This will be the most boring entry of all. It was our first day without the students. They (and I) had the day off. What's more, I don't have any pictures to share. It rained pretty much the whole day.

We went to 11 a.m. mass at the Cathedral, which is St. Julian (patron saint of Macerata). I thought the priest had a nice homily. It's kind of interesting/funny/disorienting to be in a centuries-old cathedral and seeing modern Catholic church practices. There were two altar servers: one male, one female. Microphones made the priest easy to hear, but the wooden kneelers reminded me of the stories my mom told of having bruises from kneeling all night Holy Thursday. The lighting made it difficult to follow the readings, much less see the artwork. The congregation is conflicted, too: some stand for the Eucharistic prayer while others kneel.

Walking home from mass we stopped at the Barratolo (flea market) held the second Sunday of each month. Looked around a little, but the cold rain forced us home early. Spent most of the day reading, watching TV, eating, etc.

I've already lamented the "modernization" of my homeland. Funny - I want high speed Internet everywhere, but I hate seeing that the grocery store sells convenience foods that would never have been heard of here just a few years ago. I saw a TV commercial for Special K this week. Forget the fact that Italians generally didn't worry about their weight - they NEVER ate breakfast cereals. I remember my first trip to Italy as a teen in 1972: I wanted cereal, and my uncle had to made a special trip to a big grocery store to find anything. There were probably 2 choices. Not so today. I guess that's just part of internationalization. I remember telling Americans about Nutella back then. Now just about all the US groceries carry it. Just about everything is available just about everywhere.

The news has mentioned Bush in the middle east, but it's been dominated by the huge garbage crisis in Naples. It seems they can't find anywhere to send it. No one will take it. Since this story ran, they've tried shipping a bunch to Sicily, but protesters there have tried stopping the dumping (everybody seems to dump on Sicily).

I'm wrapping up. I'm very excited to watch a game show that we watched in 2002, Passaparola. We even visited a taping in Milan and I wrote a paper about it. The show comes and goes, always slightly reinvented. It returns to the air tonight after a long hiatus. Here's a clip from a 2005 finale.
Passparola host Gerry Scotti