Giving European style -through Day 28

[Carrie]

Just checking in, I'm in Rome and our hotel has a laptop in the shared sitting room making it so easy to jump on and get caught up. I've been keeping track of most of my days in my journal, but as a recap...

- I've offered to take photos of people in order to ensure their vacation scrapbooks include everyone that was there. Mostly couples, but once a whole class of Italian school kids, the teacher was so happy!
- We picked up trash on the path to a castle on a hill in Varenna (Lake Como), and Jim helps many people struggling with luggage up the stairs. I can't count the luggage helping as mine, but I'm so proud of Jim and all the creative ways he's trying to incorporate the challenge, I just had to mention it.
- When we accidentially bought unneccessary train or bus tickets we've tried to give them away, but it's been tough to explain without extensive knowledge of Italian, so it seems the little gestures work better.
- We've also tried to be open for conversation with other English speaking tourists, and not just the American ones. We had an engaging dialogue with a couple from Austrailia in Siena - even living on the other side of the world, speaking English turned us into old friends for the better part of an hour.
- Also in Siena, we donated 5 euros to a girl collecting money for drug rehabilitation centers throughout northern Italy - she was sweet, had been sober for two years and was very proud of it.

As I'm writing this, I realized tomorrow is Day 29 for me. The plan for the day is to check out the "ancient Rome" part of the city - I'll have to think of something special to do!