Variety in Italy – And Where to Start?

 I have had so many things running around in my brain the last couple of days that I’ve been dying to have some time to myself to write about them. The cultural differences are fun, exciting, and unbelievably frustrating.

I mentioned in an earlier post the wealth of pasta selections even in corner grocery stores.  The only thing I’ve found that rivals that is toilet seats.  We need to replace the seat on one of our commodes. I went to “Leroy’s”—actually, “Leroy Merlin”—a Roman Home Depot, to pick one up. It took me a while to figure out what people were saying when they referred to it; and it wasn't until I saw the sign that I knew what they were saying. It seems that "Leroy Merlin" is a French concern and so it's pronounced in French with a heavy Italian accent that I can't even begin to imitate.  But, back to the matter at hand...

 I had the choice of over 40 toilet seats—not styles and colors; SIZES! Each display model has a diagram of the seat with measurements detailing the width, length, type of installation brackets, and location of the holes—not the big hole in the middle of the seat; but the two holes for affixing the seat to the commode. It was mind bogglingly complicated. Friends warned me to measure the seat before going and I had a good set of numbers when I arrived.  The one I got didn’t fit. The salesman warned me, “Don’t take the plastic wrap off the seat until you’re sure it fits—otherwise you can’t bring it back.” Fair warning. I clearly wasn’t the only guy lost in the forest of privy seats. I took it back and got one that seemed to cover all the bases.  The floor model’s diagram indicated that the sizes had wiggle room: the brackets would fit holes between 9 and 17 centimeters, and the length of the seat would fit 35 to 48 centimeters. Mine needed to be 47.  The box boasts, “Easy Mounting.” After getting it home, I realized all those indicators were straight up lies.  At the store, I had a moment of unease because there were no sizes on the outside of the box, just a model number.  I’ve now studied this seat for a couple of hours and there is no way to modify any of the locations of any of the brackets or the length. While there are hieroglyphic instructions (little pictures—no words, like IKEA installation guides) for the various types of commodes, the pictures of the parts needed for my model include things that aren’t in the package and don’t seem to coincide with any real world objects. It reminds me of a Christmas as a young dad, only this version is that experience on steroids.

Forty years ago, I found a tricycle for our son that had to be assembled. As a new dad, I only had two tools: a screwdriver and a crescent wrench. The package for this trike had written in several places, “ONLY TWO TOOLS NEEDED TO ASSEMBLE: A SCREWDRIVER AND A CRESCENT WRENCH.”  We bought it and put it away till Christmas Eve—when I got out my two tools and opened the package. At the top of the instructions was the assurance that all I needed were those two tools.  Step one said, “Take a hammer and …”

 Benvenuta per le ragazze o Benvenuto per i ragazzi!!

That means "Welcome!" for the girls and the boys, and I've been using that word a lot this week, at il tempio. Most of the time, I haven't needed more than that while I was stationed as a Smiler. I might have to rename that position to Squinter, because no one can see my smile behind my mask, so I just have to squinch up my eyes when I smile so people can see something remotely friendly. Perhaps we will all have a new set of Covid wrinkles around our eyes to remind us of all the fun we're having?

This is the front entry, where the Smiler/Squinter stands.

 There is only room for 20 sisters on each shift and they run two shifts per day, one in the morning and then they reopen at about 3 and run one in the evening. In SLC, I had 82 sister ordinance workers and 17 ordinance support sisters, just on Saturday Mid-day shift. It is very different here in lots of ways, and occasionally I can't help comparing, but Almer and I are trying really hard never to say anything out loud about how we used to do things in SL. There are so many cultural things that play into procedures and practices here. Temple workers are constantly coming and going because of the 90 day tourist limit. Some only come for a week or two. I'm trying to learn names, but they just aren't sticking in my head very well. Everyone has been super friendly, and I think they are like me...just thrilled to be able to serve here. I'm not sure the way I am being trained is typical, because they show me a job one day and then the next day I am on my own in that place. I've helped some in English and Italian, which I practice a lot for, the baptistry (Where I learned how to find bras by opening a million little tubs, some of which were labelled in Italian. I finally found some in a tub labelled "tops" in English. I hardly ever wear  my bra as my top. :), Initiatory (where the procedures have nearly changed beyond all recognition, but the ordinances are the same sweet language that makes me cry in gratitude), an Endowment session (only 30 patrons allowed on each session, sitting every other chair. Preparing for all the languages is interesting and fun.) 

