Long Day of Lots of Talking to People (Or Attempting to Communicate with People)

Coffee yogurt for breakfast at 8, and then I walked to the internship at 10, stopping at Conad along the way to buy a salad for lunch later. I finally finished drawing the sketches for my picture book thing, so it was a relief when Brunella gave the OK to start actually using the monotype technique to make pictures. At Cartavetra today the picture book group was all there, and they still speak rapid Italian I barely understand. Mostly I just nod and smile with a confused look on my face. Occasionally I say "si" and "non capisco". Sometimes I even say "grazie" and "che bello".

What is kind of funny about the book group is that their English is about as good as my Italian, so they say funny things. For instance, one woman was talking about how they don't sell scratch boards in Italy like they do in American art stores. She asked me how to say "scratch board" in English, and I told her, and she repeated it back to me as "scratch paper". I told her that scratch boards and scratch paper were very different things, and maybe not to try to buy scratch paper at an art store.

Also nice about the internship today is that Brunella bought coffee, and I got a macchiato and a really good Lindt-like chocolate ball. I'm going to miss the ubiquitous cheap, good coffee when I go back home.

At 12:45 I left for drawing class. Today was the midterm, though it was a super not stressful at all type of midterm because all we did was pick out our best drawings, put them up on the wall, and have the class critique them. I got to eat my salad during class.

At 4 I left, stopped at Carrefour to buy milk and pasta, made said pasta for lunch, and then it was 5:30. The landlady dropped off some more blankets while everyone was out, so now I have a brown wool blanket for my feet. I don't know how clean the blanket is, so I'm probably going to keep the blanket at feet level. That's what tends to get cold anyway.

The acquaintance from high school that I randomly ran into yesterday messaged me and asked if I wanted to meet up with her, so I said sure and met her at a gelateria. Neither of us actually wanted gelato (I had made myself hot chocolate about 20 minutes before), so we just walked and talked about high school and studying abroad stuff. I still think it's very weird that I ran into her at all.

At 8 I went back to SACI for more drawing, though I was kind of sick of drawing for today, and the room was all stuffy because two heaters were running. I powered through it though, and at 10 I walked back to the apartment. I am unreasonably relieved about not having to work on the story of my picture book anymore (Karen-- don't get your hopes up for any work of staggering genius), so I think I'm going to sleep better at night now.