Well, I suppose I ought to update this thing. I think I'll do so by posting a small portion of the letter I'm helping my mom write to send to those who helped finance our pilgrimage. Once that's finished, I'm going to use what I wrote to construct my own letter. Anyway, here's a bit from our time in Rome:

Next, we walked to the Pantheon, which is now a church with a name I can’t remember. One of our pictures shows a sign that says “BASILICA SANTA MARIA AD MARTRES,” so maybe that’s it. Liz continued talking about false appearances because when we walked up to the Pantheon, we got the impression that it was a rectangular or square building because of its porch and everything from the front suggests the building is rectangular. However, the Pantheon is very much circular. It used to be a temple dedicated to all the Roman pagan gods, but now it’s dedicated to Mary and the martyrs. If I remember correctly, many saints were moved here from the catacombs, and Raphael, King Victor Emmanuel, and King Umberto and his wife Margherita (after whom margherita pizza is named) are buried here as well. The eye of the dome was particularly cool to look at when we were there because it was raining and you could see the rain falling into the Pantheon from the dome’s eye. The huge unreinforced concrete dome is the result of the Romans’ architectural genius and their desire to be the best at everything. They were so advanced at so many things that they were a bit unrealistic and thought they were gods, or at least that’s what they were aiming for…Silly Romans. They also had this weird disgust towards brick, and although they used brick in nearly all of their architecture, they had to cover it over with marble, stucco, and other materials. Apparently the Romans though that brick was out, although Liz joked that in Boston where she’s from, brick is the thing to use. The Romans also used something that was very innovative at the time to help support the structure—stress relieving arches. Very interesting. We also received our second St. Joseph surprise here. We had a couple of minutes to look around before heading to Piazza Navona, and we turned to the left and guess what we saw? An altar with a beautiful statue of St. Joseph and the Child Jesus behind it! There were also lovely paintings on each side of the statue and other works of art featuring St. Joseph in some way. Good St. Joseph is so good to us.