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 :)