GL week 7

So this is it, my very last GL blog! It is crazy I feel like just yesterday I was sitting down in class and professor was going over the specifics for what our blogs should include and all I was thinking was ughh eight blogs is so many! How wrong was I, honestly I don’t even know where the time or the blogs have gone; all I know is right now I am writing my last blog and entering my last week here. Being in Rome has truly been an experience I will always remember and one in which I have gained so much.

This in particular this week I have been able to go places and experience things that still just blow my mind. Tuesday was one of my favorite days this entire trip I think. When I decided to go on this trip I looked into taking some online course and it happened that I was able to take an education class. For the education class it required that I do field study in Italy. Yes that’s right that meant I had to go and observe in an Italian school, and finally after waiting weeks and weeks I was able to go this week and observe. So Tuesday Brandon, Katie Moore, Katie Bell, and I all headed to the elementary school in Albano to talk to seven and eight year olds about Thanksgiving. Walking through the school it was obvious there were a lot of differences between an Italian elementary school and an American elementary school. I mean one thing I noticed right of the bat was there was not nearly as many technological devices both in the classroom and in the school in general. In the classroom then we had a translator who translated to the students for us. Watching the faces of the children while we were talking was so great! You could tell they were just fascinated by us being there. Afterward they had the chance to ask us questions and that was by far my favorite part. Some of the questions they came up to ask us were so cute and funny and when they asked us their questions in English it just made me smile. Being in that classroom was definitely something I won’t forget.

 Wednesday morning we went to the Papal audience which I don’t even have words to describe that experience. We had to catch the 6:36 am train into Rome in order to get good seats and as much as I was dreading the early wake-up call getting to sit in the second row was worth it! Sitting waiting for the Pope to come out the anticipation was sky-high for me; especially in that last couple minutes when the Swiss guards came out in preparation of the Pope’s arrival. Finally then when the Pope came out from behind the door it was an experience like no other. The lights shone down, everyone stood up and started clapping, and I just had goose-bumps it was just so cool! Then when the Pope gave his speech in SEVEN different languages I was mind blown again! I mean being here I know first-hand how difficult it is to learn a new language and to learn seven I just can’t even imagine! This weekend Brandon and I plan to travel to Rome and see the Pope again at Piazza di Spagna and I’m so excited. I mean to see the Pope once was once in a lifetime, seeing him twice is just unbelievable! 

Thursday then was another early morning out for us. We took a train two hours out to Nettuno and visited the American Cemetery which was another experience I won’t forget! Being there and seeing the soldiers who gave their lives’ for our country was very humbling. There we walked around and wandered for a while. We learned that twenty-three sets of brothers were buried there. From there we walked towards Santa Maria Gotti which was a church with a fairly modern story behind it. Santa Maria lived during the 1950’s and I found it very interesting that the church we were visiting was hers. Typically the churches we visit are very historical and some instances are decaying slightly. You could definitely tell this church was more modern.

Throughout the week we have been reading the book The Talented Mr. Ripley and I’m proud to say I’m done! Although I’m not sure that is much of an accomplishment; the book wasn’t hard to read at all but still nonetheless being finished is nice. While although I am nothing like Tom Ripley I feel like some of the experiences and thoughts he had I too can compare myself to and agree with. When Tom talks about Venice I feel the same way. Although I never wanted to avoid Venice I wasn’t necessarily thrilled to go, I thought I would be disappointed. However, like Tom, I was pleasantly surprised and now looking back Venice was one of my favorite spots. “He had thought only sentimentalists and American tourists raved over Venice… He found Venice much bigger than he supposed, full of Italians who looked like Italians anywhere else… and that the major canals had a transportation system of motor launches just as fast and efficient as the subway system.” I too expected Venice to be very touristy but walking down little alley ways and that wasn’t the case and I too, like Tom, thought the transportation system was very efficient, I believe it ran every 10 minutes? Whatever the wait time was it really wasn’t any different than the buses and trains we had been used to.