We have been working every day, because the temple closes at the end of February, and doesn't reopen until May, and we want to learn as much as possible. They are doing some reconstruction to make more room in places that get more use. The new temple president was announced this week: James and Diane Toronto from Provo. Both President Pacini and President Toronto are distantly related to Giuseppe Taranto, who was the first Italian convert to the church. (He was in Boston when baptized, but was from Sicily and went with Pres. Snow to Italy). I don't suppose that is a coincidence...

I'm trying to listen really hard all the time to all the Italian I can, but I nearly laughed out loud in training meeting, when Sister Pacini said (in Italian), "Just explain to the Sisters that...." I am nowhere near being able to explain anything, so I squinch up my eyes in my friendliest way and find an Italian sister to take over. One problem I have is that people here often speak loudly over each other, at ludicrous speed, and then I am hopelessly lost. Now that is cultural! 

I was able to help solve a mystery in the baptistry. We had a group from Israel who came to do baptisms for the dead and when they were done, one skinny little kid was shivering in only his towel in the dressing room, because he couldn't find his locker key. They checked the laundry and the chute to the basement, but finally the recorder brought a master key and opened the locker. Later, after we had cleaned up, I noticed the key sitting in the water at the bottom of the font, just waiting for someone to pick it up. Mystery solved!

I did not take this picture :)

Just as a side note: All of the floors are marble and it is hard to be quiet and reverent in the wet baptistry when your shoes make loud squeaky noises!

Ciao for now! Ci vediamo!

Buon Giorno, Amici! Come state? (Good Day, Friends! How Are Y'all?)

It is a beautiful, partly cloudy day here, and the temperature is about 17 degrees (Celsius). That's 62 degrees for us non-metric people. I'm trying to become more familiar with metric measures. You would think it would be simple, after I spent all those years telling my fifth graders that metric is so much easier to figure out. I think maybe I was lying...or like so many other things I am learning the hard way, it's a little trickier than I thought. I have a couple of touchpoints like 0 is freezing and 37 is body temperature, but anywhere in between I'm totally lost. I saw a formula that said to take the Celsius temperature, multiply it by 9/5, and add 32 degrees. Multiplying by fractions in a two-step story problem has become my life. It's a good thing I taught the F-word (fractions) in fifth grade. :) Seriously, it's a good thing my phone can figure out anything. 

We have had pretty nice weather so far, which was especially appreciated when we had no heat! Two or three days ago I woke up to a cool foggy morning. 

It really looks like this:

Ciao for now! Our church starts at 17:00, so I need to go change clothes. Love ya!

Have you ever seen a dirty spot on a wall and thought, "I should take care of that" and then your brain says, "Don't do it!"  because you know you are going to end up with an obvious clean spot and then you will need to clean the whole wall? Well...think tile floors instead of walls, and you will know what I have been doing each morning. I saw what I thought was a grease spot on a light brown tile with black grout, so I scrubbed it with some spray that had a picture of a window on it. I have tons of bottles of cleaning stuff that were left here, but I'm not sure what they are safe to use on, so I thought window cleaner was a safe bet. The good news is that the window cleaner works great on tile and it even smells pretty nice, but the bad news is that the grout is really white, not black. Soooooo...I sent Almer to the store to buy more cleaner (twice) and I've been trying to do a room each day. The living room is taking longer because it has 170 tiles, and you have to spray, scub, and rinse each one by hand. Almer has helped with the bigger spaces, which is awesome. I think it will be beautiful when it is all done.

In the bottom picture you are seeing cleaned tiles. Our friends, Dario and Alba, painted the walls and ceilings, cleaned inside and outside, bought beautiful draperies and bedding, installed the kitchen and all the light fixtures, and a million other things to make this apartment feel like a home. I'm actually kind of glad there is still something I can help with.

We were set apart this afternoon as official temple workers in the Rome Temple. It's a dream come true! President Pacini was very kind and talked to us about a lot of ways things may be different from our previous service. I think the thing that has me most concerned is that someone will need something and I won't be able to communicate. Perhaps they will let me fold socks and iron clothing in the laundry for awhile. There are parts of 8 or 9 different countries in the temple district, and lots of languages. They use language cards a lot! We watched training videos into the evening, until we had to leave to catch our bus. We can work as often or as little as we want, but the temple is closing at the end of February, so we will try to learn as much as we can before then. It was very sweet just to be inside the temple again and feel the spirit there. Ciao for now ;)

 Culture differences. Want to know the importance of pasta in Italy, compared to the USA?  If you want to buy some spaghetti at Fresh Values near our home in Holladay, and you're walking along the aisle too quickly, you'll miss the pasta section--which is about 4 feet long.  I was in our smallish grocery store here in Rome and had to take a photo. This is the first aisle of three full aisles of different kinds of pasta.  I was going to photograph each section but the grocery store people said it isn't allowed to take photos inside the store.  Not sure why; but I thought I'd cooperate.

