My husband has said for years that one should never go on holiday to Italy in August because that's when all the Italians go on vacation all at once and everything shuts down. It is absolutely true. Parking our car in Rome has never been easier and the roads have been eerily empty. I was half expecting to see tumbleweeds blowing across the streets the other day. Everywhere little shops are closed up. Even medical clinics shut down for a few weeks which is tough if one has a medical emergency as some of our missionaries have found out.
I had never heard the word Ferragosto until recently, but that's the name for this time of year and specifically the 15th of August. Apparently Ferragosto has been the traditional summer holiday since Roman times. It started as a time for horse races and celebrations and many of those traditions remain today. Nowadays, however, it has largely become a time when Italians hit the beach. I can't imagine how packed the seashores must be right now because there sure aren't many people in Rome.
This has been a summer like I've never experienced before weather wise. Rarely has the daily forecast high been below 30 degrees Celsius (about 85 Fahrenheit). The nightly lows rarely go below 20 degrees Celsius (about 70 Fahrenheit). Where I come from in Canada, it's always a gamble whether summer will decide to grace us with her presence. Never before have I lived anywhere where the weather has been so darn predictable ("ho hum, another hot and sunny day"). My husband complains about the heat but I rarely do because I'd rather be hot and sweaty than freezing my butt in a parka in January. That's probably a very unCanadian thing to say but it's true.
This is also the summer where the Italy Rome Mission office moved out of our dingy little offices attached to the Church and into a more spacious and sunny apartment with a view of a park. Consider the view we used to have when entering our old office:
Yes, if someone forgot to close the bathroom door, we would have a lovely view of the toilet upon entering the front door of our offices. The sometimes stinky office toilet. 'Nuff said.
Now take in what we see when we enter the new office:
You can almost hear the angelic choruses singing can't you?
We used to have four cramped offices in what used to be stores that opened up on the piazza. They were dark and dingy. Now check out Hermes and I's office:
Our office is really a converted apartment so we even have a kitchen! Oh how we love having a kitchen! Sister Guercio even bakes cookies here now! Hermes doesn't approve of the cookies. "That's junk!" he says. What a Party Pooper.
Brother Calebrese is the only one with a little less room than what he had before. I hope the cookies will make up for that.
The Presidents office is really nice. Of course it's Elder Sears, our Tech missionary who uses it more than the President does. But now the President can meet with special guests and do small group training there which he couldn't do before.
The one thing we're finding is, it's so quiet. In fact Brother Calabrese said one day that he's starting to feel lonely. Where we were before, the young missionaries would drop in. Now we're more out of the way and our drop-ins are mostly couriers and our postino (mailman).
Our old offices have been converted into extra classrooms for the two wards who meet at the church. They are happy to get them. That church strikes me as more of a branch building, and it's really not big enough for the two wards that meet there. Eventually the wards will move into the stake centre that has been built at the temple. But for now, they will make do with this church.
August 16th was the halfway point of our mission. It has gone so quickly that we can't believe that we will begin the downward slide to the end. I hope the second half will be as joyful an experience as the first half has been for us.
To close, here's a nice pastoral late summer picture from Italy. I took this when Hermes and I took a hike a few weeks ago and got lost in a farmer's field. Long story. Of course it doesn't beat the story of two other senior couples here who told their Tom Tom to take the back roads back to Rome and ended up driving right into the middle of a farmer's field. We love our Tom Toms here but sometimes they fail us miserably.
Anyway, Happy Ferragosto to you all!
