Day #20 in Orvieto

Making progress on my stamps

Testing them out by rubbing graphite on them

 March 14, 2013 - Thursday

This morning we had the usual breakfast (corn flakes and coffee), then hurried off to class. Some people arrived at 6am to continue working but since I finished most of my linoleum stamps last night, I didn’t come early… and I also like to sleep. In class, we continued to work on both the stamps and the second drafts of our stories. We learned how to actually construct the book (it’s more of an accordion shape rather than an actual “book”). There will be 40 squares all together (each spare is 20cm by 20cm). Once again, it will make more sense when I take some pictures of it! Since we still had a lot of work to do in the studio, we had to move lunch from 1:30-2:30 and then go to the library to watch a film for class at 3. We went outside to read a SHORT poem for class and I gave Laura a piggyback because she didn’t have her shoes on. Prof. Doll said it would only take a minute to read the poem but we were out there for around 20 minutes and even though Laura is really small, my arms and legs were shaking after having her on my back for the whole time! Because she felt like a thousand pounds by the end (I told her this – she wasn’t offended). The good thing is that it was a pretty good arm workout… and now I know that if I need to carry someone for 20 minutes I can. If I ever need to. Although that will probably never happen again.

For lunch we had some sort of shell pasta with meat sauce and it was delicious. Then we had little spinach veggie burger things with carrots on the side. And then we went to get gelato and the third gelato place in Orvieto. It was much smaller than the others but it was cheaper and they gave you free whipped cream and a cookie on top. It was sooooo good! Dark chocolate and coffee.

We then went to the library to watch a movie. It was about some soccer player – Zindane. I fell asleep during the movie because it’s in a dark movie theater-esque room but it was a pretty good movie from the parts that I was awake for!

Everyone returned to the studio after the movie but I decided to go back to the monastery to work on my story, drink some more coffee, and just hang out. It was good to write a few emails and be alone for a while (with the exception of the few people that were milling around the monastery too). I started to do some laundry but it’s definitely a different kind of process than it is at home. It takes over and hour and a half to wash a small load of laundry and I haven’t seen a drying machine since I’ve been here. Like… they don’t have them. We’ve been told that it’ll get better once the weather is nice and our clothes can hang outside, but right now everything has to hang on racks in the laundry room. Which isn’t a big deal except it takes a little while for my jeans to dry so I have to go without them for a few days while they’re drying. Once again, this isn’t really a problem either because I only wear like two different outfits. Just kidding…

Soon it was time for dinner and then I was suddenly stressed because I didn’t work on my book project at all during the afternoon. So after dinner, I rushed over to the studio to continue working and use the Internet. I’m definitely getting more excited about this book project though now that some of the prep work has been done and I started to construct the actual book! Normally we don’t have class on Fridays, but since we didn’t have class on Monday, we DO have class tomorrow.

The best thing happened today: I GOT A LETTER FROM GRAMMIE AND PAPA! Let’s just say it was an exciting moment. Prof. Doll hands out the letters and packages every day (its like summer camp) and it’s always depressing when you think he’s handing a letter to you but he’s actually giving it to the person next to you. It’s happened to me multiple times… but NOT today because I got a real letter!