Blog #4 South Field Trip

Well this last week has been pretty awesome here in Rome. Again things keep happening and I'm still amazed. Before this week, I'm not going to lie, I was starting to get a little homesick but this week couldn't have come at a better time. After a late night on Sunday night working on my project, we had our Tiber river review Monday all day. My project dealt with a community gathering space located on the lower area of the site. This community gathering area would also allow people to interact with the river and use it for reflection purposes. The area where they gathered also served as a filtration device to help bring awareness to the waste that the Tiber holds. Our reviewers where citizens/ engineers of Rome. The review went ok, not as well as planned. The reviewers were not sold on the Tiber ever being clean. They had lived in Rome their entire life and were so used to it being clean that the thought of it being cleaned was an idea and could never happen. This is just there way of life, the city is not the cleanest which is unfortunate and its upsetting to know that it will probably never change. Ok enough with depressing stories, now what happened the rest of the week. Last Saturday we all woke up and we wanted to play some basketball. So I did some research to look for the closest basketball court. We hoofed it to the nearest one but little did I know I was in for another surprise. This court was awesome. It looked as if we were playing on an inner city court in Brooklyn. The court was asphalt, the backboards were rickety, and we were surrounded by junky buildings, it couldn’t have been any better. I loved it.This weekend (Thursday thru Sunday) we took our south field trip to Naples, Capri, and Paestum. Every one was amazing. The first day (Thursday) on the way there our bus tire popped on the way so it slowed our trip a little but we finally made it to Baia. This was an old settlement that consisted of ruins that looked over the Mediterranean. One area that intrigued me in this place was the echo room. It was this massive room that had an oculus at the top. Any quiet sound you made would multiply into many other softer ones that bounced off the surrounding walls. It was awesome. Next we made our way to the hotel where we had a meal which I should take some time to talk about. We sat down knowing we had a free meal from the hotel. Knowing this we assumed it was going to be small. We sat down and there were a couple of slices of pizza for everyone and some bread as usual so we ate that and we were hoping for another plate of something. Soon after that the waiters brought out some pasta. Seeing that I am a larger man the server piled my plate high, which made me happy because I knew I was going to be full from the meal. So I chowed down my pasta and was stuffed! I had already eaten so much food. Then our teacher comes out to make an announcement that the second coarse was coming out. WHAT! A SECOND COARSE! I was shocked. Obviously I wasn't going to turn it down but somehow I managed to shove down another pork chop, a salad and some desert. It was ridiculous, but now I have respect for a three coarse meal! After the meal we all hung out in the lobby had some drinks (couple to many) and went out to the beach and watched the Mediterranean roll in on the coast. It was great!We arose early and headed for our first site, Paestum. This was awesome. It was more ruins that consisted of temples and a amphitheatre. Seeing these massive buildings were amazing and indescribable. The pictures can help explain but will never explain the experience, After, this we went to a small museum that showed and displayed some of the artifacts found at Paestum. After this we headed to Herculaneum which was a small community that had been taken over by lava from a near by volcano around 70 A.D.The volcano erupted over 100 billion tons of lava from mount Vitruvius. The city wasn’t uncovered until 1940's. It was insane to think what this community went through when this happened. After this we made out way to Naples where we stayed for the night. We also ate at a fantastic pizza shop and that had a Mais pizza, which was filled with creamy corn. It was delicious and reminded me a little of home!. Saturday we woke up, got on a ferry and headed towards the island of Capri! This Island was beautiful. I did my best to show pictures and I will give a couple of points because words cannot describe this place. We hiked for a little bit to reach one of the peaks of the mountain. WOW it was amazing. I sat on the ledge of a cliff and looked out over the Mediterranean, which sat around 1500 feet below me. Talk about amazing. While we were sitting there some wild goats came up to see us. It was awesome. Hopefully the pictures do some justice. Then we ate some lunch and made our way to the highest cliff. We were short on time so we made it all the way up to the top in less then 15 minutes. Which was pretty fast considering the average hiking time was an hour and a half. This was amazing. I could see for miles overlooking the entire island while the clouds surrounded me. It was a Once in a lifetime experience that I will never forget. Once we made it back down to head home we hung out on the beach and threw rocks into the sea not having a single problem or worry on our mind. It was such a great feeling. Sunday we went to a museum in Naples. The building was beautiful and displayed statues from all of Italy. The whole weekend was absolutely amazing. When you are here for this amount of time you start to take for granted what you are seeing. I am doing my best to keep an open mind and it’s not hard to do. I am so amazed on what is going on around me. Seeing some of the things that I saw this weekend reminds me I am surrounded by Gods work, Standing on the mountain in Capri it felt as if he was holding me up there to look out across this beautiful earth. I am so blessed and can't express how appreciative I am to be able to experience things like this!