Friday morning we drove Wes and Alyssa to the airport, leaving here at 8:15am. Traffic was fairly light, with only a few brief slowdowns on the freeway. We arrived at 9am, in plenty of time for their 11am departure. It was good having them here and we will miss them, but it is always nice to get back to our usual life, as a few things have piled up for us. The traffic coming back was even better, so we were home before 10am. After that, I went to get a well-needed haircut, while Dee went to Conad to get some produce for us. I moved my computer setup to the back bedroom again to enjoy the AC. Francesco, my barber, said that this year is hot, but nothing like last summer, when the heat started in April.
Right after getting to the Institute, Dee headed off on the Metro to her doctor's office to get a custom orthotic for her feet (she was fitted a few weeks ago), as well as pick up her x-ray prints from the clinic nearby. First she had to get a truck to move out of our way so that I could go into our driveway. There has been some street construction going on for a while, and in the evening we had to get another truck to move from its blocking position. Hopefully the construction will be done soon. Her new orthotics seem to work very well for her. I have worn foot orthotics for almost 20 years and they have made a huge difference for me, so hopefully hers will end up equally helpful.
I spent the entire afternoon at the Institute, but nobody showed up because there would be no activity in the evening due to a stake fireside. So we closed up and came home about 6pm. It was a busy afternoon, however. The electronic key box to open the gate is broken, so I had to contact the landlord. There are two of them, one still working, but if that one goes out we will be stuck either inside or outside. I also found out how to change the billing address for a credit card on Amazon; their chat support was very good, although hard to locate. Next time the mission needs something, I'll try the mission credit card again to see if it works.
At my suggestion, on my way back from the doctor, Dee bought me a Google Home Mini from a local electronics store at the train station. We like them and our Amazon Echo a lot, so this gives us one in each bedroom and the living room. Electronics costs a lot more here than in the US, not just because of the value-added tax (22%). It is not clear why things cost so much, but prices are often more than 50% higher. When she got back, she was very hot and sweaty, but she loves being able to walk around again.
As you may have noticed, I caught up on blog entries for the week. That took some time. Unfortunately, blogger.com had some major formatting problems with the entries which I had started on my tablet. After some googling of the problem, I finally was able to fix the format issues, but it was frustrating.
Closing up early, we got here by about 6:30pm, very early for us. Dee was tired after an exhausting week and a short night, so she was out for the night by 8:30pm. Sorella Knies said that, with their guests, they tell them that "Rome is a trip, not a vacation." Maybe we need to work in a bit more relax time during family visits!
Cousin Lynn's first day with my in-laws seemed to go very well. She gave us some updates throughout her day, which all seemed very promising. I got her bank account number and was able to transfer money to her account online successfully. So far, so good!
Saturday, July 21, 2018
Friday, July 20, 2018
Birthday in Napoli
Thursday was our second and last full day in Napoli. It was very hot and humid. In the morning we checked out and left our luggage at the hotel, locked in a room near the front desk. It has been tough not having a laptop with a keyboard; phone and tablet are not as good for how we usually roll. If we knew better how well the hotel would have cared for our stuff, we might have brought out laptops.
It was also my 62nd birthday, and our kids and a few friends sent some good wishes. We took the Metro to the historic downtown area. There were some very kind people on the metro, one immediately giving up his seat for my wife with her walking stick, and another elderly man giving up his seat for a mom with a stroller; then a young woman got up to give him her seat! We walked around the streets, stopping for Wes and Alyssa to do some shopping. They got to run the nose of Pulcinella, a long-time tourist tradition.
We also walked down Christmas street, though nobody bought anything. After hitting lots of shops throughout downtown, we stopped again at Cafe Diaz for a nice lunch (Dee and I ate there in March). We asked if they had air conditioning, which they did, but it was right next to the very hot kitchen, so we did better outside under the shadow of a big awning with some nice breeze. The waiter also brought us ice cubes for our water, which is often thought of here as unhealthy. I had a salmon salad, and Wes had some wonderful risotto.
