Roman tourism

After wrapping up a two-day workshop with the Salesian Sisters of the Sacred Hearts, on the south side of the city, Sr Beth (one of my spirituality students) gave me a lift to the Metro Station. I traveled to the Colosseum where I met Fr Luke Buckles, a Dominican from Berkeley who arrived in Rome last week. He is now a permanent faculty member at the Angelicum (Pontifical University of St Thomas). We had a nice visit, first at the Dominican school, and then as we walked to visit different monuments. No cars were allowed in Rome from noon until 6:00 pm, and everyone was in the streets for this Sunday of Carnival -- the children in the costumes, teenagers in bands of friends, as you would expect on a day of promenade. And there were many tourists in Rome as well. We met a few people as we walked from place to place, and Luke asked me some questions about how I saw the Roman and Italian people. I was surprised to learn that, even though he did his doctorate in Rome at the Angelicum between 1981 and 1985, he had never really learned Italian. But the Angelicum offers a full program for philosophy and theology in English (and has done so since the 1950s). In any case he's decided to work on his Italian now that he'll be here permanently.

My next move is to invite him over to the UPS.

But I just want to say how much I enjoyed seeing all the monuments that I've seen before, but it was fun seeing them with a fellow Californian who, like me, was not in a rush. We just walked and talked, and looked into places along our way.