Walking...

Today the weather is just gorgeous here in Rome, so I decided to take a nice long walk.  One of the neat things about Rome (and many places in Italy!) is that they close many streets and make “pedestrian zones” so that people can just walk around freely.  I love to be in the middle of groups of people, so I headed to the Coliseum area of Rome.

And there were definitely a ton of people!

In many of these “pedestrian zones” you can find all kinds of neat spectacles.  Everything from musicians, people pretending to be statues or gladiators, artists…

And even a monk (Buddhist? Hindu? Hari Krishna? )holding another monk seated on a pole.  (There has got to be some secret to that.  An iron pole hidden up the sleeve???)

I also went by the “Altar of the Fatherland” which also holds the Italian “tomb of the unknown soldier”.  Wouldn’t you know it that just as I got there the guard was closing the gate and nobody was allowed in for the rest of the day.  Oh well.

This week was also, of course, about WORK.  Our PIME general assembly has gone well thus far.  The biggest problem?  It seems like all we do is have meetings all day, and then we eat and sleep!

Anyway, it has been an interesting experience, and it was good to meet many of our missionaries that I haven’t seen in a long time.

Have a great week!