After lunch we did more shopping, with Wes and Alyssa buying a few things. Dee looked at jewelry but didn't buy anything, despite my urging. I love buying jewelry for her, so I told her that I wanted to do that for my birthday. How very selfish of her not to buy anything! 😉😏 I enjoyed some nice gelato, and Dee bought some delicious taralli (read about them here).
We also found the Cloister of Santa Chiara (Chiara is the name of our oldest daughter). She was apparently one of the first followers of San Francesco di Assisi, so the order has a long history.
At 4pm Wes and Alyssa had a scheduled tour of Sansevero Chapel, which we really enjoyed in March, with the amazing statue of the Veiled Christ. There have always been big lines before, so we had bought them a reserved ticket, but there was no line this time. They just stayed inside a short while, which is enough to enjoy the amazing statues. Then we were all exhausted and hot, so we headed back to the train station. We picked up our luggage and hung out in the air conditioning in the lobby for a while, before walking over to the station to grab a bite and wait for the train.
The train was on time, and the Knieses (with some friends of theirs from Texas) ended up in our same car! Dee visited with them a good part of the way back. When we arrived at the Institute, we picked up our laptops which we had left locked up inside. Wes and Alyssa decided that they wanted to go see Trevi Fountain one more time before leaving the next morning, so they headed out on the Metro while we drove home. We arrived about 9pm. Dee started laundry immediately, and I took a shower to rinse off after a hot day. It was still hot outside, but at least we could sleep in the cool. The trip to Napoli was good, but maybe a bit too long and definitely exhausting.
When Wes and Alyssa got back, we did a bit of business, giving him some stuff to take home and doing accounting for how much they owed us for various tickets. They left us most of their euros, all of their Metro tickets, and the SIM cards they had borrowed. We planned a bit for how the logistics would work in the morning. Dee gave Alyssa a small gift: a sturdy Italian shopping bag with a horse painted on it. Dee didn't know that Alyssa was into horses when she bought it, so it was a good pick.
It was good to be home.
It was also my 62nd birthday, and our kids and a few friends sent some good wishes. We took the Metro to the historic downtown area. There were some very kind people on the metro, one immediately giving up his seat for my wife with her walking stick, and another elderly man giving up his seat for a mom with a stroller; then a young woman got up to give him her seat! We walked around the streets, stopping for Wes and Alyssa to do some shopping. They got to run the nose of Pulcinella, a long-time tourist tradition.
We also found the Cloister of Santa Chiara (Chiara is the name of our oldest daughter). She was apparently one of the first followers of San Francesco di Assisi, so the order has a long history.
The train was on time, and the Knieses (with some friends of theirs from Texas) ended up in our same car! Dee visited with them a good part of the way back. When we arrived at the Institute, we picked up our laptops which we had left locked up inside. Wes and Alyssa decided that they wanted to go see Trevi Fountain one more time before leaving the next morning, so they headed out on the Metro while we drove home. We arrived about 9pm. Dee started laundry immediately, and I took a shower to rinse off after a hot day. It was still hot outside, but at least we could sleep in the cool. The trip to Napoli was good, but maybe a bit too long and definitely exhausting.
When Wes and Alyssa got back, we did a bit of business, giving him some stuff to take home and doing accounting for how much they owed us for various tickets. They left us most of their euros, all of their Metro tickets, and the SIM cards they had borrowed. We planned a bit for how the logistics would work in the morning. Dee gave Alyssa a small gift: a sturdy Italian shopping bag with a horse painted on it. Dee didn't know that Alyssa was into horses when she bought it, so it was a good pick.
It was good to be home.
Thursday, July 19, 2018
Pompeii and North Pole Gelato
Wednesday morning, after a good sleep, Dee and I went out to see a foundling wheel (ruota degli esposti), only a few blocks from our hotel. This is a place where mothers, usually unwed, would leave their babies to be taken care of the state or church. It functioned for about 250 years, ending in the 1870s. There is a little wheeled compartment where she would put the child, often with some kind of small note or token in case she later decided to come claim the child, and then turn the wheel so the baby could be taken inside, without revealing the identity of the mom. Very sad, but interesting. The foundlings were often given very positive last names, such as Brillanti, Diamante, Stellato, Innocenti, etc.
