Visiting French Dignitaries and the Mob

Two very random and unconnected topics, you say? Not really. I'll tell you what they have in common: Fall Break. I'll warn you right off the bat that this post is probably going to be one of those obnoxiously long ones that are not entertaining to anyone but me... but if you're trying to procrastinate from homework or are just flat out wasting your employer's time and money by not doing your job... glad I could help.

Fall Break is one of those intriguing mysteries that usually does not reveal itself to those students whose matriculating institution runs on the awesomeness that is commonly referred to as the quarter system. Going from a school that runs on ten-week terms to a school that runs on semesters is surely taking some getting used to, but after a grueling week of midterms, the week off was exactly what I needed.

Have you ever had one of those experiences where the life you're living is so far removed from what it normally is that you feel as though the two couldn't possibly be connected? This happens to me a lot, considering the geographical distance between the place where I grew up and the place where my life and most of my friends are back in the States... there's very little overlap between Montana and Michigan. There's even less overlap between Michigan and Italy, at least culturally. The nine of us on this program share the general experience and a lot the the personality traits that define K College students, but we've sort of been stuck in this world that is so different, both culturally and academically, from any shared experience we had before this. We've had to become friends on totally different terms than we would have if we were at K, which is wonderful, but sometimes you just get homesick for people who get the long-standing jokes and with whom you can be content just to hang out and be in each other's company.

That's why it was so nice when Elsa came to visit last weekend. We could just hang out and walk around and catch up, and it was as if no time had gone by at all since we last saw each other in June. We went to the market and bought food to make dinner one night (like we do at home... except we went to the delightful little street market in the piazza down the street rather than Meijer...), we went for numerous walks and just wandered around Rome, we went out for a delicious Italian meal at (where else?) Le Fate... we even watched some Glee!

And the incredibly wonderful and reassuring thing about her visit was this: it seemed absolutely natural that all of these things should be occuring on a different continent. The way in which we just kind of picked right up where we left off at the end of the school year, while at the same time walking around the Coloseum looking for an English-speaker to take our picture, makes me realize how lucky I am to have made such strong friendships in college. Study abroad can change you, make you a different person than you were when you went in, and this is completely as it should be; life is that way. It's just nice to know that the world does not completely stop with each new phase and experience, and that there are some things that will remain constant through those phases and experiences. Bleh. Philosophical mumbo-jumbo. The point is: it was wonderful to see her and get to show her some of the things I love about Rome. Thanks for coming, Els!

After Elsa left on Tuesday morning, Kelcie and I had to make our way to Fiumicino to meet Professors Gwynne and Higgins, as well as the other seven girls from K, to go to Sicily. At first, when I heard that this was going to happen over Fall Break, I was a little resentful. It's a class, after all, and we're supposed to have a week of vacation. But, since I am me, our time in Sicily wound up being, in all probability, very similar to what I might call my ideal vacation.

We arrived in Catania after an hour and a half flight... after standing at the gate for about an hour in what the Italians have the audacity to call a line. Oh, Alitalia... you suck. A little harsh? Think of it as foreshadowing. We got on a little bus that would turn out to be our home (ish) for the week, and drove the hour and a half to Siricusa.

Italy is constantly surprising me. Sicily bears only the tiniest bit of resemblance to Lazio (Rome), which is so different from Umbria that they could be on different continents, and Umbria and the Veneto (Venice) could not be any more different if they had brains and were trying... and all of these places (and these are only the ones I've experienced first-hand) are on this dinky little penninsula that couldn't kick even North Dakota's ass in a size race... and it's shaped like a boot! It is continually shocking to see how very, very different each new place I visit is, and how mind-blowingly, heart-stoppingly beautiful they each are in their own way.

Sicily reminds me of nothing so much as the Edenic myth. Sure, in order to come to that conclusion, you have to ignore a few big industrial works and some pretty epically crappy roads that are constantly under construction but never get any nicer... but really. It's an island, completely contained in and of itself, where there's such an abundance of fruit trees that you just can't see the forest through them... and it was the end of October when we were there, and every other plant that wasn't just eye-wateringly green and alive was blooming with these obnoxiously bright-colored, beautiful flowers. The weather remained balmy, in perhaps the mid-seventies with blue, blue skies and puffy cotton-ball clouds, with cool breezes coming off the expanse of turquoise water crashing up against the ornately craggy coastlines. So basically, October in Sicily is late May in Michigan and a myth in Montana.

