When in Rome

First of all I'd like to apologize for all typos- Italian keyboards, like Italian traffic patterns, are a mystery to me.

Internet cafes have the unfortunate quality of costing money so let me just share a few things:

The city of Bern is beautiful, but more than anything, the two days we spent in Switzerland solidified for me the wonder of hospitality and Mennonite community worldwide. One phone call to a family listed on Mennonite Your Way led to our little band of four ( Phillip, Nils, Ingrid and myself) being treated to huge fluffy duvets, two epic breakfasts and wonderful cheese fondue. In general Switzerland stayed fairly true to the generalizations I tend to make about it: orderly, clean, and beautiful. Our full day out was spent in part hiking around lake Thun, oohing and aahing at the alpine beauty and in part walking through historic Bern to the bear pit. Mostly we walked around 9 miles and took a brief break to play "casino" for a while at a cafe.

Then we took a train to Rome. It rained the whole time we were on the train and has been mostly beautiful ever since. Except last night when we got caught in the most torrential downpour I've in in for a long long time. I was essentially wading up the flooded main street, turned down many an umbrella vendor's offer of 5 euro umbrellas and finally caved and bought one for 3 after Chris, our newly aquired Texan friend (he met us on our way through a park yesterday morning and has ended up hanging out with us every since. Interesting character, he's 24, has sold his first book and got a masters in criminology) seemed pained by my seeming obliviousness to the wet. Today we went to the beach and I realized if I have any home, it's the coast of land mass in general.

Ok, time to sign off. Chris also gave me a good synopsis of US news which I've been feeling hugely disconnected from. I'm suffering a bit from the constant guilt of not being helpful to the world or engaged in fighting for justice in any way, so for those of you who are, thank you. I'm sorry I'm being a slacker right now, I'll pick up the slack soon.
Much love