Grocery Mishap and Karaoke

Today we lost a lot of glue in our program when Carole and Dr. Byers left. Carole has been a technical and organizational MASTER and she is going to be sorely missed over here—Dr. Byers also for his classroom contributions and quirky sense of humor. We all wish they could have stayed for the whole trip. In other news, my feet are itching like CRAZY! Apparently they are just bug bites, but I seriously look like my feet are breaking out in hives. I’m trying to keep it under control with hydrocortisone cream, but it’s still bothering me a lot. Hopefully it will get better soon. This morning I found out that, unfortunately, the Florence trip was cancelled. Boo! Apparently the travel agency we were arranging this through jacked up the price. No bueno. (Shh, I know that’s Spanish.) It’s alright though. None of my close friends here were going to go anyway, and we decided to go to the beach in Fano. It should be a good time! After classes today, I moved out of my second apartment and finally into Casa Lapis! There are drawbacks, but at this point I think the pros outweigh the cons. As soon as we got into our new apartment and started to try get settled, Giordana came frantically running into our room to tell us that we were missing an interview we didn’t know was scheduled. Yikes! We ran out of the room just as the maid was coming in. Carole had cleaned the apartment before she left, but apparently Mario, the landlord, would have flipped out if it weren’t properly cleaned by the maid. So, we ran out the door and did some interviews at the orotorio. It was pretty cool to see everything in action there. It’s basically like a big playground that the church runs so kids have somewhere to play. There’s a basketball court, a soccer field, a caffé, and some jungle gym type equipment. After the interview, Kevin, Victoria and I were planning to go to the grocery store so I ran up to my new apartment to see what I had and what I needed. I walked in, opened the fridge, and to my horror all of our groceries had been thrown away—even all of the unopened food! Apparently the maid thought the food was leftover from Carole, so we lost everything! Fortunately, I found some of it in the trash (all sealed things), and we are being reimbursed 30 Euro (supposedly), so that’s good. What a nightmare, though. Kevin and Victoria were really nice and went to the grocery store while I figured that out and got some stuff for dinner for me. After we ate, we went to Squa Qua with Dan and Charlotte for some coffee before karaoke at Seven’s. We talked for a long time and even Dr. Thorn showed up for a bit. Pretty entertaining. We went across the street to Seven’s after a bit for karaoke, which was HILARIOUS to observe! I’m really glad we went. It was kind of a USA fest for a little while with songs like “Born in the USA” and “Surfin USA” and “Sweet Home Alabama” which was possibly a little culturally insensitive (??), but still highly entertaining. Left the bar pretty much as soon as I started getting hit-on by Italians. Pretty much a mood killer right there. Still a good night, though!