Thursday morning we slept very well without an alarm, which was heavenly. I went out and put the new windshield wiper from Amazon on our car. It seems to fit, and this coming weekend the forecast says that we will need to use it. It took me a while, because I forgot where we had parked the night before; that is a challenge each morning, and I went up to the far corner of the block before remembering. I also read the gas meters for our apartment and that of the Sorelle beneath us, sending the results to the office. Dee went to the open market and the Chinese store. Sorella Thacker got locked into their apartment when her husband went early to the airport for transfers, and she couldn't find her key. The Balzottis had to run to the office to get the extra copy of their key. Life is always interesting around here! We agreed that we should have an extra copy of each other's keys.
After driving to the Institute and carrying a bunch of stuff up, I headed out on the subway to renew the ZTL (Limited Traffic Zone) pass for our car. That is the expensive pass (800€ per year) which allows us to drive downtown; without it we couldn't get to the Institute on weekdays. The mission pays for it, using my mission credit card. Having done it a couple of times before, I had all my paperwork in order. I waited about half an hour in line, then within 15 minutes it was all done. I can't put the new pass on until the old on expires on October 30, but it is nice to have it all ready.
The Repubblica metro stop, where the escalator collapsed the other day, is still closed, and I have seen no news when it will be reopened. Returning to the Institute, I spent the afternoon working on preparing my lessons and my talk for Sunday. Nobody showed up until evening, as is typical for Thursdays. Then there was a big group of GANS who showed up for the evening English class, taught by the Ganziani. Grace came first, followed by Dario, who was famished and finished off the chicken enchiladas -- I didn't know that Dee had kept some at the Institute. His fiancee Grace was there, but he said he was hungry and didn't want to share (not good news for a relationship, haha. ) He also dove in and made himself a dish of red bellpepper, green beans and tomatoes that he zapped in the microwave and seasoned with olive oil, salt, and garlic powder. I'm always happy to see a young person go for veggies, and he is good in the kitchen anyway. He even cleaned up. English class, they had a debate (in English) about why women were better than men, with a small prize offered to the winning team. Everyone was participating and laughing hard. The Ganziani said that having a debate is a good way to get all the kids involved, and it seemed to work well. These elders are very good at involving everybody. Amazing.
There were two of our GANS there with keys, so we got to go home early, before 8:30pm. With some help from the Anziani, we put two tall cardboard boxes into the car to take home. Dee has kept them since April (each box held four of our new chairs) to use for an activity in Primary. It took some finagling to get them to fit into our Yaris, but we made it. The Primary children will have fun with them. Doug has been reluctant to bring them home, but I'm sure it will be a memorable activity, and he came through.
We are still recovering from a couple of extremely busy weeks, and it has been nice to have a less full schedule this week. It probably won't last, but we need it right now!
Karen and Dave brought me a beautiful necklace and earrings from Venice, made of Murano glass. The necklace fell off its cord right away, but luckily didn't break when it hit the floor. So I went to the open market and found some nice red beads to replace the black cord. It looks great, and I'm glad to have it secure now.
I began to use the app that allows for two languages side by side for studying the scriptures. I have had it for a long time, but hadn't used it recently. It's great.
Snagit 2019 was just released, so I bought the upgrade. It makes putting together presentations so much easier, and I'm a longtime fan of the software, since 2008. I have used five versions.