Thursday was made much easier by not having to go to district meeting. The weather was quite chilly, and the expected rain never materialized. In the late morning we had time to go to Lidl for a big cart full of some stuff for home and some for the Institute. When we arrived, we found Dee's phone locked in the cabinet -- whew! -- though it was almost out of juice.
I walked down to the Vodafone store at the train station to ask a few questions about my data-only SIM, which came along for free with our fiber internet. Somehow they always end up confusing me. After swearing up and down that the SIM would be unusable after the 1GB was finished, with no way to pay to add more data, a few minutes later in the conversation they said that all I had to do was call to "recharge" (add more data). Sigh. Every time I talk with them I feel like I come away knowing less than when I started. Having said that, in general the Vodafone network and service works great; they just can't seem to explain anything in normal language. I did learn that our Institute office location does not have access to fiber 😦. So we're basically stuck with the wireless ISP, which is ok most of the time, but unfortunately it isn't always reliable.
The afternoon was spent at the Institute preparing lessons. I finished my reading and marking for Alma 30-35 on Friday. When I teach, I like to use the scriptures all marked up with my notes, so I have a hardback Book of Mormon in Italian that I'm highlighting and annotating. Occasionally I'll go to a separate sheet of paper for a quote during my class, but for the most part I just hold the scriptures in my hand while we have a gospel discussion. Dee had a bunch of work to do on the PowerPoint slides for her online family history class in the evening. She spent almost the entire afternoon holed up in her classroom. Everything was done in time, though she skipped the student council meeting at 4pm. It was a useful meeting with Ugo and three of the kids present in person, with two more attending via Zoom. It was good to go over plans for upcoming activities, and we also discussed other issues and possible plans.
In the evening there was the English language class, as well as a missionary lesson by the Sorelle for a young investigator afterwards. The investigator lives right outside the stake boundaries of the ward she been attending, so they are trying to figure out how to handle that. From her home, it's much easier on public transit to get to the ward she has been attending than the one she should attend. Many members here don't have cars, so the issue is more difficult than in the US where almost everyone has access to a car.
Dee's lesson ended much earlier than she expected -- she used almost 100 slides but got through everything in under 45 minutes. Her students were excited about what she taught. She's doing great stuff, though we both always come away from teaching a lesson being reminded how limited our Italian actually is. We're probably very good by missionary standards, but that's not saying much! It keeps us humble.