On Saturday afternoon, Caritas (our local charity) hosted a session on the plight of Christians in Syria, followed by an international potluck. In a sense, it was a "progressive" event, because the Syria roundtable was held in the Bishop's throne room (an amazingly beautiful hall in the Bishop's palace, all frescoed and gorgeous) and the dinner was at the Caritas office down in "Borgo" (aka "Borgo Nuovo"..."new hamlet"...a suburb of Todi that is nonetheless well inside the walls and not even halfway down the hill).
The roundtable was, sadly, wasted on me: between the microphone and the acoustics and the Italian, I understood, oh, "Christians" and "Syria" every so often, and that was it. Sigh. Just when I was starting to feel competent. Nothing daunted, I texted Michael to meet me when the talk was over, and we ambled down to the Caritas office for dinner.
I was extremely impressed: all the tables had placards waiting with the names of the foods and the countries of origin. You just had to find yours (one previously told the host what one was planning to take) and then plonk it down. It was really great to see the variety. Yes, of course, an entire table of Italian food. But we also had Capo Verde, Ukraine, Poland, US, Brazil, Eritrea, Bangladesh, and more represented. Quite a variety for a provincial town!
 |
| The courtyard, where we had music later |
After dinner, a number of participants started jamming. Michael and I, talked out, headed up to the piazza to watch the tango finals.
Love,
Alexandra
No comments:
Post a Comment
We love to hear your comments! They encourage us to write more!!