May 15:... Lovely sunny day. Woke up early-ish. After breakfast, spent most of the morning basking, drawing, and doing laundry. At 11:30, there was some sort of celebratory lunch down in the courtyard for another of those obscure Italian holidays. After, I had internet from 12ish to 2:30 (I borrowed an empty time slot) which was nice. Talked to Charon (IM) and caught up on the entire month of April journaling. Go me.

At six, Gwen and I went out to find postcards and a restaurant. While the former was fairly easy, the latter proved far more difficult, and we FINALLY found one. We had vermicelli with rabbit. Interesting. We went out for gelato later, and it made my night to see a red Ferrari parked at the Duomo not far from the gelateria. I came home and eventually went to bed exhausted.

***

May 16:...Another hot one. Spent most of the day alternating between basking in the sun, doing my laundry (the rest of it) and doing my paper. I finished shortly after 6, and at 7 we all went to Re Artu (King Arthur) for dinner. Upon returning, I endeavored to draw, and ended up reading from the symbology dictionary, looking in vain for ideas, before going to bed.

***

May 17:.. Started sculpture today -- wow. Ow. We had to make slabs of clay for our project -- that didn't happen until after pranzo, before which we went to see another cave system to see the colombari (dove holes). There are some really small passages in there -- Rick would never get through them.

Making slabs is agony. Took me over an hour just to get the first one right. The other three went faster, especially after we invented the hit-it-really-hard-with-the-enormous-rolling-pin technique, but four slabs of clay still took from 2:30 to 6ish... maybe to 6:30. An hour, roughly, per slab. Ow. My hands hurt so bad. The day also included a presentation by Joel Sheesley (the painting prof) and a venture to a pizza joint with Gwen, Tara, Dan, and Will. Before bed, Jessica and I agonized with each other for a while.

***

May 18:... More sculpture. Turned our slabs over and told our idea to make 'historical strata' for our sculpture to Marino. He liked. I had an angst-ish trip after lunch before I went back down to work some more. I made two more slabs, plenty of tiles, and cleaned up. Gwen and I went to I Dolci for dinner, then for gelato -- we met Alessandro there -- and then to look at San Giovenale for ideas on architecture. It was closed, so I just sketched a few details and went back. I was determined to draw and came up with something, but I'm just so tired...

***

May 19:...More work. No orange this morning. Boy are my hips sore. Not sure why. Finished the relief sculpture work on my project, bought a train ticket to Venice, and met a nice German girl named Diana, who works at the travel agency. Mom called -- and then I misplaced Gwen and had to go find her in the dark and (somewhat creepy) convent, then went to bed.

***

May 20:... Started assembling my box today. Have two sides up. After lunch, started preparing for our Venice trip tomorrow. Getting up at 6:30 (hmm... 7 hours from now). Got everything done, I think. Still stressing. Started drawing again though. Thought the sculpture class had me too tired and drained to draw. I hope I don't forget anything and I REALLY hope there are no more travel catastrophes.

NOTE: May 21st has been moved to May week 4.