The first night, when we got to our unattractively-named but nevertheless wonderful and cozy hotel, the Hotel Gutkowski, we took a walk with Professor Gwynne around the islet of Ortigia, which is Siracusa's historical center. Ortigia, formerly known mythologically as Delos, along with having some very beautiful views of the ocean and the hills, has the distinction of having been the 'birthplace' of Apollo and Diana. So, in the midst of the quaint little winding streets that have come to characterize my very favorite places in Italy (Trastevere, Asissi, Venice...), there's a massive temple to Apollo, and another to Minerva (the one to Diana was at one point next door) which is remarkably well-preserved for the simple fact that it now serves as the Duomo of Siracusa. Yeah. You can see the columns through the walls that have been put up to enclose the space, and what was once the cella of the temple has now been transformed into the side arcades of the basillica. We spent some time having class in there, pointing out the things that were consistent with both the architecture of a Greek temple and with a Christian church. Which is what I would have been doing if I'd been on vacation in Ortigia myself. Lame.

The week was so action-packed that I'll just give a few of the highlights. The archaeological museum in Siracuse and then the park that goes with it, containing a Greek theatre complex, a Roman amphiteatre, a who bunch of really cool tombs cut into the rock, and a quarry with big caves that felt like entering the mines of Moria, followed by a boat ride around the sea caves of Ortigia with five of the other K girls and a young, very nice French couple, followed by a delicious seafood dinner overlooking the water in a restaurant where the floors are glass and you can see the Greek grottos and the natural freshwater spring below... that was the first full day.

Driving up into the hinterland of Sicily is an experience that I don't think I'll ever have the opportunity to forget. There are so many allusions to Narnia and Middle Earth and Eden that I could make that it would sound trite and meaningless, as well as painfully dorky. But the sites at Agrigento, with it's massive, majestic temples looking out over the ocean, and at Akrai, where we nine performed the end of Theocrites' "The Persians" (I played Xerxes to great acclaim) and Pentalica, where my real Montana-girl roots came out as I clambored through viscious brambles and up limestone cliffs to see the tombs in the rock and then turn around and wave at those below... if those aren't good justifications for dorkiness, I don't know what would be.

One of the coolest things we did, however, was drive to a crater on Mt. Etna, which, in case you're unaware, is a gigantic volcano on the eastern coast of Sicily. The professors warned us to bring warm clothes, since the elevation changes so drastically from Siricusa to the crater, and boy, did it. You can fool yourself, when you're looking at the horizon, into thinking that what you're seeing there is just a bunch of particularly angular clouds... but up close, the mountain leaps up at you, seemingly out of nowhere, higher by far than anything else around it. The snow line is deliniated from the inhabitable area by a constant thick layer of clouds... you can see how the civilizations who lived in this and areas like it could believe the gods lived in such places... even by today's ostensibly more pragmatic standards, it's completely plausible.

The crater is like a different world, as craters tend to be. First of all, for the first time since coming to Italy, it actually felt like the time of year it's supposed to be. It was cold, but in that pleasant, expectant way that makes you think of Halloween... which was cool, because it was. It was fun and energizing to run around up there, and I don't think I've ever relished a cold nose like I did when I was there, just because it's such a novelty here... but I digress. Suffice it to say that if Sicily is an unreal experience, Etna is the pinnacle thereof.

We spent most of the week galivanting around southeastern Sicily, coming back each night to Ortigia and the Hotel Gutkowski, right on the edge of the ocean. The final night, after our trip to Etna, however, we spent in Taormina, which is the culmination of everything I loved about Sicily put into one tiny place. The town is built on a series of high, craggy cliffs and overlooks the sea. You can see Etna smoking in the distance. We watched the sun set from the ruins of a Greek theatre, and the breeze off the ocean smelled like salt water and flowers and amazing food... which we then proceeded to eat at a pizzaria by our hotel. The next morning, after a fairly early night (for Halloween, anyway), we took a cable car down to the beach, where Michelle and I, barefoot in the ocean, looked for sea glass.

Jealous? I didn't think that I could ever learn so much and have it be such an incredibly relaxing vacation... and I'm fairly enthusiastic about learning. The whole week was some sort of idyllic sojurn from the idyllic sojurn that is my life in Rome. The only bump came at the very end, when lovely Alitalia lost the reservations for only half of our group... including myself. The efforts of Professors Gwynne and Higgins, wonderful people that they are, were the only reason that I'm not still in Sicily waiting for some fat guy's daughter to get married so I can ask for a favor... and I'm not sure even the Godfather could finaggle his way through the idiocy that is the Italian national airline.

But we got home to Rome safe and sound, and BAM. Real life started up again. A week away from Rome has made me realize how much it really has become my world... and that fact, once grasped, has made me wonder and dread what will happen when I have to go one step farther back; when Rome was the vacation and I have to get used to life in Michigan again. It's a strange thought... but however it hits me when I get back, I'm sure that the week we spent in Sicily will be one of the most vivid memories I keep of my home here.