May 17, 2008

Today is Jason’s 5^th wedding anniversary. Bellissima! Congratulations! Auguri!!

Today was the Rotary District Conference. We saw the Italian GSE team and sat with them at the conference. The conference was held in a very large hall. The schedule ran a little behind due to the informative presentations so we ended up not presenting until late in the afternoon even though we had been scheduled for the morning. There was a presentation done in the morning about the Rotary programs and the presented included a slide with our blog. We did a ten minute presentation on ourselves and Philadelphia. Jason, Nick, and Martina had Maria Louisa and Elvia help them translate their parts into Italian. THANK YOU MARIA LOUSIA AND ELVIA!!! Jane presented Giancarlo, District Governor, with a flag and gifts from District Governor Russ and Mayor Nutter. The conference ended around 7pm.

We headed to dinner at Hotel Savoy. We had to take a bus to get there and back. During the cocktail hour we met Gianluca and his family. Elvia and Amadeu had us join them for dinner. Amadeu liked sitting at the American table because he was able to take his jacket off. He pointed out that the Americans were the only ones who took off their coats even though it was very warm in the room.

After dinner there was a group of musicians playing a mixture of American and Italian music. Jane, Elvia, and Amadea headed back to the hotel. Nick and Jason wanted to go dancing so they tried to locate dance partners. Nick convinced Annamaria to do the twist with him. He then participated in an Italian line dance and managed to master the moves very quickly. Roberto was a dancing fiend and knew how to dance to every song. Jason, Nick, and Martina left around midnight to head back to the hotel.