As we drove past Piazza Repubblica near the campus, there was a huge protest of some kind that partially blocked access. Fortunately, we were able to get through. It seemed peaceful enough, but we had no idea what it was. Looking it up online later, apparently it was the national group of charter bus drivers, protesting a law which makes their life much harder. They currently always have to return to their home garage after each trip before starting a new one, which can be a real pain if there is a long one-way drive. In Italy you just get used to protests and strikes all the time.
When we arrived, we learned that Riccardo had successfully defended his master's thesis and has now officially graduated. There was a flurry of congratulations on WhatsApp, along with some ribbing. For example, we learned that he is a twin, so I remarked that his twin sister was much better looking than he is. He replied that he is beautiful inside😀.
Dee baked the new sweet potatoes, filling the whole place with a wonderful aroma. We each sampled the result, and it was delightful. She also cut and prepared all the different ingredients for stuffing, so that they will be ready to go.
With things as ready as they could be for the big day of cooking, we left early during English class to go to Ikea. Along the way, we dropped off a big bag of our kitchen trash. The garbage bins in the courtyard here are pretty small, and we were concerned about overflowing them after Friday's event. Thus we took a very full trash bag with us in the car and stopped on the roadside a few blocks away, tossing the bag into one of the ubiquitous large bins.
Having given our twin bedding to the local Anziani last week so they could host other missionaries for the conference, we now needed new bedding for our guest bedroom, with our daughter Chiara showing up in a few weeks. Our schedule has been too busy to go shopping there in the mornings, and we feared that that mall would get real busy with Christmas coming. So this timing worked out well, arriving there around 8:30pm after some traffic. The store was almost empty, which made shopping very pleasant. We bought a folding chair (10€) for the kitchen, as we always need seating but the fixed chairs tend to get in the way when not being used. We also looked at smaller tables for the kitchen to see whether we could fit a second fridge, but nothing looked good to us. Dee came up with a clever possibility: buy a larger island with seating space and storage, instead of having the table against the wall. It might not work but is certainly worth some study. We bought all the bedding (sheets, pillows, blankets, duvet covers, etc), putting it on the mission credit card because sometimes we host missionaries. We got back home just before 10pm. Dee actually had some energy left even after a long day, so she is definitely getting stronger every day after her miserable weekend.