A Tale of Two Days

Last Friday and Saturday, to be exact.

Friday we took a long day trip to Pompeii. After a month of ruins I had expectations for Pompeii which were inaccurate. This was no reconstructing in our imagination, a la Greece and the Colosseum. Pompeii is so intact that you can see the individual apartments in a block of buildings (something I can envision more clearly after a month of living in such connected-yet-distinct buildings). The roads are laid out clearly and walking the ruined city is much like walking a modern one: go to the corner and turn, three blocks more and...

Inside some of the buildings there are frescoes still on the wall. Painted as if wallpaper, brilliant colors and patterns, and faces. Sad and ancient faces. Unlike other ruins, the ones in Pompeii felt still alive, and that if the plumbing problem could be solved one could return and build the top two stories back onto the buildings (those floors were originally wooden, and are no more) and move in. I would have liked to have wandered quietly around in there all day; but we had a guide and the tour lasted three hours. Three. Hours. The kids made it through the tour in spite of the fact that our guide's accent was just unfamiliar enough that they had a hard time following. And by the end William wasn't attending the tour but hanging out with Maddie and pretending to spy on us without being seen. Maddie has wisely figured out that games where he keeps himself hidden are a big improvement over some other ones he may play when worn out and frustrated.

Still, after three hours we only saw a fraction of the site. I took a kazillion photos and at the end almost wished I hadn't brought my camera. I may change my mind once I look at the images, but I left feeling like I still hadn't really been in Pompeii.

We had dinner in Naples--where pizza was supposedly invented--and had, of course, pizza. We ate down on the waterfront. The house white was sparkling. Here's Charlie's opinion. (We thought it was golden).



Saturday morning rolled around and we intentionally had a late start after our late return. The only program activity was optional play in the Borghese gardens.

For that, I am happy to report that I don't have a single photo. I intentionally left everything at home--even my phone--and only carried the backpack with the frisbee and the soccer ball.

We met the students (about 20 turned out!) and hiked to the Gardens. It took about half an hour--a nice warm up--and I was thinking that it would be a good time to see more of the city, my experience of which has been limited to the track between our apartment and the students' convent (where they lodge and we have class and Vespers) and walking to the Colosseum. And church.

Instead of looking around, I had some great conversations and walked out in front of more than one car (so far I've not lost the game of chicken Roman drivers play with pedestrians). We made it to the gardens and after looking around found an open-ish area with no picnickers. A small part of the group broke off to play frisbee, but I stayed with the group of women students who played a soccer game. Carmen and Charlie were team captains and chose teams old-school schoolyard style. We were fairly evenly matched and played hard for a good long while. Some people sat and watched. Others played hard (I can barely move today). Charlie took several hard hits and kept going. We cheered for one another, apologized for fouling one another, and headed the ball. William handed out verbal yellow and red cards. It was fantastic. Who knew how therapeutic play could be? In theory, yes. In practice, the opportunities come so rarely.

Later the two groups joined again for two rounds of capture the flag. I always play conservatively so I don't get tagged, but this time decided instead to try to play aggressively. Perhaps a continuation of practicing being out of my comfort zone? Sure, I wound up in jail a few times, but I also tagged people out of jail a couple of times, too. It was one of the happiest times together as group.

Although Jesse and I worked hard all Saturday afternoon with Maddie's help to hold the household together, we were still able to salvage an hour of date time before the students came over to watch...the NOTRE DAME GAME! We did spend half of that hour buying refreshments for the game, but I'm still counting it as date time. We invited the students for the first half, since it started at 9:30 here...About half of them came and hung out while Notre Dame vied with Michigan State. There was something about the normalcy and the homeyness of having people on our couch and lying on our floor with pillows that was the perfect finish to the day. It felt like a family atmosphere, especially coming on the heels of many of us also playing hard together that morning. Splendid. I know that our experience of Rome is very different in many ways than that of the students, but there is some lovely overlap and I am again reminded of the privilege it is to be spending this time with them.

We would like to do it again, and as one of the students said to Jesse: "You have all week to recover!"

And because I left my camera, I don't have any snapshots with one third of the soccer pitch and four of the players at once, but instead have in my mind's eye the whole field (I was a defender) and all sixteen playing and the movement and give-and-take and the smell of the grass and the give of the soft earth under my running shoes. And the group of people sitting and taking pictures of us playing (turns out we were the subject of a photography class). It was a delicious day.

And tomorrow is William's 6th birthday! We are trying to juggle schedules so as to spend as much time with him as possible on a "teaching day." I went and bought his cake this afternoon--the chocolatiest chocolate cake to be had from the bakery across from the Basilica di Santa Maria Maggiore. Unfortunately they only had pink candles--but I thought I packed some somewhere...