Alyssa had slept better, and we took the train about noon to Pompeii, where we had lunch together at the Hortus Pompei restaurant, right outside the entrance to the excavations. It has a lovely, shaded outdoor dining area.
From there, we took them across the street to meet the private tour guide, Cinzia. Since I had just seen it last month and Dee wasn't up to all that walking, we two left the three of them to go see the site. The private tour was a gift from us to Wes and Alyssa -- having a good guide can make all the difference, and Cinzia is wonderful.
Dee and I were able to grab a train back right away, not very crowded this time. We were able to sit down, on the opposite side from the sun. Arriving back downtown in Napoli, we took the subway up to the national archeological museum, which is quite renowned. We didn't do it justice at all -- should have hired a guide -- but we wanted to see if it was a good proxy for Pompeii, as apparently they have a lot of artifacts there. The brief answer is no. It has cool stuff, but without the same impact as seeing the streets, shops, home, and body casts in situ. The museum did not have any AC, which meant we were sweating pretty badly after a lot of walking in the sun to get there. It seems odd to us that, with all the art and artifacts, they don't try to keep them in a temperature-controlled environment. There was one person who had fainted, perhaps from heat exhaustion, and was getting medical attention. Also, there were tons of stairs everywhere, with no elevator or escalator in sight. I was worried about Dee, as stairs are still her biggest challenge, but she did ok. Not only does Italy not have the equivalent of ADA, at times it seems they almost go out of their way to be hostile to handicapped people. There was a scale model of the Pompeii excavations which was kinda interesting.
Meanwhile, back in Carlsbad, our kitchen fridge bit the dust after twenty years of service. Rich currently has no way to keep things cold and had to toss a bunch of food. Before leaving, we had hoped that our old appliances would last 18 more months, but apparently not. The dryer has had problems and the fridge has now died. Hopefully that will be all until we get home! Anyway, Dee bought a replacement online, a Kenmore from sears.com, scheduled to be delivered Friday.
Wes and Alyssa really enjoyed the tour of Pompeii, but they were fried from the sun and pretty wiped out. We had given them our portable umbrellas to use as parasols, but they didn't think they would need them, which was a mistake. Dee found a very nice restaurant just a block or two from our hotel for dinner, the Antica Trattoria e Pizzeria da Donato. It got great reviews and we really enjoyed it. We had been thinking of taking a taxi down to the Lungomare waterfront area for dinner, but traffic was looking like well over half an hour each way, so it was good to have something close. Unfortunately, Alyssa was not feeling well and went back to the hotel without eating. The poor girl is running on fumes.
After dinner, the three of us went looking for some gelato. We asked at a cafe on the main piazza (Garibaldi) outside the train station. They didn't have any, but the waiter, Leopoldo, recognized our name tags. He said he lives near our chapel and knows some Mormons. He asked about the free English classes, hoping that there some some in the morning (unfortunately not), since evenings do not work for him. We asked about gelato, and he told us about a great one called Gelateria Polo Nord (North Pole Gelato) near his house, about ten minutes by foot. We found it on Google Maps and had a pleasant walk as it was getting dark. There was one area along the way which was a bit scary, but we had some great gelato and enjoyed the walk.
My wife spoke on the phone with her cousin Lynn, who is set for her first day helping out at the home of my in-laws on Thursday. We are very hopeful that this will all work out. Lynn has some good ideas and is a great cook, which should make her very popular there! This would be a wonderful miracle if it works out, so your prayers would be appreciated.
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| The wheel is on the left. |
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| An eyewitness description of the process from 1877 |
Wes and Alyssa really enjoyed the tour of Pompeii, but they were fried from the sun and pretty wiped out. We had given them our portable umbrellas to use as parasols, but they didn't think they would need them, which was a mistake. Dee found a very nice restaurant just a block or two from our hotel for dinner, the Antica Trattoria e Pizzeria da Donato. It got great reviews and we really enjoyed it. We had been thinking of taking a taxi down to the Lungomare waterfront area for dinner, but traffic was looking like well over half an hour each way, so it was good to have something close. Unfortunately, Alyssa was not feeling well and went back to the hotel without eating. The poor girl is running on fumes.
