GL 350; week Tre

Oh thee beautiful Rome….and Venice.

            Only three weeks into my Rome adventure, well technically four but wow! It still feels like I have been here for months or at least longer than three weeks. This week has been very laid back and kind of relaxing especially after going to Venice, which I will talk about shortly. This week we had our usual readings from our assigned books and not our usual three hours of Italian but four hours! For me, learning or at least being in Italian class is difficult, I cannot seem to understand what is going on and I have never really taken a language before which, I feel sets me back in Italian, but we will see how the rest of the weeks to come go and try to be positive. As for our weekly visits, we went to the St Domitilla catacombs, San Giovanni in Laterano, St. Constantine church and the aqueduct system.

Venice was beautiful and the whole boats as transporting was awesome, especially Boat police cars and ambulances. I loved the place, fell in love with it. Venice and the surrounding islands had open air, the sea, and just the atmosphere of the city. While taking a ferry from island to island was the only option and I do get motion sickness, I did pretty well about not getting sick, I think always being up getting fresh air helped! We also went to the beach, best part of the trip because I have never been to a beach before, amazing! I loved the sand, the sounds of the water and discovering shells, I collected too many of them, I went shell crazy. We went to an original murano glass factory and saw how glass can be molded into all kinds of objects, what we saw was glass being made into a vase and a horse. So, I never realized how much murano glass could cost and it is expensive, 2000 and up for the good stuff. For instance, there was a chandler costing 45,000 Euros! The Sunday before we left we went a beautiful church, Saint Mark’s Basilica, the service was in Italian and Latin, one of the most beautiful services I have ever seen and words cannot describe its beauty. Now, since the service was in Italian I could not understand what was going on, so relating this to the story in “Smiles of Rome” by Margaret Visser, the church service did seem like a play. The service was scripted from the readings of the day, kept my attention and spoke silently to me, just like if you see a good play but this service was able to reach a place much deeper inside me than a play could, into my heart and very soul. In general, the city of Venice is beautiful, just amazing, and someday I hope to go back there, I I will just have to wait and see.

            In our assigned readings this week I read several passages that caught my attention and well, said something that I liked. In “The Smiles of Rome”, of pg 84 a passage says “Love each other as much as brothers should, and have a profound respect for each other. Work for the Lord with untiring effort and with great earnestness of spirit. If you have hope, this will make you cheerful. Do not give up if trials come; and keep on praying…..”, and this “Bless those who persecute you; never curse them, bless them….Never repay evil with evil….Do all you can to live at peace with everyone”. These words stuck with me because they are words I have been trying to follow, being kind to everyone or respecting everyone no matter their personality or lifestyle or how they treat me. These words are quite beautiful because of the beauty following these words gives you. The church or Bible teaches us to see the beauty that God created around us and in every person sometimes it just takes a just a moment or second look to see that beauty and other times it is instant.

For instance, when we walked into St. Constantine church, it was a beautiful church do not get me wrong but it seemed like other churches we have seem until we had the option to climb the sacred steps on our knees. The climb up was difficult, already having bruises on my knees from previous falls and climbing up 28 steps is harder than it sounds. On each step you are suppose to say a pray or meditate, which I did and when you reach the top, your knees or my knees did not hurt anymore, I was very proud of myself for climbing up the sacred steps on my knees. After the climb, I was able to notice more beauty about the church that made it unique and captured my up most attention; so much attention that I did not know the group had left for the next church. The beauty of life, of God, or everything is around us, through the beauty and atmospheres of the church to the dirty alley down the road or the Indian umbrella sellers, a weird beauty I suppose but beautiful in some way. The next church we went to as San Giovanni also known as the Popes church. It was a very big church and what I would consider very modern for a church in Italy. I saw the holy doors which are only open once every 25 years, 2025 is the next year it will be open. The door was beautiful after taking a second look because the hand of Mary and foot of baby Jesus was a color different that the rest, worn away to a pretty gold like color from all the people rubbing it. The paintings inside were beautiful and the church was too big to explore and enjoy in the time that we were given so I plan on going back to revisit it, studying the inside more intently.

The same day as the churches we went to we also went to the St Domitilla catacombs. The catacombs were more than what I thought they would be, an aura indescribably creepy yet beautiful. The history and the structure or the dark immerse and massive maze of graves underneath the ground. Over 150,000 tombs and less than 2,000 still intact, or something along those lines, are still intact because of all the damage done to the catacombs. Our tour guide was the best we have had so far and was easily understandable. The catacombs were something that I have never seem in my life, heard of but never seen, there was so much history, so much hope in the darkness from underneath, a beautiful thing. The end of the week was a tour of the aqueduct system of Rome. So the fact that all the water Rome gets from this system is pretty darn cool and the fact that the water tastes excellent is well an added bonus. We were able to see the structure of the different systems and, a beautiful park, feeling like we were in a farmland, but we were still in Rome. So, I will be truthful, this was kind of boring and it may sound bad but, to me it was boring but the aqueducts in itself was interesting to see up close and being able to touch the stone. This week being in Rome was again Amazing and full of moments and memories for my future memoirs, well, maybe not for the memoirs that I probably will not write that because my memory is horrible and I have yet to write in the “said” journal I wanted to keep while I was here!