Today was another really long day, and the weather was not really nice. We walked over 11 miles along the overall Rome and Vatican City. We took Metro to the upper city, and our first stop was Vatican Museum which is the rated No.6 in the world. I have to say that I love Vatican Museum most, and the whole tour inside and outside the museum was unbelievably fantastic. We were very lucky that we made a reservation online to avoid the tedious line, still big crowds inside. I did not expect the museum too much because Vatican is the smallest country in the world how come the museum to be grand. I was totally wrong, it was not only grand, but also delicate and holy. The most impressing spot was the upstairs chapel painted by Michelangelo. Tourists cannot expose their shoulder and no photos inside. The other major stop was St. Peter’s Basilica. We walked 337 steps to go to the top. It was thrillingly narrow and tiring because we did not have anywhere to rest. If you have a heart disease, I strongly suggest you not go to the top. After climbing to the top, it was another world. We were suddenly faced by the breezes, and the overall view was amazing. I really hoped we could stay longer, but the storms were coming, so we had to go back. Then we walked along the Pantheon, another piazza (I forget the name) where was filled with street art. Interestingly enough, we saw another Penn Stater there. Hamdon began to shoot some videos reminding me that the program was to be over. Dinner was taken place the same place, we exchanged final words, we hugged, they cried but I did not. During this program I had been thinking a thousand times to leave and to see my boyfriend, but at the last minute I really could not believe and did not believe it was over. Hamdon said this was his best time during college. I say this must be a period of time that I will remember forever.
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The first full day in Rome. I have to say I am in love with Rome. I am very surprised we could see so many attractions in a day. The top one must-see is definitely coloseum. The line was long, but I have to say it was worth it. The platform was huge and impressive. Coloseum was built before Christ used for the performance of fighting against beasts. The shame was that we did not have a tour guide with us, therefore a lot of things were not very clear to me. But this was the payoff of seeing many things in a day. Then we went to the forum to see the Ancient Rome city, from which definitely recalled me the saying "Rome isn't built in a day. " And then we went to see the piazza di Venezia, one of my favorite piazze. It was tremendous and stunning that was a piazza in honor of dead soldiers who fought for Italy. It was interesting that the guidance will blow the whistle angrily to ask people who sat on the stairs to stand up. There were just so many significant buildings we saw in the Rome, every step further, I could see more stuff that I saw on the textbook before. The best part of the day was a residence area of Jewish. It was a relatively quiet place in a busy metropolis. We had lunch there, and brinera had a discussion with us about biggest fear. Brinera said her biggest fear was illness, because she would not want to suffer. She said if she had had cancer she would have spent all her money to enjoy the last month of her life. She is the person like a character described in book. She is totally a free person, no family and love being alone. She said she did not like marriage, instead she preferred a three-month relationship, "love is fireworks", and she did not mind start over and over again. Then we kept walking along downtown, we shortly stayed in "the mouth of truth" and another piazza. We walked and walked, and we were all worn out after such a long day. We had a quite nice dinner with a reasonable price for two entries, side dish and dessert.
Today it was the day to say goodbye with Calabria. I actually was kind of excited about my next trip and not felt sad at all. I was carrying the heavy luggages again and I got very weak recently. The short walk made me really tired. We spent almost eight hours on the train. We literally did not do much on the train, I spent some time talking with vincezo's cousins. It was a little bit awkward because I did not know much about Italian. But we started the conversation anyway. I knew it must be stupid and I was not satisfied with the progress I made so far when we did the conversation. But for the most part we understood each other and I was very happy about that. When we arrived Rome, right that second, I heard Chinese. Then I realized how touristic Rome was, there were so many Chinese and people form all over the place. We met brinerà, the Italian teacher that I will have class with. I thought she was really cool. I was scared of her al little, but after some the conversation. I realized she was a really special, independent, generous and kind person. I looked forward to hear more stories about herself. One girl on the street glanced at brinera, and then rolled her eyes and showed the disrespectful smile. I thought it was weird but annoying. Is that because brinera was special? Or was she wear the cheap purse. She took us out to explore the city actually we walked along XX settermbre. I saw many attractions on the way. For example, San Carlo Quattro Fontane, quirinale, and Fontana di trevi. I took pictures and slow motion video of I throw the coin by right hand and crossed left shoulder to follow the legend, saying either "you would return to Rome or you would meet your true love". Then we stayed a nice restaurant for dinner, and I ordered spaghetti of vongole. Then we kept walking. We saw the piazza di spagna, trinita dei Monti and Villa Medici. Then we got back to hotel, and I was exhausted. Even though I heard people complain about Rome often times, but I have to say that's been my favorite place so far. It is touristic but that makes Rome more fascinating and entertaining.
