Tuesday, October 7, 2008

Un giorno nella vita.

As suggested, I'll start updating with some day-to-day adventures since, yes, every day is an adventure.

Well, today was any normal Tuesday. It's been getting colder at night and in the mornings and the government doesn't turn on the heat until...November 1st? Well, I got up and took a shower and got coffee with Jen on the way to school. We always stop at Mirko Bar which is right around the corner from "campus." I put "campus" in quotations because our "campus" is really a renovated villa (a large house) with a big cement wall and iron gate blocking it from the rest of the street. It's beautiful! Anyway, the bar is small, but it's always the same few baristas and they are so nice. They know our coffee orders. So we sat, enjoying our morning caffe and headed to class, Jen to her Human Politics class, me to Food and Wine.

Food and Wine was as usual today, an hour and half of the lesson dedicated to lecture, followed by a half hour break, followed by a professional cook coming in and preparing two regional dishes, paired with two wines that we all get to try. Today I didn't so much prefer either dish. One was a risotto, cooked in red wine and butter (yeah, I know, boo-hoo) and the other was a sliced veal with a mayonnaise spread that had lemon and tuna blended in to it, topped with capers; (again, boo-hoo). The wines were both red and very different from one another. I think I prefer whites.

After class, Donna and I made our way to Via del Corso, a long and prominent street in Rome that's famous for it's shopping. I was directed to this area in search of an art supply store. We found it, and it's fabulous! There are two parts to it,  two separate stores, actually. One is like Cappel's, where it had all the holiday decorations, it was great! This was the first sign of anything Halloween or Christmas; just another adjustment from seeing Halloween and Christmas decorations in August. Anyway, we passed all the fun and walked in to the art supply store and I got excited. They had EVERYTHING! 

Mom: They had a fair selection of beads, jewelry supplies, a great selection of books with things such as patterns and pictures and instructions for numerous things. I didn't look so closely, but there was quite a variety.

I ended up getting a sketchbook, markers and colored pencils. I can finally make some Roman art of my own, yeah! All in all this excursion was exciting and successful, I look forward to others. My roommates are starting to come home. And if you've seen the most recent post previous to this, you'd see that my internet spot is right by the door. It's almost dinner time and I have homework to do. Our house smells good.

1 comment:

Caren said...

Did you see any beaded flower books? There's a kind of wire that I can't find here called spiral wire. It's called Bouillion or canutiglia or molla wire. It's used in ganutell. Here's my gallery of ganutell flowers. Here's a page with pictures. It's a German site but I couldn't find an Italian site with clear pictures. It comes in gold, silver and whole bunch of cool colors. It's a spiral wire and comes in different diameters and different patterns, like it might be circular or square or have a zig zag pattern.

Another flower art form I'm interested is called fiori di moulinè or Fiori di Filo. I have an Italian book on the technica by Donatella Ciotti who has written a whole bunch of different craft and jewelry books, in Italian of course.

There's yet another art form call biedermeier. It uses natural materials.

Off to a meeting.

Love, Mom (hope the links work)