After dinner, the three of us went looking for some gelato. We asked at a cafe on the main piazza (Garibaldi) outside the train station. They didn't have any, but the waiter, Leopoldo, recognized our name tags. He said he lives near our chapel and knows some Mormons. He asked about the free English classes, hoping that there some some in the morning (unfortunately not), since evenings do not work for him. We asked about gelato, and he told us about a great one called Gelateria Polo Nord (North Pole Gelato) near his house, about ten minutes by foot. We found it on Google Maps and had a pleasant walk as it was getting dark. There was one area along the way which was a bit scary, but we had some great gelato and enjoyed the walk.
My wife spoke on the phone with her cousin Lynn, who is set for her first day helping out at the home of my in-laws on Thursday. We are very hopeful that this will all work out. Lynn has some good ideas and is a great cook, which should make her very popular there! This would be a wonderful miracle if it works out, so your prayers would be appreciated.
Wednesday, July 18, 2018
Antibiotics
Tuesday morning we were going to take Wes and Alyssa to the catacombs nearby. However, she had been unable to sleep, apparently for the second night in a row, because she had a bunch of bug bites all over her legs and feet. They were itching, painful, and red. It was too bad that she didn't say something earlier, but she was trying to be a trooper. My wife immediately called Sorella Knies, who had just gone through something similar and had a prescription antibiotic to recommend. Fortunately, Dee was able to walk down to a local pharmacy and get some without a prescription for Alyssa. The pharmacists here have much more latitude than in the US. Dee also got some anti-itch cream. Both seemed to help quite a bit, but Alyssa was still pretty wiped out, so she slept some and they took it easy most of the day. Being ill while traveling is the pits.
Anziani Balzotti e Knies both need new computer monitors, and they called me for advice. It was Amazon Prime Day here, so they had Dee's 27" monitor on sale for a great price: only 120€. I offered to buy one on our Prime account (limit one per customer), since they apparently do not have an account. Unfortunately, my mission credit card got rejected for payment, as did that of Anziano Knies. Very odd. So I put it on my personal credit card and will get reimbursed. I asked him to look into why Amazon and HSBC don't like each other, because this has happened before. He got an answer via email, too late for this order, explaining that we need to set the card up with the church billing address in Salt Lake, not the mission office. Sometime soon I hope to verify that works.
We had a big Taco Tuesday event, with Gabriele as the guest of honor because he is leaving on a mission for England on Wednesday. Unfortunately, my photos from that day are very low resolution. It won't happen again, but I'm sorry to not have a good photo. Ugo noticed the problem when I sent out the photo to the WhatsApp group, and I was grateful to discover it fairly quickly.
We closed the Institute at 4pm so we could leave for Napoli on the train with Wes and Alyssa. It is the first time we have done that on a big day like Tuesday, but it's summer so it is not a big deal. Wes and Alyssa came in late, just in time for us to leave, so she was feeling a little better by then.
The train to Napoli was on time, but the AC was barely working. There were Italians wearing sweaters and sweatshirts (one guy had both). I think they must be a different species when it comes to heat and cold!
We arrived at the hotel -- ibis Styles -- only a few blocks from the train station, by about 6:30pm. It was very nice and modern, in a great location for us. After unpacking and relaxing for a while, we headed out for pizza at a local joint the missionaries love. It was about a 15-minute walk, and Dee handled that just fine, with her walking stick that she really likes. It actually speeds her up quite a bit! She is really getting around great now.
On the way, as we were passing the station, we ran into Peter and Maxwell from our Institute class. After hugs all around, we invited them to join us, but Maxwell doesn't like pizza, and they probably had something else scheduled anyway. Too bad -- it would have been a lively evening with them. The pizza was very good and very filling. We had a few appetizers first, including fried zucchini flowers (one of my wife's favorites). Fortunately we saw the size of the pizzas and decided to get one for each couple and share. Thanks goodness -- by the end were were all stuffed!
