Living in tokyo.

Our Weekend in Roma!

Julianne (I spell her name differently every time.) Jonathan and I spent the weekend in Roma. Julianne found a wonderful hotel for us in a great part of town. The most exciting part of the trip was having air conditioning in our rooms. I realize how spoiled I am in Tokyo always having the air on in our apartment. I slept like a baby both nights.

We took the 5:53 train from Firenze. As we took the Eurostar the trip was only 90 minutes. One lady in our car, however, had a much longer trip home as she was on the wrong train. When she realized her mistake it was too late to get off. The first stop was Roma. She was headed home to Bologna, only a short distance away. Anyway, we arrived in Roma, took a taxi to our hotel, freshened up a bit and went out to find a place to eat. Now, that we have been living in Italy a while we don't worry about everything having to be so perfect. We, more or less, just ate at the first restaurant we saw. And yes, the place had VERY CUTE waiters. Even Julianne thought our waiter was cute. She never thinks ANYONE is cute. It they aren't tall and Danish she doesn't even look!! Crazy women with all these cute Italians around. After dinner we walked around a bit, had a gelato and went to bed.

The next morning we had a nice buffet and we were off to see the city. It was hot hot hot. We were planning just on taking a hop on hop off bus because there is not point trying to get everywhere by subway. We did that but we didn't exactly hop off and on too many times. It was just too hot and there were too many tourists. We got off at Vatican City and toured the Basillica. But there were too many tourists to be that moved.

In the meantime poor, poor Jonathan was having horrilbe pain in his gums. He had no idea what was going on but he could hardly stand the pain. We were worried it was TMJ again. (That's the tight jaw thing.) He suffered the entire day. He was a great sport and did everything with us. That night we visited Torj, his cousin and Jason her husband. Jason works at the US Embassy. We rested at the hotel a little before they came to pick us up. They actually lived in the neighborhood. Jonathan didn't know how he was going to last the night. Well seeing family helped him a great deal-he could at least endure the pain-severeral beers helped as well. We went to the riverside where bars and restuarants were set up for the summer months. We sat at bar for at least two hours and just talked and talked and talked. It was great fun. finally at 11 pm we decided we should eat something. We finally got a taxi home at about 1 am.

Tory and Jason live in Embassy housing so they of course have a big three bedroom apartment.

They will stay in Rome one more year.

The next day Julianne really wanted to go to a big mall out by the airport. I wasn't really in the mood to tour so I went with her. I know, we are in Rome and we are going out to a huge mall. We keep waiting on the wrong platform for our train so it took forever before we got there and didn't have much time to shop. NO PROBLEM. Julianne was able to find plenty in that short time. We met Jonathan at 4. We were then going to take the Archeobus for a tour before heading back home. Well, we had our luggage with us so we weren't allowed on the bus. We were so disappointed. We argued awhile but that didn't work. Usually lots of discussion works in Italy. Not this time. Well, we decided to change our tickets and head back home earlier. Yes, it was a weird trip to Rome but we DID have fun.

By the way, Jason had antibiotics and gave Jonathan some to take in hopes that would do something. Jonathan woke up the next day feeling almost perfect. It must have been some kind of infection. We were all relieved. We thought we would be taking him to the hospital the second day. Thanks Julianne for a great weekend.

On our way in the Eurostar.

Happy Julianne waiting for our cute waiter at our first restaurant in Rome.

Looking lovingly at Jonathan.

This is what I ordered.

Our first subway ride. A very colorful train painted by Da Vinci.

ROMA!!!!

Dancing at the Vatican.

Trevi foutain.

Trevi Fountain

Some church!

Very enthusiastic tourists.

A wonderful man we met.

Gorgeous Julianne.

Tori and Jason.

What is Jonathan looking at?

Our view of the river as we talked and talked and talked.

I think Julianne is learning more English than Italian. Her Italian is great by the way!

Good-bye party for Priscilla

My Italian class changes almost weekly as people are here studying for different lengths of time. Priscilla was here a month. We will miss you. I will miss you making your crooked mouth when you make a mistake in Italian. Class won't be the same without you. Sorry I missed you Saturday and Sunday. We met at Santa Croce and then went to a little Turkish, Russian, Italian restaurant. Jonathan and I go there almost daily because the owner is a dear man, the food is quite good and very reasonably priced. He set a nice table for us up front by the door. Andrea made a chocolate cake. After the nice dinner we went to watch the European soccer tournament. Julianne knew of a place we could watch it on a big screen outside. It was fun seeing all the Germans cheering.