Today I finished my final presentations because Mike will leave tomorrow. I talked about two memorable trips for language presentation, and I talked about the perspective of performance in fashion for culture presentation. It went well, because I spent a lot of time on the presentation, and everyone else did good job. I woke up at 6 to finish the presentation. At afternoon, we spent 3 hours on "scopa", a card game. That was a lot fun to spend time with amici without using cell phone. At night, we had the farewell dinner. Our group invited you the close people we met in Italy, like Eleonora, Petro. It was getting sad at the end, and Some people cried. Then I realized it was almost over. How time flied, and how nice our group was. It has been a great time to be together, learning, traveling and having fun. I really appreciate this experience to help build my academic ability but also the friendship between everyone.
The Power Point files are attached During the day, I spent the day preparing the presentation. I did not have lunch, so I got really hangery. At night, we went to a local community for a meeting arranged by Eleonora. At first, we had no idea what was going on but saw lots of strangers in a short amount of time. We shaked hands and smiled. I put the "Italian performance" on, but I had no idea what we were doing. I sat in a room listening to their philosophy of philanthropy. I always hated those kind of activities in my life, so I was not very nice to show my patience. They talked about what they did and wondered what we had done. Then they took us to their organization camp where we had some conversation with the Italian ragazzi. They tried to use their English while we were trying to use our Italian that was funny. Also, I found they were much more easygoing people than I though they would be. It was funny that one Italian guy had a crush on Kaylee, and one Italian young girl had a crush on Riccardo. They wanted to take every picture with every single mind, and they wanted to friend us on Facebook. We all thought it would be much nicer to meet earlier with them. We had many mixed pizza for dinner, also we had cannoli and fruit cup. We sat on a very long table, pizza and calico and music. Those things reminded me that "we are in Italy"
Today is the full day we stay in Napoli. We took an early train to Pompeii first. Many tourists in Pompeii were from all over the world. We paid for a tour guide so she could explain for us. She had a very strong accent so for most part I couldn't understand, but I still understood some from the brochure and others' mouths. Pompeii was an old ancient and prosperous village but was destroyed by Volcano explosion in 79 A.D.. Pompeii in ancient language meant "five" which was made up of five villages so it makes sense to call it Pompeii. The archeologist even recapture the movement of people when lava covered them, and they infused lime to reappear the figures. It was very vivid and impressive. Also we saw so many houses, shops, mosaic decorations that everything we stepped on were taken place thousands of years ago. I was surprised by their wisdoms. I saw how they used nature to heat up water and where they took baths. Another big thing in ancient times is sex. we saw so many decorations and souvenirs about sex. The tour guide said that sex was one of the most big thing in their daily lives besides eating and sleeping. After the tour, we spent time on ourselves for taking some pictures, and took train back to Napoli. I did not do many thing in Napoli actually. We were all tired, Napoli was not a safe place to wander so far. So we explored some piazza and castle in the center and I bought a pair of expensive but nice shoes. For dinner, four of us went to a nice restaurant. I ordered a local wine, entry for ravioli with squid and and shimp and dessert for tiramisu for a bit over 20 euro. It was a very pleasant and enjoying dinner, the food was delicious and the price was acceptable. The overall impression of Napoli was not so well, because it was crowded and dirty, and everyone reminded me to watch our my purse and watch. I was very cautious all the time so I could not totally relax and enjoy the city. We even saw a prostitute sitting on a corner of the center. But I still appreciated the experience very much, especially when I went back to the hotel standing on the roof of the hotel, I saw the night view of Napoli. It was a quiet place in a such crowded place, I could hear and see everywhere. It was still beautiful, the fireworks were everywhere that seems the city was celebrating some national holidays. I am glad I could see and experience the true southern Italy by my own eyes and my heart.
Today we had conversation and lunch combined together at Eleonora's house. We took everything with us, and we were ready to leave from the house directly. We met the her family, and visit her house. That was huge, gorgeous and luxurious. The house was build early 19 centuries, and it was bought by Eleonera's dad which costed him about 7 million. The house was not only big with beatiful gardens and yards, but also it was very furnished and was displayed with many delicate utensils and decorations. After the tour, we had a buffet-like lunch. It was the most awesome lunch I had at the time. We have some many choices, like pasta, parmigiana, chicken. Then we had watermelon and espresso. People sang and displayed their own culture together. Riccardo was a good singer, and he showed his voice and was very impressive. We wrote a "thanks note" for Eleonora for everything she did for us, and we took pictures to remember the last conversation day. She also very considerate for preparing the vegetarian food for Hamdon and Fatimah for their dinner, because they were on fast. Speaking of fast, I learned so much more about their Islam religion. For example, I saw and learned what they could eat and what has been going on was fast. After we went to the train station and spent the afternoon on the train. Thanks to Ryan, he told me many card games so we could kill some time, since we did not have cards that time, so he drew the cards that was hilarious. When we got the Napoli,it was night already. We found a small restaurant for an easy dinner. Then we tried to party a little at boys' room. But Hamdon took very serious of that and prohibited that to happen. So we went to sleep. After this trip, out relationship was getting closer, and we named each other a family member as if we were really on a family trip.
