Milano memories

Tuesday we climbed to the top of the Duomo -247 steps. It was impressive from the topside. The artistry is amazing. We also have seen many museums and cultural sights. The Rotary Club last night was very kind to us during our final presentation. Today we went in the basement of the Biblioteca - with a giant vault and very old books (inspirating for future Vatican novels!) It's pizza time with the family so arrivederci!

Milano

If I only had the computer skills to post pictures, you would be in awe. The sunlight was perfect on the Duomo (Cathedral) today and it glowed. I will figure it out when I get home and share my photos with our fan club from around the world. We also saw the Natural Science museum and the largest convention center in Italy today.

My Milano family is wonderful. She is the daughter of the incoming district governor. He is very invested in the Dave Mathews band and saw Lynard Skynard in concert in Italy. The daughter spend a summer in Minnesota on a youth exchange and the 15 year old son knows more about Obama than I do (including saving all the articles from the last two years.) He needs to be a page at the White House.

We have our final presentation on Tuesday evening at a Rotary Club. I am visiting two more outreach efforts on Thursday. Then we fly home on Saturday. It has been a truly amazing experience!!!!!

Success at District Congress

Our team spoke this morning at the District Congress in front of the representative of the RI president, District 2040 Governor, Our governor, Ron Richards, and 500? other Rotarians. Everyone was very impressed. We even got compliments from those who heard us the first week. Either our italian has improved or our confidence. After we finished, the team that came to Florida shared their pictures. It was a very nice morning.

Now the team is out in the park at Monza with the Italian team. A king 200 years ago set aside a huge track of land for his palace and gardens. It is like Central Park in Monza. The area also contains the Monza track. Yesterday we had a chance to drive the new Fiat Eco-2 around the track. It was fun (even though we did not clear 200 miles per hour!)

Last night Piermarco and I (both GSE team leaders) joined the District Governor and 30 of his special guests (PDGs, family, etc) for dinner at a residence that is used now for catering. It was memorable with the formal setting and the speeches.

In the morning (Monday), we move into Milano. We will park the rental van and take the train everywhere. Lucianno has arranged some exciting vocational visits on Thursday as well as all the signficiant sights. Ciao!

Friday from Monza

We have moved from Bergamo to Monza and head to the District Congress on Saturday. Rotary last night was amazing as they had 23 young people in attendance. At least two had studied for nine months overseas, two were headed overseas, and most of the others had been to Rotary summer camps in foreign countries. They were inspiring.

Our tutor in Monza likes to walk so we walked over 3 miles along the River Adda to see the dam, locks, and ferry inspired by DaVinci. Then today we walked all over Montevecchio, a regional park. The long walk was after the tour and lunch at the vineyard so it was an adventure. We have also toured the Cathedral of Monza and its museum. It has a crown from the sixth century that has an iron strip running around the inside which is attributed to one of the nails used to crucify Christ. Even without the tradition, the crown was beautiful and very antique.

Our host families have been very hospitable. Each family has its own personality which makes for great memories. I have 389 pictures after three weeks so be prepared. Ciao!

Mapello and Bergamo

We arrived in Bergamo on Saturday morning. I am actually in Mapello, 10 km outside of town with Antonio and Bibiana. We had dinner Saturday night with their 2 sons and their wives, and three grandchildren. Beautiful children!!! They also have a small dog named Pepe. The next community over is the birthplace and baptism site of Pope John 23rd. It is impressive how proud they are of him.

Sunday we walked all over the upper city of Bergamo. Its walls are over 1000 years old. Several beautiful churches and a palace with a garden. The Rotarians who showed us around have limited English so matching it with our limited Italian has been amusing. It has strengthened our Italian skills. We took the cable car up to the upper city and walked down after dinner. I was thankful we did not reverse the order. The upper city is THE upper city.

Bergamo has 100,000 people and much industry. I am spending Monday at Caritas International who is working in Africa. Tonight we meet the Bergamo Rotary club and tomorrow we speak to Bergamo South Rotary. Both evening events. Wednesday we move to Monza.

Ciao!

Leaving Sondrio

Sondrio is a beautiful city - especially the people. Smaller towns are so friendly and charming. We traveled Thursday through Bormeo to Livigno where we spent the night at Hotel Lac Salin. It was a very nice hotel in the heart of skiing and mountain biking mountains. Fabio, the owner, is a Rotarian and hosted us. He also took us out on a paved bike trail to see the valley and then we rode back through town. It reminds me of Lake Placid or Park City with higher mountains. I had a very relaxing evening.

Friday we returned to Sondrio via the Swiss alps and Tirano. We have pictures of us playing in very icy snow (as it fell many months ago.) Tirano is famous for its church where the Virgin Mary healed a young lady in 1504. Pilgrims flocked to the church for centuries. We toured a winery and then had dinner in a small restaurant in the vineyard with the director of the winery. He makes delicious wine.

We had breakfast with the family this morning and now we head to Bergamo for more adventures.

GSE update

For those of you that are following our trip regularly, you should know that we have a variety of blogspots. Janet's posts are on the main site because I am not very computer-savvy. The other team members set up individual sites that can be tracked from the column on the right. They also have many pictures of the places we have been on their pages.

Last night we spoke to the Rotary Club of Sondrio. Our Italian has improved since last week so some people actually understood us. We are using it more here as there are fewer English speakers who want to practice their English on us. We also benefitted from having a new friend from Britian who runs an English-language school in Sondrio. He assisted us in a question and answer time at the end. Lucianno, the GSE coordinator, drove 130 km to see us - very sweet of him.

I visited a volunteer agency yesterday. Banks in Italy give 1/15 of their profit to these types of groups and they coordinate grants from the government for volunteer assosciations and help promote the needs for volunteers. In some ways, they have similar coordination efforts to our United Way without the fundraising component. That was their primary focus of questions for me as their funding is not sufficient and they need to develop a donation system.

In the afternoon we saw a historical museum, the church, city hall, and several other sites. The afternoon again closed with gelato and a nap!

Most of the Rotary clubs here do not enforce the 60% attendance rule so they have many more members than those who actually participate. Last night's meeting had 75 members and about 25 in attendance. They are 10% female and have had a female president. We have been experiencing so much through the cultural events and the vocational visits. Rotarians everyone would be proud!