Why Rome?
During spring semester of my junior year, I enrolled in an honors seminar "Art, Architecture, and Engineering: The Roman Experience" which included a required study tour to Rome, Italy. The course content focused on getting to know the cultural aspects of Italian life and learning how their practices and customs differ from America. Professor Rassati focused on covering the engineering basics in lecture while Professor Nelson focused on Rome's beautiful artwork and the history behind basilicas and monuments. Every class, we all worked to improve our Italian language in preparation for the trip.
I wanted to take this class for two main reasons. First of all, all throughout college I have taken mainly nursing classes. I wanted to take a non-nursing class that would allow me to expand my horizons and to step out of my comfort zone. Secondly, Rome is the center of Catholocism. Being a devout Catholic, I was very interested in learning about the history and many basilicas of Rome. Not to my surprise, I was flabergasted by the beauty that each basilica held. Toni (our tour guide) and her abundance of of knowledge about Rome's history, artwork, and basilicas is what really made the trip interesting for me.
Part of the ethnological approach of the class was a study tour to Rome, Italy, which is home to an abundance of history and artwork. Each day we started the morning off by following Toni (our tour guide) to the various sites of Rome. We would then split for an hour or so lunch on our own. Most days we would then tour Rome again together in the afternoons. We had all of our evenings (and some afternoons) free. This allowed us all to explore Rome at our leisure and to get to experience the city first hand. We also took two day trips to Assisi, which is the beautiful Italian countryside best known as being the birthplace of St. Francis, and Bagnaia, a small Medieval Italian town home of the Villa Lante.
I wanted to take this class for two main reasons. First of all, all throughout college I have taken mainly nursing classes. I wanted to take a non-nursing class that would allow me to expand my horizons and to step out of my comfort zone. Secondly, Rome is the center of Catholocism. Being a devout Catholic, I was very interested in learning about the history and many basilicas of Rome. Not to my surprise, I was flabergasted by the beauty that each basilica held. Toni (our tour guide) and her abundance of of knowledge about Rome's history, artwork, and basilicas is what really made the trip interesting for me.
Part of the ethnological approach of the class was a study tour to Rome, Italy, which is home to an abundance of history and artwork. Each day we started the morning off by following Toni (our tour guide) to the various sites of Rome. We would then split for an hour or so lunch on our own. Most days we would then tour Rome again together in the afternoons. We had all of our evenings (and some afternoons) free. This allowed us all to explore Rome at our leisure and to get to experience the city first hand. We also took two day trips to Assisi, which is the beautiful Italian countryside best known as being the birthplace of St. Francis, and Bagnaia, a small Medieval Italian town home of the Villa Lante.
Wine: One of Rome's Greatest Pleasures
One of my favorite parts about Rome was immersing myself into their cultural practices and habits. One of Rome's most well-known habits includes having long, late-night dinners with friends. Often, each dinner was accompanied by a glass or two of wine. With Rome's great selection of wine due to their tourist population, I had the opportunity to sample many different types and flavors of wine. Part of this class coursework included a final project of our choice. The project that I chose centered on wine and to interpret the real meaning behind Italy's common practice of wine-drinking. The button below is a link to my final project centering around wine.
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Pictures
During our ten day trip, we captured quite a few memories. We drank wine & had gelato for dessert with almost every meal, ate way too much, walked 'til our feet were sore, and did our best to immerse ourselves into the Italian culture. We spent 2 days exploring the Italian countryside, explored Assisi (home of Pope Francis), toured the Colosseum, toured the Vatican, and climbed 320 steps to get to the top of St. Peter's Dome at the Vatican. I, of course, found quite a few cute old people on our trip. If I had the opportunity to go on this trip again, I would do so in a heartbeat.