Day 22: Wednesday, May 28. After waking up and dealing with the student's medical issue the night before, Kim and I didn't wake up and get out as early as we would have liked this morning. Today's class was scheduled 11-1, which meant I needed to be in the office at 10 (I keep an hour of office hours before and after class). I wasn't able to spend time with Kim at the Wednesday market. Once again, this is an image from the web.

Inside the city walls there are vendors of all kinds. We always buy produce from the same guys. 

Two of the students asked me to go with them today to speak with people at their churches. At 3:30 I went with one student to Misericordia, one of the churches the class had visited the day before. I went and spoke first with the sacristan, a very friendly retired guy who took us to see the priest. The priest was a bit gruff but said she could record up until 5 p.m. and then would have to quit, as people would start arriving at 5:20 for the 5:30 rosary. Each church has been different. This priest wants no recording during services. At another church the priest invited the student to the front of the church during the mass. I was then off to another church to meet up with a couple of students. I encourage you to click the link for Santa Maria Delle Virgini. The church may have been built centuries ago but it is modern in many ways, including the fact that they stream their masses. I spoke to a couple of people who very kindly said recording was no problem, including mass, as long as the students didn't walk in front of people during services. Besides having been built almost 500 years ago, the church is notable for having a painting by Tintoreto, a well-known Renaissance painter.

What would have been a pretty successful afternoon for the student who was assigned the church was instead pretty awful. It seems he lost his iPhone on the bus going to the church. We contacted the bus company and the drivers on that route, but no one had found it. To be sure someone did find it - they just didn't turn it in. This same student had left an expensive pair of sunglasses on our excursion bus the previous week. He was able to get those back (it was a charter - no one else got on it before we notified the driver) and I told him he needed to put 50 cents in a poor box in church in thanksgiving. When he said he lost his phone I asked if he had made a donation and he said he hadn't. He was beginning to wonder if there might be a correlation. I told him that I thought if God punished everyone for not being thankful enough, we would all be in serious trouble.