Birken Italy Trip October, 2015: Day 4, Monday, in Rome

This morning we reunited with many of our Melton friends over breakfast. The Aussies arrived after flying 12 hours to Hong Kong and then another 18 hours to Rome. It makes our trip seem like a piece of cake. It was so good to see these friends, some of whom we've traveled with on four or five previous Melton Seminars. The Seminar itself started today at 2:00 PM so we had the morning free. Eric went out for a walk, but I opted to reserve my strength and take a leisurely morning for myself.

Once the Seminar got under way in the afternoon it was a non-stop whirlwind. We started off at the statue of Marcus Aurelius (actually the replica of the real one that was in a building we couldn't enter) and made our way to the Forum. We would stop at various locations throughout the Forum and do mini-study sessions using the texts in our Melton Italy reader. All along we were going back and forth between Roman history and Jewish history in Rome and in Jerusalem. We ended our tour of the Forum at the Arch of Titus (which we saw yesterday). Did a study session here on how we felt upon seeing this. All fascinating and disturbing!!!!

Dinner tonight was at the Pitigliani Center, the Jewish Community Center of Rome. Dr. Ambra Tedeschi and members of her board gave us a short lecture on the history of the Center. It started as an orphanage just after World War I. Today is houses activites for children and cultural arts for adults. We were well fed with wonderful dishes representing Roman Jewish cooking. A delightful experience.

I'm really exhausted tonight and it is close to 1 AM. We will be on the bus to start the day at 8 tomorrow morning, so I'll keep this short and just post a few photos from the afternoon and evening.