I ride my bike for middle distance trips--where it's too far to walk but I'm too cheap to buy a bus ticket. Sometimes the traffic is a little scary and I'll ride on the cobblestone sidewalks. The other day, while trying to avoid traffic, I brushed up against a tree that was hanging over the sidewalk. 

I survived.  

Here's the tree.   

Now take a look at one of the mega-thorns that are all over this thing--they're bigger than 16 penny nails!

I actually got stabbed while trying to take that photo to show the relative size of the thorns. They are *very* sharp.  I was lucky I didn't get impaled by a dozen of them while brushing by on my bike.

It could have been worse, I might have been biking in Arizona...

Oh the Places You'll Go!

Especially  if you don't pay attention to the marquee on the front of the bus. We learned that lesson yesterday on what had previously been a simple trip to and back from the grocery store. There are two cozy grocery stores within a 5-minute walk of our apartment; but they don't carry some of the things we need in setting up a new place. There is a mall that takes about 15 minutes to get to on the bus that we've used a couple of times. Yesterday, we got there in a little less time because the bus didn't take the normal route we were used to. We thought it was a little strange, and when we realized it was going the wrong direction we quickly got off at the next stop. Usually, we have to walk about 5 minutes from the bus stop to the mall; but yesterday as we looked around to get our bearings, we were about 50 yards from the entrance! 

We shopped for a while and then went back to where we were dropped off (across the street, so we'd catch the bus going the other way.) We had a lot of stuff--groceries, mixing bowls, an ironing board and two huge pillows.  The bus arrived in about 2 minutes and we were on our way home--a trip of about 10 minutes.  If only.

When the bus got to our neighborhood of Buffalotta, it was supposed to turn left towards our street; but it continued north. I thought, "This is strange..." As our neighborhood disappeared in the distance, we kept expecting the bus to turn around. When I realized we were probably on our way to Switzerland, I told Robyn we needed to get off. She was certain that since we missed our stop, we could  enjoy the trip and it would just make a big circle.  Soon, we passed signs indicating that cars from the other direction were entering Rome. Then we passed olive groves, plowed fields, and herds of sheep. The bus came to a stop and we were the only people left.  The bus driver said we had to get off because this was the end of the line. I asked, "Non torna alla Buffalotta?" --This doesn't go back to Buffalotta? He shook his head and clicked his tongue--"Tz." That's a word that you can't find in the dictionary, but it means "No." It's said with the tip of the tongue off the top front of the mouth. More than "no," it meant we were in trouble. It took 3 hours to get home from there.

It might have been more fun if it had been just me and Robyn, but schlepping all the store stuff with us dampened our enthusiasm. The important lesson we learned was that the number on the front of the bus telling you the route is only half the information. After the number is a street name that you need to be aware of. When we took what we thought was our regular bus number 86, that wasn't the 86 we needed. We lucked out going to the mall; but not so much on the return trip. But, if we want to go see some sheep and olive groves 20 miles north of Rome, we know where to go. 

 Arrrrrrrgh! I made a rookie mistake! 

Hello friends and family! Do you remember setting up a new household? Imagine doing it, but not knowing the language in any of your instruction manuals for your new appliances or what things really are at the grocery store. It's like everything is an IKEA manual, and I'm just trying to look at the pictures and hope for the best. Sooooo... when the electronic display on my lavatrice (washing machine) looked like it said a cold water load for what I thought was a short wash, I put in my colored laundry. My brain said, "Robyn, you probably should wash that teal blue towel by itself the first time", but I didn't because I thought cold water would be fine, but noooooo. I am now the proud owner of several other pieces of laundry that are a lovely shade of blue. I've only been doing laundry for about 55 years...evidently I am the world's slowest learner, in two languages.

Yesterday, we went to get what the Italian government is calling their "Super Green Pass" in downtown Rome. Almer's friend, Elliott, gave us awesome directions about where to go and what to do when we got there. We paid about 35 euros for the taxi to get us there by 8:30, so we could line up before it opened. When we arrived, it was in a huge, OLD, complex of large and small buildings, spread out over several acres. It had meandering roads leading all over the place, with signs pointing lots of directions, some of which were broken off or painted over. Elliott said to go to the front of building 90, which faces the busy road and go up the stone steps, where we would do stuff to get our Super Green Pass. Everything went smooth as silk until we got to the top of the steps and read the sign that said in big letters: It is forbidden to enter here!!!

