wanted to serve her mission! We didn't hear her answer 😀. After lunch ended, my wife made a couple of batches of chocolate chip cookies, which ended up very flat and spread out but tasting wonderful.

We had choir at 5:30pm, with a pretty good showing thanks to the Anziani and Sorelle being there a bit early for English class and joining in. The cookies were for a choir treat, which helps with socializing, and everyone loved them.

During the afternoon my wife cooked a bunch of chicken legs in the two crock pots for events this weekend. Dee writes: The smell of the chicken tantalized the Institute visitors more than the cookies! She was able to get them cooled down enough to bring home in a pot, so she can shred them here. We had a whole bunch of bags to bring home. Unfortunately, we couldn't find a parking spot nearby and ended up carrying it all through the rain for a while. It was good to get home a bit sooner than usual, since Wednesday will be an early day for us.

Friends from home

Before I forget, here are the eight posters we put up for Sunday's open house:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Monday started particularly early for Dee, who had a followup dentist appointment at 9am. She left home about 7:45am to walk to the bus stop, but traffic was quite bad for the bus, so she arrived 20 minutes late. Dee writes: I love walking on the Ponte Milvio bridge. Even though I was running late, I took a couple of pictures. Lovers leave padlocks on the bridge and throw the key in the river.

Here are some more pictures of the cool glasses at the local optician near the bridge. In the past, they have even had monocles.

Fortunately, all went well and quite quickly; she was done by 10am. From there she took the bus and the subway directly to the Institute, because we had friends from home coming to meet us there for lunch. I drove down separately. It rained hard when Dee was traveling earlier, but by the time I drove into town there was sunshine. It's a little chillier than last week, but still quite a bit warmer than the winter has generally been.

Sherry & Gregg from Del Mar just finished a tour of Israel and are in Rome for a couple of days before they go home. We had arranged for our son Rich to take them some stuff to bring to us, which was very welcome. It was fun to greet them at the door of the Institute with Italian bacetti (kisses on each cheek) instead of an American hug. Sherry liked it, but Greg thought it was weird coming from me, which made it all the more fun! Men do that here all the time. We showed them around the Institute and visited for a few minutes, then walked downstairs to the little restaurant/enoteca that Signora Chirra and her husband own. Sherry and Gregg had served a mission in South Africa a few years ago, so we had a good time comparing notes. We had a very nice lunch and visit together, and then they headed out for a day in Rome and we headed back to the Institute.

In the afternoon, we each worked on lesson prep, and Dee did some food prep for Taco Tuesday and beyond, as well as making some yummy rice pudding for dessert for home evening. My lesson for FHE was on how the things of God seem foolish to the world (1 Cor 1:18-27), but how we see the hand of God in all things. We shared some examples from our lives, as well as from the scriptures. There was a very nice spirit there, which was good because we had three non-members and a very inactive member, along with only four "regular" GANS. We also talked about the Pentecostal experience in Acts and at the Kirtland temple dedication. I give the lesson in two languages, by saying a bit in Italian and then in English. In addition, I prepared a bunch of readings for everyone in dual-column format: one column in Italian and the other in English. That way as we went around the room taking turns reading, everyone could follow without needing an audible translation.

 

 

 

We also started a new tradition here, which we have done in our FHEs with our family ever since the kids were little and then with our adult FHE group. We bought a book of 1000 Italian quotes, and somebody in the group picks one that they like and shares it with the group. The young man who picked the quote said, "Here is a quote from Thomas Jefferson." We reminded him to speak in Italian. So, he looked at the book and slowly said "Tommaso Jefferson ":)We also bought an Italian vocabulary book, but that hasn't arrived yet. Next week we'll add our tradition of having somebody pick a word and see who knows its definition.

Alkmini, our delightful, fun, and smart Greek non-member girl, was talking with the missionaries this evening. She is taking the lessons from "her" sisters, and she's the one who went on the missionary activity last week. Anyway, I overhead her say "missionary work is fun!" 😀

After the rice pudding was consumed, the kids played the card game Five Crowns for a while, having a lot of fun until we kicked them out at 9pm because Sheyla wasn't there -- usually she can lock up after we are gone.

 

When we got home, my Italian USB Thinkpad keyboard had been delivered to the office and given to me by the Balzottis. I'll try using it soon when we have a few spare minutes at home (not sure when that will be at this point!) I'm so looking forward to being able to easily type letters with accent marks!

