First Day of Classes

I should really call this entry First Day of Class, because I had only one class in the afternoon. But I'll start back at yesterday afternoon.

After typing everything up, USC Tiffany, USC Vanessa, and I decided to try to walk to the school without a GPS just to make sure we knew the way well enough to not be late to class. We got a bit sidetracked though and start taking pictures of ourselves in front of any landmark that didn't have too many tourists blocking the view.

I hadn't gotten a good picture of me in front of Brunelleschi's dome yet.

Multi-person selfie in front of sideways Duomo.

Vanessa and I in front of a statue of a centaur getting beaten up.

Me in front of the David replica in the Palazzo Vecchio.

Me copying the David copy.

A wider view of the Palazzo Vecchio.

In front of Cosimo Medici.

Note the pigeon sitting happily atop Cosimo's head.

The Neptune statue behind me, also a replica.

Tiffany took this panorama that doesn't quite reflect the number of tourists here.

Another angle of the Palazzo Vecchio, now showing off the tourists.

Lots of statues behind us. Nice perspective.

Apparently you're not supposed to eat anywhere near the statues in the Palazzo Vecchio. One woman walked by with a gelato, and this man appeared from nowhere blowing a whistle at her.

We made our way to the school and back ok, and by then I was hungry and made a dinner of scrambled eggs, baguette, and a coffee yogurt. It was just chance, but I picked out a very good brand of yogurt for myself.

Eggs and non-toasted toast, a cup of milk on the side.

Tasty yogurt.

I then rested for an hour or two, followed Mommy's advice and iced my bug bite, and went to sleep.

This morning, while others went to class, I walked with USC Megan in a search for a mythical store called Tiger, or more accurately Flying Tiger of Copenhagen. It's a Danish chain of stores that contains a variety of items, basically anything anyone would ever need (except for cooking pots, as it turned out), and everything follows the line between adorable and strange. We spent maybe half and hour admiring the merchandise, I found and bought a reusable water bottle for myself, and then left to head back to the apartment.

Nothing very remarkable about these markers except for the Danish translation: twin tuschers!

A pencil case shaped like a banana.

Pencil case shaped like a milk bottle.

Megan and I posing in front of the sketchbooks.

Notebook shaped like a chocolate bar.

Tupperware container...

...compacted tupperware container!

The cake decorating department.

Along the way we stopped at a farmacia for medicine for Megan's bug bites (I'm lucky I only have one so far; she isn't). I don't really get the deal with pharmacies in Florence. All over the city there are lit up green crosses, which, contrary to what is in Los Angeles, denote that the store is a pharmacy, not that it sells medical marijuana. Each pharmacy is relatively small and sells ridiculously overpriced medical-related products. I'm talking 20 euro sunscreen expensive. I can't imagine anyone actually living in Florence frequenting these places often, but I also haven't seen a Walgreen's or Rite Aid sort of store yet, so that's another mystery for me to solve at some point.

I got back to the apartment at around 12pm, then went out with Tiffany and Megan to search for a restaurant called Osteria Buonagustai, a supposedly good and cheap pasta place. But no matter how hard we searched, the osteria was nowhere to be found. I'm not sure it really existed. Maybe it moved. In any case, all that searching left only 45 minutes to buy some food and eat it too, and we were in the touristy part of town where most things are overpriced and apparently not as autentico. We reached the conclusion to just go to the Mercato Centrale, where I got a fusili pasta in tomato sauce with cheese on top, the David Baum Special. It was tasty, but I think I ate too fast because I felt like I was going to puke when I got to class.

Lunch.

Today was drawing class, and it went alright. The professor is a British guy from Yorkshire who seems nice enough (for Karen: his accent is identical to Yahtzee Croshaw's accent. I kept expecting a tirade about video games to start up). We got the basic syllabus stuff done and then did some figure drawing with models. Looks like it'll be a fun class. What is weird about it is it's all girls in the class, and that makes it feel like I'm in some sort of Catholic school (all the Jesus and church stuff around adds to that).

After class, the USC group finally split up to go about different things, and I went off on my own to the supermarket right across the Arno to get another load of groceries, this time armed with specific meals in mind. I got some salad supplies, and I found the tuna in olive oil that Grandmother was talking about.

Tuna.

Chupa Chups exist here!

Then I walked back to the apartment and got out some more ice for my bug bite, which started acting up again. And now I think I'll figure out dinner. Maybe some tuna salad and leftover baguette.

Here's the interesting-looking trashcans that don't look like trashcans. They're separated into mixed, plastics, and organic trash. They also look a bit like vending machines, but they're not.