Today, we had quiz for language course, and we turned in our final exam of culture class. Then we could focus on the presentation. We also finished the movie "Italy love it or leave it", and there were so many things I got to look it up on the internet again. Around six o'clock, I went to Scilla with some of my amici. We spent an hour seeing the sunset. It was the most beautiful sun set I has ever seen. Everything was so peaceful and tranquil. Only few people were on the beach, so I just laid down seeing the sea, sky and clouds blending together. The gulls flied across the sky sometimes. I saw the sum wend down to the sea level little by little, and it was the perfect time to appreciate nature and beauty of Italy. Then we had dinner at local restaurant which was rated really high on "TripAdvisor". It was huge inside, and the seafood was really fresh. I ordered one oyster and rolled, stuffed swordfish. Finally I had some real course in Italian restaurant lol. The owner of the restaurant was very funny, his pictures were on every product in restaurant, and he had a huge picture wall. We had picture with him as well, and we left our email to him so we could keep in touch. We were joking that "we got to go back to Scilla for seeing our picture on the wall". Then we had gelato and chilled on the beach. The breeze was very cool and we were very relaxing. Then we called Sergio to go back. It was hilarious that six of us squeezed in one small cab. Sergio was funny guy as well, and he kept chatting with us and took us to see the view on the mountain. The cab price was only 15 for six of us. Anyway, it's been a really good night.
Mi sono svegliato moto prima a finire i compiti. E poi abbiamo avuto classe all'albergo ancora. Dopo la classe lingua, siamo andati a supermercato. Non io abbiamo avuto bisogno di fare la spesa, ma sono andata a accompagnare gli amici. Io ho trascorso il tempo per esplorare. Finalmente, io ho trovato del prodotti interessanti. E poi abbiamo guadato a finire il film uccide solo d'estate, e abbiamo guadato un secondo film. C'era del tema interessante di la mafia in classe, e io l'ho pensata molto per il tema. Per pomeriggi, io ho studiato e ho telefonato mio ragazzo. E poi, siamo andati a numero uno con i ragazzi e Maria and professori insieme. Abbiamo mangiato Pasta alla carbonara e Mozzarella alla caprese con miei amici. E professori e Maria abbiamo mangiato la specialità di pesce. Io ho cercato che università professore e sua studente erano molto stretto. Maria era moto simpatica e divertente. E mi piace la esperienza, perché noi abbino conosciuto amici altri. È importante che noi conosciamo più ragazzi.
We still had class at hotel today, and then we went to the bronze museum and art museum this afternoon. The bronze museum was definitely the must-see in Reggio Calabria. The museum was well designed, and had many displays. It was organized by floors, and we started from the top floor. I had to say it was very frustrating to understand the description, because the content was about Ancient Greek that I was not familiar with and there were way too many difficult vocabularies. I tried to grasp the main idea of the displays such as the year and ceramics characters, such as copper age and Bronze Age. There were too many information to absorb. However, the Riace bronze statues were extremely impressing which were found under sea. The archeologist had some relationship to Penn State as well. The figures were very tall, delicate and vivid. The people who salved the statues even thought they were real people. It took very serious steps before went to see the statues. They were displayed in different room, and only certain number of people could go on the same time, and the air was purified before we came in. It was taken very serious, and it made me feel I was going to see something very important. Then we were arranged to see the art museum, lots of were collected by mafia. I loved going to the art museum and just looking at the art pieces and interpret them. I didn't like to listen how others interpret art, because I thought everyone appreciate art in its own way. They let us to guess one abstract art pieces, and I loved that which I could hear how others thought about the art piece. I wished they could let us stay longer to have more free time to walk around. The people who organized the trip were the same from that International association. Everything was just another interesting example of performing art. They did everything superficially for advertising and promotion. They took us to the bergamot store for taking thousands of pictures and sharing the Facebook page, and I thought I was annoying and I did not do it. After every activity, I took a nice work along the center street and took train back to Catona. The dinner was chef's choice, what we had tonight was called "Scaloppine alla limone".
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Zihan Dong(Cici)Penn state 2019, majoring in Supply Chain Management, minoring in Italian and international business. Promoting Chinese culture to America; loving art, music and adventures. Definitely check out the posts! Follow me and experience the beauty of Southern Italy!
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