Most nights after dinner some of us here at Art Workshop International indulge in the Italian pastime of the evening stroll, or passagiato. Barbara Shoup calls it our passagelato because somehow our passagiato always ends up at the same place. I tell you, the pink grapefruit gelato is almost as good as the Pane de San Francesco. Afterwards I come back here to my room and blog, check the email, and watch the Olympics. Last time I was here I never touched the tv for two weeks, but the Olympics is a whole other ballgame, as it were. What makes it really odd is that though two of the Italian channels are broadcasting the games live, the only channel I can get this late at night doing a recap is in German. Italian, I barely speak; German, forget it. So I've been watching all these fabulous athletes with continuous commentary I can't understand at all. Occasionally the announcer gets excited; sometimes I can see why, others it's a total mystery. Also, they're spending a lot of airtime on some sports popular in Germany that we don't do so much in the US. Synchronized platform diving, the hammer throw, who knew?