 We dithered a minute, but when some guys came out for a smoke, we went in to scope the place out. There were people moving throughout the building, so we asked a friendly faced girl where to go to get our SGP. She didn't know, but she led us through a labyrinth of halls to a mostly friendly faced woman who told us they had moved the SGP offices to building 17. I cannot imaging doing any of this without Almer understanding what people are saying! It is so confusing, even without the language barrier. Well, we went back out the illegal way we came in and started walking to find building 17. This is not a business complex, but acres of trees and grass and fences and old, old buildings, some which have all the windows broken out, and everything has graffiti on it.

 The old outbuildings also have really disturbing murals painted on them, such as a huge sideways face where all the features are running and dripping to the ground. There were multiple bodies marching along without their heads, and of course a few naked, tortured looking ladies. Think Stephen King creepy. The building numbers had no real order, so we just walked and asked strangers if they knew where 17 was. Finally, someone pointed us in the right direction and we arrived there, only to be told that on Tuesdays, the interviews for SGPasses didn't begin until 14:00, which is 2:00 p.m. They only start at 9 on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. It was only 9:15 and 46 degrees outside. We quickly decided to just stay and wait inside the building until 2. A nice older man offered us coffee. I just kept telling myself that it was the same as driving to St. George without stopping, and I have done that lots of times, so I could do the wait. We watched out the window as the line outside began to form and a little before 2 a lady came and said to be fair, we would need to wait out with the other folks. Italians are terrible at lines, preferring to squish in wherever. After all that waiting, I stepped out the door and immediately turned around and placed myself at the front of the line, to heck with being polite! It was really 2:30 by the time they got started and another half an hour to get a number code written on a torn piece of scratch paper with our authentication. We said Grazie Mille! and wound our way out of the forest to a street where we could call a taxi. (The taxi was a Tesla, which I have never ridden in, so that was fun.) Evidently Almer had not had enough adventures because he left his phone on the taxi seat. He got it back, so all's well that ends well.

An interesting side note: the bulk of the green passes expire after 6 months, but with no new vaccine for the variants, everyone will be out of compliance soon. I can hardly wait to see what the Italian government comes up with next... Ciao for now :)

 Many of our friends have asked us, "Tell us about the food!" 

It's a most excellent adventure. I mentioned earlier--that we were being force-fed pizza because we couldn't yet cook in our kitchen. Well, we've been able to cook for several days, but for some reason, we're still eating pizza.

The application process for our visa required that we draft a letter to the consulate explaining why we wanted to live here. I talked Robyn out of her first draft--but I regret that now.  She wrote, "We have retired from our day jobs and would now like to move to Rome to eat pizza and gelato. We have rented an apartment for the above stated purpose."

We haven't got around yet to the gelato because, to be honest, it's been on the chilly side during January.   But the pizza! Wowie Kazowie. We went to one of my preferred pizza emporiums the other night and I ordered my standard: Calzone. That means A giant sock because the bread is folded over and all the cheese, mushrooms, tomatoes, ham and spices are inside. I like it because it stays hot longer than one that is open to the air. Also, it's only half as big on your plate--I can't eat a whole pizza but have no problem with one that's folded in half.

 Here's Robyn working on her Cappriciosa. If you look closely, you can see artichoke, olives, prosciutt0, and a couple of eggs. With ham and eggs on the pizza, I thought it could be the Italian version of a breafast burrito--only pizza doesn't get served in restaurants until after at least 7:00 pm.  

My pizza is much less a vision of color there in the foreground--just toasted brown bread directly from a wood burning oven--with all the deliciousness waiting to be discovered. 

For about half the price of this sit down dinner you can get take out pizza at a place near our apartment. It's run by a couple of Egyptian brothers and they make a fine pizza--also falafel and shawarma. Two pizzas or two shawarmas cost 5 euros each--about six bucks. It's more than we can eat, so I have the leftovers for lunch the next day.

I've been dying to write about one of my favorite food items in Italy: oranges.  There are lots of varieties and they undergo a transformation during late January until mid-March.  They go from bright orange to blood-red, the famous blood oranges of Sicily. Here's a photo of an orange from when we arrived two weeks ago.

 You can see a couple of cells of dark orange among the lighter hues. This is the beginning of the transformation.  By March, they'll look like raw meat on the inside.  Here is an orange from earlier this week. You can find them everywhere at open fruit markets. When I was a missionary, I ate them until my teeth ached.

What a wonderful world this is.