My week was filled with frustrations.  Without going into details, I had no internet service for days, I lost all of my cell phone contacts (a guy at the TIM store deleted them), and my spring allergies were so bad that I came down with a cold.  But still it is spring, and the days are long and summer is just around the bend.  So I laughed and I learned.

I am living in the Borgo, a neighborhood near the Vatican, an area about half a mile long and four streets wide. It hasn’t changed in centuries.  Everyone knows everyone. Those who grew up here rarely leave. Many marry within the borders and stay, raising their children within the Borgo.  There is a story about a man who lived his whole life in the Borgo, never once crossing the Tiber and thus never seeing the Colosseum.  It is probably a tale, yet not beyond belief.  The Borgo is magical.  Once inside you never have to leave; it has everything one needs.  Mornings when I open my shutters I am greeted with a “buongiorno” through the window across the street.   So in my quest for an internet connection, I knocked on my neighbors’ doors looking for answers.  “Do you know why the connection is down?” I asked.  Most of them shrugged.  But one gave a quick reply, “It’s because of the Vatican.  It is always taking the power.”  Chissa?  A day later as I was walking down the street una donna anziana turned to me and pleaded, “Signorina, your dress is too short.  Please put something under it.”  For a moment I was horrified, but after a long minute I reassured myself that the length of my dress was not too short by American or Roman standards.  I had to remember that I was in the Borgo and that the woman was perhaps in her mid-nineties.  And so I smiled.  After the shock of her comment had gone, I realized that she had called me Signorina.  And that made my day.