Sunday the 23rd was a special day as a few UDers and I went to climb the Cupola, that is the dome of St. Peter’s Basilica. We arrived early (maybe 8-ish?) to skip the lines, which worked out beautifully for us. We were able to choose between taking the elevator for 7 or 8 euro or the steps for 5 euro. I have two feet…they have one elevator…yeah, I can walk. Besides it being more economical, it’s more thrilling to take the steps. Speaking of which, until you’ve climbed all 320 steps up to the top of St. Peter’s dome with only a couple of brief pauses, you have absolutely nothing to complain about going upstairs to fetch that grocery list you forgot. Talk about steps! Crazy angles, tight winding staircases that never seem to end…but it’s worth arriving to the top breathless and having your breath taken away again the second you look down on St. Peter’s Square and the papal gardens and overlook the entire city of Rome, like one of those “I can see my house from here” moments. It was one of the grandest sights I’ve seen from one of the grandest places on earth!
Monday was our grape harvest. We cut the grapes from the vines, tossed them (if not at each other first) in some baskets which were picked up by the tractor and taken to the main bin for smashing. After a good hour of harvesting, some of the students were able to get into the bin and smash the grapes the traditional way: barefoot! Being tactile sensitive as I am, I opted not to squish grapes, but I was still bombed with grapes by Meghan, a classmate and great friend of mine. I mean she squished an entire juicy bunch on my head like a confetti egg. I was just dying with juice running down my face and all, but hey, I guess I deserved it for dozing off in Dr. Osborn’s class on the Bacchae (involving Dionysus, the god of wine). I guess I got to be Dionysus for the day.
Thursday was a particularly fun, and most likely my most favorite, day on campus. It was Greek Olympics day! Take field day in school, and multiply it by 10 or 20. It was super awesome! Every student wore togas in the color of their team (our team was grass green), and the faculty and staff were dressed as the Greek gods. It was really fun getting into the Greek spirit the day before we set out for our Greece trip. The teams lined up in the vineyard’s main path and ran its length following the torch bearer for the Olympics (yes, the torch was actually lit), all of us screaming and howling excitedly as we made our way to the soccer field where the events were to take place. Each team made presentations for their team name and team spirit. Our team was named “Caesar Salad” for our green togas, and our presentation was extremely improv, ending in “Veni! Vidi! Vici!”
The games consisted of an assortment of crazy competitions, all of which would take ages to discuss since some are known more to past UD Romers than the rest of the world, but some more recognizable ones include an egg toss between teammates (I think the furthest they went must have been a good 100 feet), a water balloon toss using a giant slingshot to catapult the balloons at our professors for points, and a “sculpture” contest where we had to cover one or more of our teammates in shaving cream to make them look like a familiar Greek (or Roman or Etruscan) statue. For that one, our team did the caryatids of the Erechtheion (Google it), which won us first place on that round as that particular sculpture had never been done before by the students. At the end of the Olympics, our team, the Caesar Salad, took the gold and won a forno dinner at the forno we have on campus! It was a shocker for us (or at least for me), but we were extremely excited. Since I had avoided getting messy with shaving cream--my tactile sensitivity ensured I would stay clean--I stuck around after the Olympics to help clean the field, which was still hard to do due to the fact that there was a lot of shaving cream. Turns out all that yucky work earned me a 10 euro capp bar card, a highly coveted tab card for those of you unfamiliar with UD’s famous cappuccino bar in Rome. I hadn’t even expected to receive such a card from the RAs, so it was a really nice bonus for helping out.
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| The Winning Team: Caesar Salad!!! |
After Mass and a delicious buffet-styled dinner, we Greeked out watching Disney's Hercules, which I had not seen since I was maybe 7 years old. As a kid, it was one of those movies that was really weird, scary and disturbing, not to mention some inappropriate content involving pointless sensuality. Finally watching it years later, it was really interesting because I watched it with a discerning mind, taking everything I've been learning from all of my classes here, particularly from Art & Architecture, Western Civilization, and Philosophy, along with my past art classes at UD, and plugged them into the movie. I was able to reap more from the movie than I think most people would have watching it for the sake of entertainment, which I never do. I mean, I think most of the students were right there with me doing art history in the movie, saying, “Oh! That’s a Doric column! Ha! That’s a spin-off on caryatids. Hey! That’s black-figure technique on an amphora,” and we all laughed out loud when an Oedipus play was mentioned. I was able to appreciate the film for the sake of its style, art and historical content, but for entertainment, it was…okay. Definitely intriguing, a little slap-sticky here and there, but definitely not anywhere in the top ¾ of my list of favorite Disney films.
Now we’re all pumped for our10 day Greece trip. I will update y’all on the next blog post which will have to wait until I return from Greece since I won’t have any internet access at all. It’s going to be a blast though. Greece here we come!
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