Ciao, bella

I cannot believe that in the last month I have not had a spare moment to put an update on here. The Lere household has been utter chaos. I will update you on one thing at a time over the next couple of days.

Two weekend ago, Philip and I took four days (it was much needed as I had just worked 14 consecutive days in a row at the clinic) and went to Rome, Italy. It was such a wonderful trip. Rome is such a beautiful, fun city! I highly reccomend it to anyone. No joke, the flight is worth is just to go and get gelati (Italian ice cream - it isn't even in the category of ice cream as it makes every other dessert (or "pudding" as they would call dessert in the UK) pale in comparison).

We stayed at a hotel on the rim of the city that had a great (free :) shuttle service into the city center throuhout the day. The first night we came into the city and checked out the Trevvi Fountain. Day two was a Sunday, so we saw the Pope at an outdoor mass at St. Peter's Basillica. We did a lot of walking around the city that day (probably about 5-6 mi). We walked along the river down to the Colleseum. On Tuesday we spent our time in Vatican City where we went to the Vatican museum and saw the Sistine Chapel.

For the first time in his life Philip was in a city where he didn't speak the language. I told him, "welcome to my world!" :) Though it was really nice having him to speak Spanish to everyone (people at the hotel, taxi drivers, waiters). Because the languages are similar enough, they could communicate on a very elementary level. We were proud - we got asked a couple of times what language we spoke - this meant we looked European. We really try to be intentional about this when we're traveling, as the loud American stereotype doesn't earn you any points. Don't get me wrong, we are very very very proud (and so grateful) to be Americans - however some Americans tend to be loud and obnoxious in other countries and make the rest of us look like fools. So when in Rome. . . we did as the Spanish did :)