Day 17: Friday, May 23. Today was Kim and my 33rd wedding anniversary. Because today was a teaching day, we decided that the "real" celebration would occur over the 3-day Memorial Day weekend starting tomorrow. I taught my two hour class in the morning and met with a couple of students. At 12:30 Kim, Jake and I were meeting at my favorite restaurant, Trattoria Da Ezio, for our anniversary lunch. I made reservations ahead. When we got there at 12:30 it wasn't a problem, but by an hour later almost all the tables were filled. It's a small place so it doesn't take too much for that to happen. I explained to Jake that this was as authentic as he would ever find: hand made fresh pasta.

After a long Italian-style lunch (a couple of hours at least) I went back to the office. In addition to email, etc., I needed to meet with Angelica and Serena to discuss a situation (Fliberto was on an excision with the Oregon students for the day). It seems one of our students had complained to the hotel staff believing that the bed was infested. Of course this is always a possibility but this is not a dump of a hotel. We had a long conversation about how to handle it. As this is a public post and as there are certain student rights with regard to privacy I am choosing my words carefully. There is a lot I am not including here. Our conversation lasted more than an hour, which I have condensed to a couple of sentences. We concluded that the best solution was to make some changes. Getting a new room would not be an option. Having 17 students, one lucked out and had a single room. The decision was to trade the single room occupant, provided that student was willing. I volunteered to visit the hotel and have three conversations. First I asked the hotel whether it would be possible to make the change. It may sound simple but in this country, getting a hotel room requires a passport and they keep track of everything. Even if someone comes to the hotel just to go up to a room to visit a guest, that person should register at the desk. Fortunately the hotel was fine with it. Next I called the single room and asked the student to come talk with me. The student was extremely willing to trade. I was relieved and said that the student could think more about it, but the student was fine, only wanting to be sure that the bed linens would be changed. Finally I called the student who had complained to explain the switch The student was concerned that the one who changed places would now have problems. I asked what other alternatives existed. The student suggested being given a new room and I explained that that was not an available option.

Having dealt with that, I went back to the apartment for dinner with Kim and Jake. I felt bad having to leave after dinner on our anniversary to meet up with some students who were shooting a special event at one of the churches. Kim was very understanding and as I said above, we were celebrating big this weekend. We planned the big meal at noon Italian style on purpose, since we had to get up so early the next day to travel. More on that in the next post.