Please excuse corny title! I just put together this little summary of Sunday at Porta Aventura, biggest amusment park outside of Eurodisney in these parts. It was a fundraiser day--while that means tickets are generally double at home, here it means they were only 8 euros instead of the typical 40!

 I had arrived late Saturday night after my flight home was delayed by a few hours. Unlike at home, where the free vouchers the airline gives don't cover tip or alchol or much at all, I was treated to a five course meal by Iberia. Ah...Italy! I had a super whirlwind tour. I packed light, and meandered my way on Thursday afternoon to the plaza of Il Duomo. This is indeed the shopping mecca of, of, of something. Not sure what. It was, however, one of those landing in a new city experiences where everything flows. I stumbled upon the tram I was supposed to take over to Adriano and Claudia's place. Adriano is working on the Filografia project and they generously offered to host me for the two nights. I did, however, have to get off the tram once I realized there wasn't a way to buy a ticket on there, I figured it out after saying something to the effect of "billeto" to an older gentleman and teenager who both looked concerned about me being carried off by the Milanese police. So I jumped off, found a ticket somehow, figured out that "tram" in Italian is "tram", and got back on again only to get off 3 stops later at the "Rolling Stone" Cafe, just down the street from Adriano and Claudia. Filografia is a partnership among French, Italian, German, and Greek adult education programs to integrate multimedia and creative writing techniques. They're finishing up two years of peer education and exchange, and were meeting to discuss what they had learned, present their work, drink some wine, and attempt to understand one another. I showed some examples of the adult ed. work we've done in Arizona, Boston, and South Carolina, and hoped they got the accents. My favorite moment was when an older French woman (impeccably dressed mais oui) came up to me after. Her English was about as good as my French. She just looked at me like she wanted to say something, and then we both started laughing. Ultimately some nice bilingual person explained that she had loved the videos I showed. Evidently something got across despite the language barrier. Anyway, the evening ended with a forty person four course meal and hopes of future collaborations.

 On Saturday when I checked my email, I found out that we are starting workshops (train the trainer) here this week! So the first day is tomorrow, and it looks like we have 5 public health trainers, and 3 folks who work with youth. Stay tuned!