It had cooled down somewhat by the time we walked home. The hotel had nice AC, and the rooms were fairly spacious by Italian standards. I gave Alyssa a few of my benadryl tablets, which also help you get to sleep. Hopefully that will be useful for her after some tough days.
Anziani Balzotti e Knies both need new computer monitors, and they called me for advice. It was Amazon Prime Day here, so they had Dee's 27" monitor on sale for a great price: only 120€. I offered to buy one on our Prime account (limit one per customer), since they apparently do not have an account. Unfortunately, my mission credit card got rejected for payment, as did that of Anziano Knies. Very odd. So I put it on my personal credit card and will get reimbursed. I asked him to look into why Amazon and HSBC don't like each other, because this has happened before. He got an answer via email, too late for this order, explaining that we need to set the card up with the church billing address in Salt Lake, not the mission office. Sometime soon I hope to verify that works.
We had a big Taco Tuesday event, with Gabriele as the guest of honor because he is leaving on a mission for England on Wednesday. Unfortunately, my photos from that day are very low resolution. It won't happen again, but I'm sorry to not have a good photo. Ugo noticed the problem when I sent out the photo to the WhatsApp group, and I was grateful to discover it fairly quickly.
The train to Napoli was on time, but the AC was barely working. There were Italians wearing sweaters and sweatshirts (one guy had both). I think they must be a different species when it comes to heat and cold!
We arrived at the hotel -- ibis Styles -- only a few blocks from the train station, by about 6:30pm. It was very nice and modern, in a great location for us. After unpacking and relaxing for a while, we headed out for pizza at a local joint the missionaries love. It was about a 15-minute walk, and Dee handled that just fine, with her walking stick that she really likes. It actually speeds her up quite a bit! She is really getting around great now.
Tuesday, July 17, 2018
Laundry schedule challenges
Monday was a really humid day, but it was overcast so not quite as hot in the afternoon as on prior days. With guests and their busy travel schedule, laundry has been a challenge. Dee did some loads for them while they were out of town over the weekend, and I loaned Wes my nice Columbia shorts because his were in the wash. They fit him great, and they breathe really well. He now wants to get a pair when he gets home! The problem is that I want them for our Napoli trip on Tuesday, so Dee had to run some loads Monday morning for them to be dry in time for me to pack. My wife is the laundry queen, so she got it all done.
Recently I changed the camera app on my Moto phone. The built-in one has been getting slower and slower to snap a shot, for no apparent reason. So I installed another very popular app, Camera MX, which seems to work very well. After a couple of weeks, however, I discovered that by default it was saving photos to the internal memory, not my (much larger) SD card, where they need to go. So I changed the setting to go there, but apparently in so doing I set the camera resolution to ultra low 😥😞 (e.g., 18KB for a photo instead of 2MB+). Fortunately I caught the problem after just about two days, without many photos taken. I then ran a file explorer app to copy the interim files from internal storage over to the SD card, but that reset all the file times and dates to 1970 (which is the zero date for the FAT file system). Sigh. That is a bug, not a feature! I will have to fix that sometime soon, which will take some work.
In the morning I took Wes and Alyssa to the local Chinese store just to show them around. Alyssa immediately started looking at the clothes. She is small enough that Italian clothing looks pretty appealing to her. I also walked to Conad and the Chinese store without a cane for the first time!
We all drove to the Institute a bit earlier than usual so that we could have AC (our office in the living room has no AC, and our guests are in the back bedroom, so I can't work there). I walked the two of them over to get some cash from the ATM, and I did so as well. Then I dropped them off at the Metro to go see the Colosseum and Forum, with some directions on how to walk to get the best view of the Forum (up behind the Campidoglio). They also went to the Pantheon, then went home to rest for the evening. They were really worn out. We later found out that Alyssa had some bad bug bites which were driving her crazy and had made it difficult to sleep, which is not fun.