Open house

Sunday was one of those long and wonderful days. We left home at 8:30am for church and returned 11 hours later. It rained quite heavily on the way there, as well as a bit in the early afternoon, but fortunately the rain let up for our open house from 3-6pm. We left early for church to practice for a ward choir number, "Our Father's Love". We probably didn't sound all that great, but we had a rather large group singing, including most of the Relief Society, shown here after the meetings.
Dee writes: The Relief Society President sent out a message Saturday at 5:30pm, asking all the sisters to wear black and a flower. I asked her if she would bring one for the sister missionaries. She told me it's easy for each of us to find one--either from the garden, the plastic centerpiece in the kitchen or the curtain tiebacks. However, we missionaries don't have a garden, centerpiece or curtains, so she brought some for everyone :)

 

It was Ward Conference, but with a special twist: they replaced the bishop. Ugo had told us he was being released after serving about 4 years. The stake president was concerned that he had too much on his plate, with lots of travel for work, the Institute, his family, and being bishop. So in a way he was glad to be released, but at the same time you love the people you serve so much that it's hard to give it up. A stake president once described it as one of those "happy sad days." Our new bishop, Stefano Magnanti (we had lunch at their home a couple of months ago) is a wonderful man, and he will be terrific. We are delighted to sustain him.

My Sunday School lesson, on Joseph in Genesis 34-39, was cut a bit short by the longer Sacrament meeting, which was ok with me. It went fine, with good participation. During the third hour, the stake ran a joint meeting, talking about goals of doing simple, daily things to increase our faith and improve our lives. 

At the very end, the stake president got up and said that he knew we were out of time, but that he had an announcement to make and needed our help. He said that they had been given permission to look for a new chapel location for our ward. The current chapel is not in a good neighborhood, is a bit run down, is over half a mile from the subway, and is on the second floor with only a crude outdoor lift for handicap access, so this was very welcome news. He said that they have a location in mind and a plan, with a meeting on Monday to get the plan approved by Area authorities. The new location is only 50 meters from a subway stop, in a nicer part of town. It will take a bunch of interior construction to turn the facility there into a chapel, and they still need some concessions from the landlord, so he asked us to fast and pray for divine help in getting it all done soon. We were all pretty excited and will have to wait and see what happens.

After church we left directly for the Institute, where Dee started putting out food for the open house. I began printing photos on our nice color laser printer to be used in making eight posters of the various kinds of activities that go on at the Institute, two posters per room. Fortunately, Alessio and Ugo, with two of his kids (Joshua and Sarah), showed up to help us set things up, including gluing the posters together and hanging them on the wall. It was a lot of work, but we were more or less ready in time. 

 

 

 

People started arriving slowly, but by the end we had over 40 people who showed up, which probably exceeded our expectations. The word for open house in Italian is open house, but they don't quite have the concept down. Nobody left until it was over; they didn't seem to get the idea of dropping in for a few minutes and then leaving. That was all good: it meant we had a lot of visiting and a full house.  At the end, one of the stake presidents gave a spiritual message, gathering the whole group together in the biggest classroom (again, not usually what we would do in an open house, but it went well). All the seats were full with more people standing at the door. We got to meet the parents of a number of our GANS kids, which was wonderful.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Dee's carrot cake was the hit of the night. Several kids and adults couldn't get enough of it, and both cakes were consumed. She promised to get the recipe out to a number of people. Italian cakes are usually very simple, sort of like a light, dry pound cake, and no frosting. So the nuts, moist cake and cheesecake frosting knocked them off their feet.

After we got home, I went over to help the Knieses with a problem they were having on their laptops with the church email website. It is probably related to the fact that they use Macbooks instead of Windows machines, as it seems to work fine on Windows. I told them to call the church tech support folks Monday -- sounds like a bug on the server web page.

In the evening Dee got a call from Joe, an Italian cousin from Edmonton whom we met a few years ago. She had given them some family history and thought that he was calling about that, but he was just touching base. He was surprised to learn that we are living in Italy, and he gave us an update on his parents and aunts/uncles, all wonderful folks from Calabria, most now living in Canada, who are the contemporaries of Dee's parents and are not doing well healthwise. It was cool to hear from him.

Permesso di soggiorno!

After a long week and a late night, we each slept in a bit on Saturday morning. For us that usually means 7 to 7:30am 😀. Dee spent the entire day at home. Around 10:30am I ran over to the local police station to try to pick up my permesso di soggiorno (permit to stay), which the mission office said would probably be ready. Things were a bit disorganized and there was no signage to help, but after standing in the wrong line for a while I finally got into the right line. After that it only took about 15 minutes. I then had to produce the correct piece of paper, which again wasn't clear, but the lady was quite nice and helpful, and finally I got my document. Dee will have to come in separately to get hers, as they need a fingerprint scan. The permesso looks like a driver's license, and the expiration date was 01.12.2019. At first I was bummed, thinking that meant that it would expire in Jan 2019, a couple of months before we came home, so we'd have to go through all this again. Then it dawned on me that the date was in European format, meaning Dec 1, 2019, so we actually got a full two-year permit from the date of our original fingerprint appointment. Nice.

