Subscribing to CSS in Rome

We heard from some soon-to-be loyal readers that they were not receiving any e-mail. The subscription process takes two steps:
* one to subscribe (typing in your e-mail address at right)
* one to verify that you intended to subscribe, by clicking on a link in a message sent after you typed your e-mail.

If you have not done the second step, you won't receive e-mail notices about new postings. (Several folks are listed in that pending status right now.)

CSS Subscribers: The Barracuda spam firewall will snap up the confirmation message. Look in your spam box (online) for a message sent by Feedblitz. You will want to whitelist Feedblitz because that is the source of the daily e-mails.

This seems complex - but it prevents pranksters from signing you up to receive blogs you would not want, and spam merchants from flooding you with commercial blogs.

Greetings from Illume

The team at Illume wishes students traveling to Rome an enriching experience! We thank Fr. Graham and other leaders at the College of St. Scholastica for entrusting the arrangements for this journey to us. Travel to places of historical and religious importance inspires participants to personal transformation as they visit places where visionary men and women made history.

We know that you will return home as different people with new perspectives. We hope that you will begin to see yourselves as citizens of the world, leading compassionate and caring lives, preserving our common heritage for yours and future generations!

Buon viaggio!

The Illume Team.

Preparing for Rome: Electrical Appliances

I'm in charge of taking a laptop computer along, so that we can keep up this blog. The wonderful folks in our IT Dept assured me that this laptop was able to adapt automatically to Italy's electrical system, but I'd need adapters for the plugs.

I believe the IT Dept, truly I do. But I wanted some independent verification, too. The information at About.com made me feel quite secure about the laptop.

It also made me hope that none of us are planning to bring hair dryers, especially without a power converter. The story of the unintended candlelight dinner is sobering.

Here's the link to advice on using power appliances oversease.
(Sr Edith)

In Rome Now: Crossing the Street

[A new link has been added: In Rome Now, with lots of information about galleries, events, shopping - and SURVIVAL. The following somewhat daunting post comes from the Survival Guide.

We're sure that your mother taught you how to cross the street: wait for the green light, look both ways, that sort of thing. This course of instruction will prove perilously inadequate in the center of Rome.

Let’s say you are standing at the crosswalk on the Corso Vittorio Emanuele II at eleven o’clock on a weekday morning, You look both ways. At eleven o’clock on a weekday morning, the traffic flows heavily on the Corso from both directions. So you wait for a break in the traffic. At eleven o’clock on that same weekday evening, you may find yourself still standing at the same crosswalk, hoping that the traffic will eventually break.

For the novice Rome pedestrian, a better course of action is to wait for a native. Natives cross the street without waiting, and often without looking right-left-right to see what’s about to smash them. They enter the crosswalk in the firm belief that the drivers of the approaching vehicles are in no mood to commit manslaughter. Miraculously, the Red Sea of traffic parts and the native pedestrian almost always makes it safely to the opposite curb.

Protect yourself with such a pedestrian. Cross right along with him or her, preferably to his or her right so that the odd murderous driver will hit him or her first, thus buffering the impact on your own body. Should you be fortunate enough to come across a traffic light, do not rely on the green walk signal. This generally is timed to last two seconds or less, followed by a longer amber warning signal. Cross on amber or you may never cross at all.