In the afternoon, I gave Claudio some feedback on his new desktop computer component selections. Finally I was able to make a copy of the Institute door key for Dee that actually worked; it was expensive, but we now each have one again. Sandro from our ward came by to work with Dee on family history again, though they didn't find anything this time. It was P-day for the young missionaries, so we had a number of them around for a bunch of the afternoon: who can argue with AC and WiFi?
One very interesting recent development is that, with this heat, my wife has developed a taste for the Fanta orange soda that I love here. Ever since I have known her, she has never enjoyed soda, but something about a cold Fanta hits her just right when it is hot outside. We now have several big bottles in the fridge!
For my home evening lesson, I shared a brief video and some quotes from Margaret Barker, a Methodist minister and Old Testament scholar from England who has written many books, much of which is very friendly to LDS beliefs. She has developed a set of LDS fans, and I have read many of her books and seen her speak a few times. My lesson was mostly from her talk at the 2005 World of Joseph Smith conference at the Library of Congress, celebrating the 200th anniversary of his birth, but also from a 2012 temple seminar in Logan, Utah, where I got her to autograph one of her books for me. She had many interesting observations about the Book of Mormon and its correlation with other ancient religious texts. It was a rather small group, but the kids seemed to really enjoy it. It was a terrific lesson, and the GANS were riveted on what Doug was saying. Jomar said it's the kind of reinforcement he appreciates for when his friends and family have questions or doubts.
Dee made school cafeteria peanut butter bars for dessert, which were really popular. I walked down the 63 steps from the Institute, and my ankle didn't hurt! On the way home, it was raining hard, with thunder and lightning. We gave a ride to Sorelle Neuberger and Yanacallo, from South Carolina and Ecuador/Genova, respectively, who now live beneath us. We joked that there was no missionary from Utah in the car, which is unusual with that many of us, so maybe that caused the lightning! 😀😉
The first president of the Rome Temple has been announced: It's Craig Pacini, and his wife will be the matron. They served as Mission President here 1999-2002. He also served here when he was young and he has dual citizenship. The people who knew him are so happy, and say he is a terrific man.
Recently I changed the camera app on my Moto phone. The built-in one has been getting slower and slower to snap a shot, for no apparent reason. So I installed another very popular app, Camera MX, which seems to work very well. After a couple of weeks, however, I discovered that by default it was saving photos to the internal memory, not my (much larger) SD card, where they need to go. So I changed the setting to go there, but apparently in so doing I set the camera resolution to ultra low 😥😞 (e.g., 18KB for a photo instead of 2MB+). Fortunately I caught the problem after just about two days, without many photos taken. I then ran a file explorer app to copy the interim files from internal storage over to the SD card, but that reset all the file times and dates to 1970 (which is the zero date for the FAT file system). Sigh. That is a bug, not a feature! I will have to fix that sometime soon, which will take some work.
In the morning I took Wes and Alyssa to the local Chinese store just to show them around. Alyssa immediately started looking at the clothes. She is small enough that Italian clothing looks pretty appealing to her. I also walked to Conad and the Chinese store without a cane for the first time!
We all drove to the Institute a bit earlier than usual so that we could have AC (our office in the living room has no AC, and our guests are in the back bedroom, so I can't work there). I walked the two of them over to get some cash from the ATM, and I did so as well. Then I dropped them off at the Metro to go see the Colosseum and Forum, with some directions on how to walk to get the best view of the Forum (up behind the Campidoglio). They also went to the Pantheon, then went home to rest for the evening. They were really worn out. We later found out that Alyssa had some bad bug bites which were driving her crazy and had made it difficult to sleep, which is not fun.
In the afternoon, I gave Claudio some feedback on his new desktop computer component selections. Finally I was able to make a copy of the Institute door key for Dee that actually worked; it was expensive, but we now each have one again. Sandro from our ward came by to work with Dee on family history again, though they didn't find anything this time. It was P-day for the young missionaries, so we had a number of them around for a bunch of the afternoon: who can argue with AC and WiFi?
One very interesting recent development is that, with this heat, my wife has developed a taste for the Fanta orange soda that I love here. Ever since I have known her, she has never enjoyed soda, but something about a cold Fanta hits her just right when it is hot outside. We now have several big bottles in the fridge!
