late night confessions

well, i will be the first to recognize that i am the youngest person on our trip to rome and i think it shows in the fact that at 1am i am still up, blogging, while everyone else has been able to fall into bed. i cannot get rome out of my head and will give you all another quick update on what is going on here. it may not be as colorful as my first post, but just as heartfelt.

as you can see, the roman keyboards are a bit too much for me to understand and i have not been able to find the shift key for the life of me. hence, no capital letters. we have all found that none of the keys actually are what they say they are. it took until today for me to realize that the @ sign can only be found by holding down a key that reads maiusc and pressing the number 2. i will not even attempt to find the quotation marks or apostrophes or i will be up all night.

anyway, so today was full of both physical and emotional activity. i say that in a wonderful way, because through each and every speaker that we hear, all of us find new ways to connect, discover new hurdles to jump, and discover the blessing of the work we have been asked to do. not everything has been easy to digest, not every speaker perfect, but in the wise words of sister judy, each day we are given the words we need to hear. the goodness of this journey shines brighter all the time.

our speakers today focused on association within the lasallian tradition, the structure of the institute of the christian brothers, and catholic social teaching. our speakers were all incredibly dynamic, each in their own way. the brothers we have met are especially wonderful and have provided guidance that we could not have found elsewhere. yesterday we were given a tour of the archives and the joy and knowledge that we felt in that room was unbelievable. we held saw actual letters that lasalle wrote and amazing pictures drawn by boys from a christian brothers school in the early 1800s.

might i add here that a couple of the pictures that were posted are of the bones of saint john baptist de lasalle which are located in the chapel here. there are also pictures of us in that space. the stained glass window you see was actually donated by us, saint marys university, and you can see that our name is in the second picture of the window.

some of the other pictures are val fitzgeralds bathroom, the view of the chapel from her bedroom window, and the first pictures are of us in the amsterdam airport. we also posted a few from our social with the brothers the first night. you may notice simon, the representative from our nairobi campus. he has been wonderful to work with and has provided me with a much better understanding of our nairobi campus. without him i probably never would have known that boiled bananas are a delicacy for our kenyan students! simon says that boiling them in water without having them turn to must is practically an art.

well, although i am not tired, i am sure i have bored you enough. i will end with a few things i have learned in rome so far, beyond the scope of our readings, meetings, discussions, presentations, speakers, services, tours, and socials. and yes, we have done all of those things, many, many times, within these first two days!

anyway, in conclusion, my list of revelations

tip the gelato woman. it is the only way to get her to smile when you attempt to say the flavor names.
coffee is meant to be thick and practically eaten with a spoon. i now have thick coffee love.
there a 100 and 1 ways to use nutella which is kind of a chocolate and hazelnut concoction.
most roman roads are what americans would call scary dark back alleys.
the smart car would make my parallel parking life much, much easier.
webpages are all in italian which was fun at first, until trying to post pictures.

and finally, i have gasped in awe more in the past two days than i have in years, but not only when looking at the bones of lasalle or out my bedroom window. my heart has literally leapt when looking into the faces and listening to the words of my colleagues. again and again i have found connections and heard words spoken that have given me actual, honest joy. i feel hopeful for saint marys. i have faith in what we are doing. i am eager to keep going.