029 ho finito 3 settimane nel lavoro

A Collage of a Variety of Things in Rome:
1. Trastevere, 2. Tempietto Antico, 3. Arco di Constantino,
4. Bramante, 5. Detail from Mausoleo di Adriano, 6. Castel Sant'Angelo,
7. Trastevere, 8. Via Appia Antica, 9. Random Temple

This morning was very stressful! Delfina is still at her mother's house, so I am alone in the apartment. A woman comes to clean every Friday at 7 am, so I made sure I was up at 6:45 in order to buzz her in the building. At 7 am, the citofono buzzes, so I answer "pronto". A masculine voice answers, and I can't understand through the static, so I assume it must be Elena and buzz her in. A minute later, there is a man knocking on the door, this is definitely not Elena. So then, I proceed to have a conversation in Italian through a wood door right after getting out of bed. Anything but ideal circumstances. I still don't know what he wanted, but I convinced him that I'm a friend of the apartment owner and that she is with her family and he will have to return on Monday. Whew.

Then, about 30 minutes later, someone else knocks on the door! There's still no sign of Elena. This time it's some kind of maintenance man for the condominium, and I understand the part where he tells me that he's cleaning the stairs, but I still don't know what he wants. So I explain again how I'm sorry but I can't let him in, the woman who owns the apartment isn't here, etc. When I leave, I realize what he wanted - he rolled the doormat up on end, leaned it against the wall, and put a small wood box in the middle. I saw him as I left the building and now that I had the context of the situation, he spoke to me again, and this time I could understand that he was just trying to give me the package. So, to sum up, I definitely had a huge linguistic failure this morning. I called Delfina a little while ago to let her know the cleaning woman did not arrive, so she's going to check into that.

Today is an exciting day - it's the 10 year reunion of the 1996 ICCROM Architectural Conservation Course. The courses have lasted as long as 6 months, historically, although the 1996 course only lasted 3 months. So it's a group of 20 individuals from all over the world that are very close, and they will all be giving presentations this afternoon on their projects in conservation over the last 10 years. Tomorrow will be especially exciting, because I will be joining them in a tour of several projects around Rome - Trajan's Market, which is currently being restored under Giorgio Croci, one of the top preservation engineers in the world (who will give us the tour); Richard Meier's building that houses the Ara Pacis; and Renzo Piano's new Auditorium music hall. Very exciting!