It's Friday!

Another week coming to an end. It's crazy day again - the streets are packed with christian and muslim pilgrims. Simply no place to stretch your arms - not that you have to! But it goes to show how crowded the streets are.

I think it's going to be a lot more troublesome for us here today because huge machines like forklifts are loading our museum stuff for exhibition in Korea. The street is very narrow, enough for only one car to pass, and the forklifts have to transport the crates out of the Old City to St Stephan's Gate where the trucks are waiting. The crates are huge, some 6 feet or so. They're transporting statues and other stone and marble artefacts. And they're very heavy. Hope nothing gets broken - our museum is quite famous here in Israel for its collection.

Well, I got to use my "hot air fan" this morning. It was ok for me; kept the room a little warmer than usual. I don't want it hot, like Fr Niccacci does. Just comfortably warm is enough.

The philology class went on ahead, though our lecturer Fr Buscemi was a little lost as to where we stopped the last time. That's a consolation because usually I'm the one who's lost! We're into "participles" today - and it's so complicated because in Greek the participle is very versatile.

If you haven't yet known, we have classes everyday except Thursday and Sunday. Usually we clean our rooms on Saturday afternoons/evenings and then relax for the weekend (which is actually only Sunday). Its an odd system that they follow in Rome. For 1st year students they don't even have Thursdays off, because they have full-day excursions on that day.

Fr Stefano de Luca, our archaeologist in Magdala ( remember Mary Magdalene?) called to ask if I could go over and help him dig. I'd love to but because of my philology class, I can't do it. Besides my left ankle is hurting even more - maybe because I walked too much yesterday.

And I had a big surprise - Kris our altar-boy wrote me! That's nice! He said he's studying hard, which is exactly what I should be doing now!!!!! So signing off for the moment .....