010 più informazione di US/ICOMOS a washington

Don Jones at US/ICOMOS has posted a description of our activities in DC, along with a few photos. The group photo at the top of the page was taken at the Old Post Office on Penn Ave. in DC.

009 oggi è shabat

Sabbath (Shabat) begins tonight. Delfi has cooked a big meal of stuffed tomatoes, salmon, eggplant, zucchini, and all kinds of other dishes. I told her this morning that I would be out on the town tonight and not available for dinner. I thought it would be easier to stay out of her way, since there's no electricity allowed tonight. This was before I realized that there was going to be excellent food. So next Shabat I will stay home, and Lucia has assured me that there will be ample leftovers for tomorrow.

Good news - I had a late night espresso last night, which enabled me to stay up a little later, then sleep through the night, and wake up refreshed. Yay! Hopefully this means my jetlag is over.

So tonight, I think I will go to the Centro, hang out at the Campidoglio (Capitoline Hill), check out the view of the Roman forum under spotlights, have some dinner, do some sketching, and have a gelato. Buses and trains run until midnight, so that's when I'll need to be heading back to the apartment.

Saturday I plan on visiting Castel Sant'Angelo. More details on Sant'Angelo later, it's a really fascinating site. And for Sunday, I haven't decided yet... maybe the Shrine of the Cappuccini or Villa Giulia (villa = park).

008 scusi o scusate

Since Sarah found my last linguistic comment interesting, here's another.

All the Italian books and CDs you find say to use "scusi" for excuse me. But when Jason and I were in Sicily last year for Flavia's wedding, we noticed everyone using "scusate" instead. We didn't know what that meant, but we assumed it meant "excuuuuuuuuuse YOU".

Well, I got the explanation from Delfi last night. Apparently it's an ultra-polite way to say excuse me, something like "excuse me, milord / milady". It's left over from aristrocratic times and you only hear it in Napoli and Sicilia.

But here in Rome you hear "scusi" and "permesso".

007 non so niente di futbol

(for some reason this post failed yesterday, it may show up twice, if so, sorry!)

The World Cup finals start tomorrow. I have never watched soccer before, but I am going to give it a shot. The finals are in Germany, so since it's the same time zone I don't really have an excuse. Plus, apparently, when Italy's playing there's not much else to do around here besides squeeze into a bar and watch the game.

First of all, I had to do a Google search to find a webpage with the schedule. Embarassing. Then I had to read about it to find out how it works. Here's what I learned. 32 teams made the finals, including Italy and the US. In the 1st round, the teams are divided into 8 groups of 4. Each team plays the other 3 teams in the division. Then the top 2 teams in each division move on to the sweet 16 round. From then it's single elimination: a round of 8 teams, a round of 4 teams. Then the 2 losers of the final four play each other for 3rd place. And finally, the championship game on July 9th.

The other interesting part is that Italy and the US are in the same 4-team group along with Ghana and the Czech Republic. They play each other on June 17th.