15th Gennaio 2015

This morning I went to school. The History and Philosophy teacher was away, so we had a substitute in the second hour and we were dismissed at the end of the fourth hour. I finished my story in technical drawing today.

After school I was planning to visit La Basilica di Sant'Antonio. I will give you another basic Italian lesson: "il", "lo", "la" and "l'" are the singular forms of "the", and the plural forms are "gli", "i" and "le". So, "La Basilica di Sant'Antonio" is The Basilica of Saint Antonio. Many of you will already know this, but I am assuming zero knowledge.

While I was waiting at the bus stop near school, I was talking to a group of my classmates. They asked what I was doing after school and I told them. They invited me to have lunch with them, at a restaurant called "Sushi Kai". I accepted, and in all there were 11 of us at lunch. It was a flat-rate sushi train, and while there was a wide variety of sushi, there were also other Asian dishes including dumplings, spring rolls, fried rice, noodles, teriyaki sticks and miso soup. There were also a few sweets too. It was a great lunch, and a very good setup for a restaurant.

Afterwards we wandered around for a little while before I visited Sant'Antonio. I completed the pilgramage. I was planning to light a candle, and I bought one outside, but they have a box where you donate the candles and they use them when they need them, which is probably a fire-prevention thing as much as anything else - when I went on the 8th of December there were well over 500 people in there.

I saw Saint Anthony's lower jaw, voicebox and tongue, as well as some of his clothes. It was a very nice experience.

After visiting Santo I walked around the centre for a while - Giuliana had a meeting that wasn't supposed to finish until 8 o'clock tonight. I caught the bus home and arrived at about 20 past 5. Giuliana finished early and was home at half-past 6. We played cards, and then I wrote this. For dinner we are having minestra con zucca (soup with pumpkin (con means with)) and ouve (eggs). I am quite tired after my afternoon out so I think I will go to bed quite early tonight.