Guest Post from Alex

For starters, on my first post, I just want to say that this keyboard is really shoddy so many of my errors will be due to that, not any stylisitic flouting of convention like the ordinary author of this blog favors.
That said, we-re in Lazio, north of Rome in a funny little camping village type place with mobile homes and the like. It is quaint, comfortable and, importantly, cheap. In San Ginesio we had a TV and spemnt a lot of time watching the news about the impending fiscal apocolypse and it has certainly made me feel even more sensitive to the kind of money we have to spend traveling. So this oasis of cheap room and board is a nice respite.
Better still was the free room and food we enjoyed in San G., but that locale had issues all its own which were the toipic of Ursulas last post.
We/ve pretty much hit the half way here in terms of time and it is a very interesting feeling...both a feeling of great accomplishment and recognition of how long we-re actually out here for, but also a fair ammount of feeling like its going by quickly. It is totally inexplicable for me that I can have memories which seem like moments ago//eating sandwiches in the park with Veronika// but have them really be weeks and weeks, as well as countries, ago. And Rome flew by totally too quickly. Luckily we are near enough to it here in Lazio that if I really get overwhelmed with feeling like I am missing it, we/I can take a day trip to go see the inside of Trajans markets, Diocletians bath or the Domus Aurea of Nero. We might have to. Being there was insane...to really know that I was literally stepping on the same paving stones that Augustus did...and not that he might have, but actually DID in some places through doors and the like. That forum in Rome was the beating heart of the entire western world for more than two millenia...i can still barely believe the squallor and ruin it has fallen into and the sheer disrespect it recieves every day from loads of sweaty, stinking, filthy, loud, undignified tourists. Everyone has a right to see the place, of course, but is it too much to ask that they should be expected to have some reverence for a place of such historical, social, cultural gravity...insert question mark here/the keyboard doesnt have one!
Well, my time is running low on this machine so I am going to sign off, but at least I wrote something, huh...
Ill do it again. Blogging is kind of fun. I started reading Dracula and the whole thing is largely journal and diary entrries...the style does have comething to it. Yeah, ill write on here again, if we ever find a reliable computer for more than an hour. damn it all.
Cheers and hugs and kisses to everyone back home i am missing. and boy, am i missing you all!