Rome day 3

The first night I was here, I went for a little walk to just feel the flavor of the city. I feel very comfortable here - Italians are my friends. Many people speak English and seem to be amused by my attempts at speaking Italian. My friend Rosie told me to just go into random churches in Rome - that they're all really beautiful, so I did that the first night. It was very impressive, especially when a guy started playing this HUGE organ. It was very churchy and a nice intro to Rome and Italy.

First dinner was penne arrabiata and it was pretty disappointing. Since I hadn't slept on the flight over, I crashed around 10 and woke up around 6:30am which was surprising. Got Pia up and we walked over to the Forum and the Colisseum. During the walk, I discovered that I had brought inappropriate socks and my feet were unhappy with me, so my first Italian purchase was new socks and I must say I am very happy with them.

Coliseum was interesting - we took a tour which provided context beyond what my tourbook included, so that worked out well. We went to a small pretty place for lunch and I had the yummiest pizza and decided that I could survive on pizza for the entire trip!

Actually, I'm behaving. I've been walking to and from the place where my conference is being held, which is about a mile each way (listening to "This American Life" on my iPod), and eating fish. My blood sugar is actually much better than it was at home, which is good. I haven't had any gelato yet, but I will cause they tell me it's super-yummy. Maybe I'll wait till the end of the trip so that I don't fall in love with it and want to eat it every day!

Conference ends tomorrow, so I can get back to sightseeing. I'm working through the end of the week, so I'm not actually on vacation until Saturday. The content for the conference is awfully dry...but I'm talking to folks and learning new things, so that's all good. Oh yeah, European men wear suits & ties - at least they do to this conference.