For my home evening lesson, I shared a brief video and some quotes from Margaret Barker, a Methodist minister and Old Testament scholar from England who has written many books, much of which is very friendly to LDS beliefs. She has developed a set of LDS fans, and I have read many of her books and seen her speak a few times. My lesson was mostly from her talk at the 2005 World of Joseph Smith conference at the Library of Congress, celebrating the 200th anniversary of his birth, but also from a 2012 temple seminar in Logan, Utah, where I got her to autograph one of her books for me. She had many interesting observations about the Book of Mormon and its correlation with other ancient religious texts. It was a rather small group, but the kids seemed to really enjoy it. It was a terrific lesson, and the GANS were riveted on what Doug was saying. Jomar said it's the kind of reinforcement he appreciates for when his friends and family have questions or doubts.
The first president of the Rome Temple has been announced: It's Craig Pacini, and his wife will be the matron. They served as Mission President here 1999-2002. He also served here when he was young and he has dual citizenship. The people who knew him are so happy, and say he is a terrific man.
Light blogging alert
We are travelling in Naples with our son for a few days, without our laptops, so we probably won't blog for a bit. I promise to catch up at the end of week.
Monday, July 16, 2018
Dinner with Daniela
Sunday morning we went to church, with Dee wearing normal shoes, not tennis shoes! I was concerned and talked Dee into bringing her tennis shoes in the trunk of the car, just in case, but she didn't need them. Life is good.
Ugo spoke in Sacrament meeting, and also another member. By the time they were done, we only had five minutes left, and still had another speaker to go. We expected to run over as usual, but the last speaker surprised us by skipping many pages of his talk and we ended on time for the first time in several weeks. I was very impressed, and told him so!
Mauro, a BYU prof and good friend of Ugo, was in our ward with his family. He is a native Italian, but his wife is from the San Diego area. Her Italian accent and cadence are amazing; I thought she was a native. Apparently they lived in Rome for a couple of years while he was doing post-doc work at the Vatican, and she obviously picked it up very well.
Dee taught Primary second hour and is apparently doing good things with the kids. Her change of scenery to a different room has helped calm the kids down, and she and they are having fun together. No one asked for the toys, and they were very involved in all the learning activities. It was wonderful. We had Mauro's children, who were very attentive, and some of our more lively children were out of town, so I don't claim credit for the positive outcome. I brought an eyedropper and let them fill it from a bowl and use it to fill a jar. Each time they did the dropperful, they would say something they were grateful for. It was a big hit. However, this is the great part: I brought a visual aid from THREE WEEKS ago and asked what it was about, and Levi, age 6, nailed it. Wow. A little problem at church is that we have no drinking fountain. Poor Levi was so thirsty. When I showed him I had a water bottle, he was more than ready for me to squirt some in his mouth. I taught my temple prep class second hour, which was enjoyable. We talked about the blessings of temple service, reading a lot from D&C 109, the dedicatory prayer of the Kirtland temple. After church, the Hubers gave us a big shopping bag of things we had requested from the commissary. We don't know how much to pay them yet, but it was great to get some good loot.
Next Saturday evening there will be a baptism in our ward: a young refugee named Chris. He started coming to the Friendship Center a while back and said that he always saw all the Mormons as having a light about them, so he wanted to learn about the church. Anyway, he requested that I be the one to baptize him. Of course I am honored to do so, but I don't really know him that well, just having had a few brief conversations. I did bring my baptismal clothes just in case, so it will be nice and I'm honored to use them.
Soon after we got home from church, Wes and Alyssa returned from Florence and Venice. They were hot and tired but had a great time. I picked them up at the nearby Metro Jonio stop. We all took it easy in the afternoon, hanging out in the air-conditioned back rooms.
