Living Off Tomato and Mozzarella Sandwiches

I thought class this morning was at 9:30 for some reason, but it was actually at 9, so I ate breakfast on the road in order to get there on time-- breakfast was leftover sandwich from last night's dinner. Class was fresco painting. During the first part of class we worked on just regular paper, copying from Michelangelo paintings.

For lunch I walked with USC Vanessa to a place called The Oil Shoppe (for some reason it's written in Ye Olde Butchered English), where they sell a plethora of sandwiches, mostly to Americans and other English speakers. I got one with mozzarella and tomato, plus an iced coffee on the side because I heard it was supposed to be good (it was!). After lunch we still had a lot of time until class started up again, so we walked to the Oblate library, the public library around the corner from the Oil Shoppe and SACI, and we both got library cards. The cards themselves are interestingly just flimsy pieces of paper with bar codes taped on the back. I then found the English section, which was tiny, but then I went to the kids' section, which was filled with Italian books I've read before in English. I'm thinking of trying to reread some of those in my spare time to see if I can pick up some better Italian skills.

Then back to fresco class, where we started spreading plaster and painting. Something I didn't know before about fresco (I didn't know much about fresco before, so that's not saying much) is that you have to work very quickly, because once the plaster dries you can't change it. So in order to make a painting larger than a day's work, you have to work in sections, spreading only the plaster you plan to paint each day. It's a time-intensive art.

After class I walked back to the apartment, had the leftover sandwich from lunch for dinner, and then started part two of the bean soup cooking. I added some more water before commencing cooking, but even with that and aluminum foil covering the pot (I don't have a lid), all the water boiling out and I started to smell burnt beans. Luckily I caught it before the soup was ruined, but it now has an ever-so-slightly burnt after taste. I also may have put in too much pasta. Otherwise it's a good soup! I had some of that to complement my sandwich for dinner, and I think I have enough leftover for at least a week's worth of soup slurping. I put about half of it in a tupperware and into the freezer. Unfortunately, that was my only tupperware, so I'm probably going to make another search for tupper. I checked a 99 cents store before, but they had only teeny tupper or weird non-microwave tupper. The search continues!

I then did some drawing homework, watched a movie with the roommates, and now really should go to sleep because I'm getting up early tomorrow for a trip to Pisa and Lucca. Good shabbos!