Moving along, sometimes

One day before the deadline, we successfully applied for our persmission to stay. This was our second try at our second post office. The first time an unfriendly postal worker shooed us away and we were afraid we would get the same lady. Fortunately, it seemed to be an entirely different staff on this day. The long lines seem a constant, however. The gentleman who received our papers looked through them quickly and said all we needed were additional copies of our passports, so we went out into the neighborhood looking for a store to make copies. We did that and returned to the post office. I thought we were finished but he looked more carefully at our papers and questioned a few things. We found someone in line to translate and resolved the problems. We paid our money and left, feeling triumphant. The actual permits are sent to our local police station and we are not even sure how they will notify us to pick them up. They may even arrive after we leave Italy! On another subject, we attended the ballet in the exquisite opera theater. Each seat seemed to have its own personal chandelier, with a huge one hanging down from the ceiling in the center. The ballets themselves were strange, but we expected this. They were so strange they were enjoyable. Carter wrote in his journal about the second ballet, "Parade," something to the effect that there were a series of folks who came out to dance, including a Japanese fellow, a horse and two Cubist figures, none of which had anything to do with the other. Before the performance I managed to speak with a cellist in the orchestra, who put me in touch with another English-speaking cellist who may be able to give Carter cello lessons here in Rome. We left the ballet early to find that the metro had closed for the night, so we were forced to improvise with a series of buses to get home. Moreover, the following night we tried to go to baseball practice and the metro just stopped. Despite lots of announcements over the intercome, even the Italians didn't seem to know what was going on and everyone kept running off and running back on the metro car. It finally stopped for good and we all went up to street level looking for buses. We were about halfway between home and baseball but couldn't find a bus with room to go in either direction. After much walking we found a trolley and another bus to take us home. So we missed baseball that night. The following day Stephen and I went to the Napoleon Museum because Stephen is writing a report on Napoleon. He filmed quite a bit inside the museum. We then tried to locate a fencing studio to the north of the city. We ended up walking a big circle alongside a major highway and came across a gypsy camp down an embankment. It was like a shantytown and was very depressing to see in the rain. In this section of the city, almost everyone is driving cars--there is no foot traffic. The few passersby we encountered helped us eventually to locate the fencing studio. We met a pyschology professor there who translated for us and gave us a lift to the nearest bus depot. I think this fencing studio is too hard for us to get to via public transportation, but I have another one to investigate. Fencing might work out if baseball doesn't. After that long day we watched "Spartacus" on the laptop. I haven't mentioned too much about the food yet. We are mostly cooking at home but have eaten in a few pizzarias, one Indian restaurant, where we each had a throne to sit on, and at the local casual restaurant, where we had a thick, millet soup, pork and pasta with clams. David said that it was about $15 cheaper than our usual outings to Phil's back home. P.S. I enjoy your posted comments, so please keep them up. It lets me know who is reading this!