Second Day of Classes

I did end up making some tuna for dinner yesterday, which I combined with the last of the baguette, lettuce, and tomato for a tuna sandwich. Being fairly tired by then, I read a book before going to sleep early at around 10 or so. Some neighbors must have been having a party because I could hear loud cackles and yelling in Italian until I fell asleep.

This morning I woke up at 7 and had a coffee yogurt for breakfast. I know I wrote yesterday that I was lucky I had only one bug bite, and now I feel silly because I was attacked last night by at least a small army of mosquitoes, and I am now very very itchy. The highlights of my bug bites include one on the side of my left hand, about an inch below my pinky, one on my right arm, about an inch below my wrist, and one on the bottom of my left foot.

 Learning from past experiences, I left with one other friend for class instead of waiting for the whole group and got to my History of Italian Cinema class on time. The professor is a film editor who seems proud to have worked on a bunch of Coppola films. The film we watched today was called L'ultimo Bacio, an Italian movie from 2001 about people with relationship issues. Daddy would have fallen asleep.

After class, I walked back to the apartment and dealt with lunch. The problem with lunch here is that everyone is on basically the same class and eating schedule, so the kitchen in the apartment suffers from too many cooks syndrome. I decided to wait until everyone was done eating before I could get in and cook my pasta (in a pan, because still no pot). I added some tomato sauce, cheese, and basil, and I had a decent David special. Another problem with the kitchen is that only a select group here sees the need to get their dishes washed before the next day, so the sink is collecting dirty plates and assorted food gunk. I can tell it's going to get gross pretty quick, but I'm not sure of a nice way to tell them to do their dishes without sounding nagging.

At around 2pm I went back out to walk around and get generally lost exploring, and at 3:30pm I made my way to an art store called Zecchi to buy supplies for the drawing class. Zecchi is a cramped art store near SACI (there's a student discount) that is like a compacted Blick's if you add Italians. I got some supplies and then waited for a friend to finish up, which of course made me late for the next class, 3D Animation. On the way there, an old woman elbowed me hard in the chest and didn't even say excuse me, and I know she knew she did it because I yelled ow really loudly at her face. And then I was late for animation (the class was at the top of three sets of stairs), which meant that I got the worst seat in the class, all the way in the back corner where I couldn't see the screen in front and with the computer with the outdated 2013 software. Furthermore, someone had messed around with the keyboard or something, because all the punctuation keys had been rearranged and did not match up with what they actually typed. By this time I'm sweaty, hot, and mildly irritable, and I leaned back in my chair, which of course knocked over the stand sitting in back with a projector screen, causing a bit of a ruckus. And because I couldn't see the screen at the front of the classroom, I had to keep moving up to the front of the room, squinting, and then asking the professor what she had just done at intervals. I'll just say I don't think this professor is going to be my biggest fan. The class itself looks like it will be challenging, but doable if I put the time in to do the assignments.

Class ended at 7:30pm, and when I stepped outside next it was raining, which was surprising for me because it had been so hot in the afternoon. Luckily I had a friend who had an umbrella on her, and we walked back to the apartment to drop off our stuff (in my case, a heavy bag of art supplies), and I quickly made a caprese sandwich before going off again to a survival Italian class at 8pm. The class was very basic and I guess meant for people who know absolutely no Italian, but it worked as a refresher course.

At 9pm, after the class ended, two other USCers and I walked back to the apartment, stopping at both a Chinese grocery store and a regular supermarket on the way. I was on the lookout for something chocolatey, but I wasn't able to find anything that quite fit the bill, so instead I had a mugful of honey nut cheerios and milk to make up for it. And now I'm sitting and typing this up. My phone has let me know that the stock market closes at 10pm here, which means that Italians trading on US stock exchanges don't have to get up early to make their trades.

I haven't added any pictures here so far, so I'll put this picture here at the bottom of apple ketchup, which I spotted at the Chinese grocery store. I wonder what it tastes like.

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