Gospel Choir
Tuesday morning Dee went out to the open market, quite a walk for her. Her scooter has been a great improvement for her mobility. Dee writes: Ugo's younger sons asked me to make them mittens before I fell down the stairs, and I really wanted to get the yarn to start. Levi asked for navy and turquoise and I found those colors! Another thing I have needed is hooks and eyes, which we couldn't find at either Chinese market. I carried my crutches with me on my scooter, and people recognized that I was injured, not crazy to be riding a scooter. There is a flight of six steps on the way to the mercantino (open market), but I was happy to discover there is a pedestrian path for skipping them. There were a couple of tricky spots where I had to use the crutches: to get around some broken glass and to get down a particular curb. I can now lock the brake on the scooter, step down with the crutches, then pull the scooter to me. Meanwhile, I walked up to Todis to buy some produce and tortillas, then drive the car back down much closer to our apartment. I spoke to Amazon and to HSBC, the bank for my new mission credit card, trying to figure out why I cannot successfully buy anything online with my card. Apparently HSBC has some kind of block on our card for online purchases (in Europe?), though it is couched in terms of me not supplying the correct "zip code". When I ask which zip code it is that they want, the one in Salt Lake City for church headquarters or the Italian postal code where we live or the postal code for the mission home or office, they really don't know. It is not clear whether this will be resolved.
We had a good-sized group for Taco Tuesday, though in two shifts, and I didn't get a photo of the second group. Ugo was there, again bringing limes, avocado, and cilantro, so Dee whipped up some nice salsa.
Olivia, our backpacking-through-Europe girl, was also there to eat; she was the only female other than Dee for a while. She has a cold and ended up taking a 3+ hour nap in one of the classrooms, using the blanket and pillow we have there just for that purpose. I also gave her some cough meds. After her nap she felt good enough to do some more sightseeing. She leaves on Wednesday, but overall I think that we did very well by her.
At 4pm, I walked over to the new Friendship Center at the local Episcopal church (St. Paul within the Walls) to participate in a gospel choir. The director is Alessandro, an Italian, and we had a lot of fun singing "Amazing Grace" in four-part harmony, with three people in each section. Over half of the group was LDS missionaries, who had the most experience in choral groups, and all but one of the others were immigrants.
Microsoft support was to supposed to call me at 3pm about the Windows license issue, but they didn't call until I was at the choir. They left a message that they will call again Wednesday. The time difference makes connecting a bit difficult.
For Ugo's church history class in the evening, he had Steven Harper teach the class from BYU via Zoom. Steven is the leading expert on the accounts of Joseph Smith's first vision, which was his topic. Dee attended, while I manned the door/intercom. I usually end up in the kitchen when there's a class going on, so I was pretty happy to get to attend this one. I also knit during the class :) I will watch the recorded version later. Alessio helped us carry stuff down to the car (even though he has a broken toe), including our new desktop computer, and when we got home the Sorelle came down to meet us and carry stuff up. We have been very blessed by kindness of others during Dee's injury, mostly helping carry things. Claudia also offered to do some dishes and there were plenty!
We have a new GANS, Martine. She was Joyce's companion in the MTC. She's from Sicily (born in Africa). We had a nice talk about her goals and interests. She is happy to know we can help her with her math class for Pathway, and she wants to learn to knit :-)