In the evening we drove over to meet Daniela, Alyssa's cousin, the daughter of Aurora and Alberto from Agrigento. She is clearly an intelligent and lively woman, and looks way younger than her years. She has two cute little dogs and a cat. We got to meet the dogs. I particularly liked Mia, two years old. She was excited to see a cousin .She lamented that she has six cousins who live outside Italy, and it tears her heart. She has never spoken to four of them. We had set up a dinner at a pizzeria just around the corner from her house. It was not a tourist spot, and only Italians were there. The menu was completely in Italian, too. Who knew it was common to get pizza without sauce, or without cheese? We also had dessert. I learned that semifreddo has different ingredients than ice cream. Wes had a strawberry semifreddo that was the best of the bunch. She was delightful, fun and talkative. We translated for her and Alyssa, but of course it is a somewhat limited way to facilitate a conversation. It was a wonderful evening, with great food and company. We tried to pay for the dinner, but Daniela said, in effect, "no way -- you brought my cousin to see me!"
Ugo spoke in Sacrament meeting, and also another member. By the time they were done, we only had five minutes left, and still had another speaker to go. We expected to run over as usual, but the last speaker surprised us by skipping many pages of his talk and we ended on time for the first time in several weeks. I was very impressed, and told him so!
Mauro, a BYU prof and good friend of Ugo, was in our ward with his family. He is a native Italian, but his wife is from the San Diego area. Her Italian accent and cadence are amazing; I thought she was a native. Apparently they lived in Rome for a couple of years while he was doing post-doc work at the Vatican, and she obviously picked it up very well.
Dee taught Primary second hour and is apparently doing good things with the kids. Her change of scenery to a different room has helped calm the kids down, and she and they are having fun together. No one asked for the toys, and they were very involved in all the learning activities. It was wonderful. We had Mauro's children, who were very attentive, and some of our more lively children were out of town, so I don't claim credit for the positive outcome. I brought an eyedropper and let them fill it from a bowl and use it to fill a jar. Each time they did the dropperful, they would say something they were grateful for. It was a big hit. However, this is the great part: I brought a visual aid from THREE WEEKS ago and asked what it was about, and Levi, age 6, nailed it. Wow. A little problem at church is that we have no drinking fountain. Poor Levi was so thirsty. When I showed him I had a water bottle, he was more than ready for me to squirt some in his mouth. I taught my temple prep class second hour, which was enjoyable. We talked about the blessings of temple service, reading a lot from D&C 109, the dedicatory prayer of the Kirtland temple. After church, the Hubers gave us a big shopping bag of things we had requested from the commissary. We don't know how much to pay them yet, but it was great to get some good loot.
Next Saturday evening there will be a baptism in our ward: a young refugee named Chris. He started coming to the Friendship Center a while back and said that he always saw all the Mormons as having a light about them, so he wanted to learn about the church. Anyway, he requested that I be the one to baptize him. Of course I am honored to do so, but I don't really know him that well, just having had a few brief conversations. I did bring my baptismal clothes just in case, so it will be nice and I'm honored to use them.
Soon after we got home from church, Wes and Alyssa returned from Florence and Venice. They were hot and tired but had a great time. I picked them up at the nearby Metro Jonio stop. We all took it easy in the afternoon, hanging out in the air-conditioned back rooms.
In the evening we drove over to meet Daniela, Alyssa's cousin, the daughter of Aurora and Alberto from Agrigento. She is clearly an intelligent and lively woman, and looks way younger than her years. She has two cute little dogs and a cat. We got to meet the dogs. I particularly liked Mia, two years old. She was excited to see a cousin .She lamented that she has six cousins who live outside Italy, and it tears her heart. She has never spoken to four of them. We had set up a dinner at a pizzeria just around the corner from her house. It was not a tourist spot, and only Italians were there. The menu was completely in Italian, too. Who knew it was common to get pizza without sauce, or without cheese? We also had dessert. I learned that semifreddo has different ingredients than ice cream. Wes had a strawberry semifreddo that was the best of the bunch. She was delightful, fun and talkative. We translated for her and Alyssa, but of course it is a somewhat limited way to facilitate a conversation. It was a wonderful evening, with great food and company. We tried to pay for the dinner, but Daniela said, in effect, "no way -- you brought my cousin to see me!"
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