Dear all, finally settled in the guest house had a few days rest and work and now ready to keep up to date with you.

The flights went well. From Brisbane to HogKong I had a personable American who lives in Cairns with his yoga teaching wife. He himself earns his living giving financial advice and doing stints working for NGO's, frequently in Africa, an interesting combination.

On the flight from Hong Kong to Rome, I had a Prague born man, who came to ba a resident of China, via the USA. He currently has a leather tannery and goods factory. With just a little prompting he got onto the relative merits of leather hides from different parts of the world. Hides from Australia are better than hides from Brazil - they can cut around the barbwire marks but not the numerous pockets from tick bites. Goat hide from Indonesia is better that hides from Spain, etc. Then he really warmed to the subject.

I had to wait about an about 1 1/2 hours for the Marcia and Karen to arrive and then Rebecca an Amercian Benedictine who is librarian at the North American College in Rome, met us and brought us to here (which I will call the Casa - for this blog). That is luxury to be met after a long flight by someone you know and who knows where to go.

The Casa sisters were delighted with our arrival. Obviously this Renewal Program is one of the highlights of their year. On the practical level it means that they don't have changeover of guests for over five weeks, but more importantly, they enjoy the stimulation of Benedictines from differing traditions - just as the ones coming enjoy the international orietnation of these Tutzing sister. A Korean, Sr Celestine worked this for our arrival.

She is going to show me how she does it when the rest of the Program sisters arrive.

The community at present consists of Koreans, Philippinas, Germans, a Kenyan, a Nambibian, a Brazilian, etc. Some are away doing visitations in Africa or South America or home for medical check-ups. Obviously they prefer home to here for medical matters.

Parts of the Mass can be in a number of languages but so far we have had only Italian, Latin and English. I really hope we have a little Swahili before I go.

I'm settling in well except for

the security! These are the keys we had done in the guest house. The one for the bedroom, turn twice, the front door, turn once, the grill (heavy - wrought iron) turn four times, the front gate, turn only once. And this seems to be standard for all around here, and I presume Rome. High walls, grills, TV surveilance. And it seems that it is necessary if you want to keep your things. Personal safety is not the issue, I believe, it seems that the thief will not hurt you. But I do wonder about a society that is so deeply ingrained with suspicion and with such an attitude to other people's proerty. As you will remember from last year Lesvos was the polar opposite of this, theft was virtually unknown on the island, in spite of the large tourist numbers.

So much for this morning. Today, I'm meeting Michael Kelly (for htose who do not know him he is an Australian monk who as last year elected Abbot General of his Benedictine congregation - the Silvestrines). We will have lunch at San Stefano. Fr Simon Tonini is there - delight - and then Michael is going to 'do' part of Rome with me.

Off to Lauds now