Our first days

Hello! We made it to Rome, after about 10 hours on two different planes and four hours of down time in the Amsterdam airport. The flights were fine, and we got great plane food- well, as good as plane food can be. They served chickpea curry!
Anyway, we left the Minneapolis airport around 3:10 on Saturday and made it to Rome at 12:30pm on Sunday (Rome time). Our bus driver from the airport was a short, happy man with crazy gray hair and a very interesting sense of where the lines are in the road. I think we cut off at least 12 cars on the highway, although everyone cuts everyone else off so it seemed to be a common occurance! MaryLouise spent the drive talking with the busdriver in Italian! It was an interesting conversation, especially since MaryLouise doesn't know Italian. She starting to talk to him about a bird called a "Hoopie" and I think things got lost in translation.
By the time we went to bed last night we had all been up for about 36 hours straight and we were exhausted! We had a social with the General Council of Christian Brothers last night and it seemed like we were sleepwalking. However, the Brothers have been hospitable and they kept feeding us! I thought it was to help us stay awake, but they have been feeding us just as much today, so I think it is just how things are here. The food is wonderful- we had veal meatballs for dinner last night with pasta as an appetizer! They serve pasta at the beginning of every meal here, and corn salad at the end. So interesting!
Anyhow, we have had meetings all day today, a tour of the Lasallian museum (we saw LaSalle's hat!) and are just on our way to have a tour of the Christian Brothers archives. We also had a prayer service early this morning with Sister Judy playing the guitar.
Okay, I am late for the archive tour and Mary Thole wants to post pictures. We will write more as soon as we get some down time... not really sure when that will be.

-Sarah