I worked on my Sunday School lesson for a good while in the afternoon. With FHE on Monday, I'll have taught five lessons in one week, which is a bit much even for me, but teaching is always fun. Next week is very busy, as you will see, but all with good stuff.

In the evening, Anziano Balzotti and I went together to the Stake Priesthood meeting at the Rome 2 chapel, which is fairly close. Parking is always a challenge there -- we had to walk a few blocks after finding a spot. It was a good meeting, with some excellent talks on building strong spiritual roots, being self-reliant, doing missionary work, and forgiveness. That last talk was given by President Rondinelli, who showed a video with an incredible true story about a man who forgave the young drunk driver who killed his wife and two of his children. President Rondinelli opened it up for discussion, which went well. It is worth noting how different the culture is here. In the US, most such comments from a congregation would be 15-30 seconds each, maybe a minute at the very most. Here, comments are often 3-5 minutes long. Nobody notices; that's just how it is. We Americans are much more in a hurry, which is both good and bad.

Dee made some carrot cake to bring to the Institute open house Sunday; she was busy all day with that and other preparations. I spoke with my mom, and Dee spoke with her parents. Everyone  is doing fine, though there is almost always some kind of drama or entertainment in California; today was no exception -- 'nuf said.

Chicken Thai Pasta

Friday morning I stayed home and worked on my lessons. Dee went out on foot for a while to a couple of local Chinese stores, plus Conad for some food for us. I had time in the afternoon as well for some final lesson prep. 

In the afternoon I went down to the little restaurant just below us to invite Signora Chirra to our open house this Sunday. She's a delightful lady who proudly announced that she is almost 80 years old and has been married for 60 years. They own the larger apartment on the floor below the Institute that we hope to be able to get approval from the church to rent as a new, larger Institute location. I was able to also meet her daughter and granddaughter there. She said she'd come to the open house, and she also gave me some pastries from their store and told me to send my wife down. Dee went down a while later and Signora Chirra showed her some of the Easter egg candy things she makes to sell. She also asked Dee a bit about the church, what we believed in, etc. So hopefully we'll get a chance to explain things a bit more to her soon.

For my Seminary lesson, there were six kids, even without a couple of our regulars. We did some of the same scripture learning games, plus a new one where you try to give a clue using (difficult to identify) consecutive words from one of the 25 doctrinal mastery scriptures, pausing about 30 seconds between words. Each student has a printout of all the scriptures, which they search through frantically. The winner is the one who can get through the most words without anyone finding their scripture. I did one as an example first, just to show them how it worked, and surprisingly I ended up winning with six words! Bingo is their favorite, though we did the plate game again for the newcomer.

 

Ricardo came by to pick up the 120GB SSD that I replaced in my new Dell computer (with a 500GB one). He recently bought a new desktop after consulting with me on the specs. He's very happy with it, except for slow boot times, which I assured him the SSD will fix! Ricardo served a mission in Scotland and Ireland and speaks English with a lovely accent. He's married to an English woman, but two of his younger brothers are in my Institute class, and his dad is in our stake presidency. Dee writes: one of his brothers really loves cheddar cheese and was delighted to hear we can get some for him at our Metro store, where it's much less expensive.

My Book of Mormon lesson went pretty well in the evening, covering 3 Nephi 1-9. I showed the video of "Star Bright" at the appropriate point in the lesson. The kids here don't seem to have the same rules for not talking during lessons; as my wife observed, in the US, at least when they talk they know that they shouldn't be doing so! Anyway, I was able to make it work, mostly by pausing when the the talking got a little out of hand. We had some good discussion about how to make choices in the face of adversity. 

The most effective part of my lesson (judging by how quiet it got) was when I talked about Christ saying "how often would I have gathered you a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings". I shared a favorite story from KathyR, a longtime member of our ward in Carlsbad, who told of her grandmother who actually had a chicken coop in the backyard. One night there was a fire, and the whole thing burned. In the morning, they found the mother hen with her wings spread to protect her chicks, but the mother was burned to death. As they picked up the mother hen, the baby chicks all walked out, alive. It is beautiful imagery, showing how much Christ loves and sacrificed for us.

For the dinner, my wife made chicken Thai pasta. It's a different taste for them, and we're not sure that everyone liked it, but there were a bunch of very happy faces eating it, and it disappeared quickly. We got home pretty late, but it was fun to see the kids all hanging out together.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Dee writes: For the Wednesday activity, the gans went out with the missionaries to do a gesso (chalk). I don't know who first thought up this activity, but it's lots of fun. They take a sheet and lay it on the ground in a piazza and draw something on it. People gather around to see what they're doing and they get to talk to them about the Church. Alkmini, who is not a member of our Church, also came! They had a great time and hopefully touched some hearts.