We all had to go to the police station in Marino (the next suburb to the east) in order to fill out our permisso di siggorno papers. Now, we filled all the forms out a the school, so when I arrived at the station all I had to do was sign three pieces of paper which I could not have read, even if I had been given the time, because they were written in Italian, take my passport back (the school had them all week to make sure that nothing happened to them between the campus and the station, apperantly they have learned this leason the hard way), and fingerprint me.

Now the only other time I have had my prints taken was at the DPS when I got my driver's licence. There all I had to do was stick my right thumb on this little computer scanner deally-bob and it was done. Here they did not just take one thumb print, and they did not use a computer. I guy in a lab coat covered my hands with increasingly large amounts of ink, as he took prints of first my finger tips alone, then all of my fingers from where they meet the palm to the tip, and then both hands. I looked like I had taken up juggling coal.

I was then shuffled into the next room, a bathroom, to wash my hands. The ink was sticky, the water was bitterly cold, and the soap wasn't much to look at. I must have stood there and scrubbed my hands for ten minutes, and even now, four days latter, the color of my finger tips is a little darker than it was at the start of this trip.

While I'm on the subject of the police station...

There was no smoking allowed in the lobby, just like you can't smoke in any public building in the States, but it was permitted in the office, a fact someone had taken advantage of more then once. There was a paper shredder next to the chair I was sitting in (it was a teeny tiny little office) with an ashtray sitting on top of it. Wierd.