Closing now I guess there really isn’t much more to say other than part of me is really sad to see eight week approaching. While it’s been a great experience and I’m ready to go home and see my family and celebrate Christmas and the New Year I feel like part of me will always want to come back to Italy and experience it all over again. Like I’ve said before though the only thing to do is make sure this last week is made as memorable as possible! Ciao!

SOC week 6

WOW! It is so hard to believe that I am in week seven and writing my last Sociology blog! This trip has been one of a kind and I can’t even imagine what my life would have been like if I hadn’t come. I mean honestly I would be missing out on so much! This week in Soc. class we began wrapping up our conversations about healthcare, universal care, and the possibility of the power of prayer. In addition this week we went into a market and surveyed Italians about their opinion on healthcare.

I suppose to start off I’ll comment on the experience of surveying Italians in the market. That had to be one of the most intimating experiences I’ve had. Really though, think about it we were supposed to go up to complete strangers who didn’t even speak our language and ask them to fill out a survey for us. Well to say the least I got off to a rocky start and was pretty nervous to go up to strangers and ask them to fill out my survey. I mean typically I’m a pretty quiet person in large groups and so this took a lot for me. All in all though it was a really good experience and the results I got really surprised me. All the readings we have been doing in our Universal Health Care book suggest that Europeans like their universal healthcare system but that was definitely not the impression I received tallying up my results.

In his article Henry J. Aaron writes about how America should move slowly and cautiously towards universal healthcare. He writes that, “Democrats should beware of once again approaching health care reform the way [in the comic strip Peanuts] Charlie Brown always approached the football that Lucy held- heedless of experience, credulously hopeful, and flat on their backs.”  I love that he wrote this because this is how I feel. In class professor talked about whether we needed to dip our feet in the water and test it out or just jump in head first, I have to say I prefer to dip my feet. Being cautious never hurt anyone and this way no one ends up on their back. I think when it comes to something as big as healthcare before any decisions are made it is important to look at the views of your people but also the views of people who have a system you are looking to adopt. From my results the views of the Italian people do not like universal healthcare, from the view of our book it looks like the Canadian people like universal healthcare, it would be interesting to take a poll now.

The last notion we talked briefly about in class was the idea of power of prayer. I am a very VERY strong believer in the power of prayer. With that said though the question we were supposed to address was whether we can cure disease through the power of prayer and my answer to that is no. While like I said, I believe in power of prayer and that miracles can happen every day I don’t think prayer can cure. I think that because health is more than just physical prayer can help and soothe your mental and emotional health but cure your physical disease? No.  In my opinion prayer is a way to give hope and a way to look forward to a better circumstances. This is why a priest presents the last rites it is used as a way to console and soothe the mental health.

GL Week 6

Week six was yet another week full of unexpectedness and surreal moments, go figure right? I can’t believe that only eleven days are left in this trip; I’m not exactly sure where the other thirty some have gone! No time to waste sad thoughts on that though, with so little time left I’m definitely not taking anything for granted and trying to make the most of the remaining time I have here in Italy!

Where to start with week six? Well on Monday and Tuesday we went to the Vatican and it was so great. Monday consisted of going up to the top of the dome which in my opinion was beyond surreal. It was gorgeous! I mean the view from the top was definitely worth the climb up! Afterward we had a tour of the Vatican museum which was really interesting as well. Ending the tour we found our way to the Sistine Chapel, and thank goodness I had a much better experience with the Chapel this time. Looking around at all the paintings was breathtaking; the scale on which the paintings were done was just amazing I can’t even what it must have been like for Michelangelo to paint The Creation. Tuesday then, like I said before, we headed back to the Vatican and went underneath St. Peter’s and saw the tomb of St. Peter which was both surreal and unexpected. Surreal in the fact that I was standing less than 10 ft. from the bones and tomb of St. Peter and unexpected in the way in which his tomb was displayed. I expected some decently elaborate display but in fact what I saw was almost the exact opposite. Afterward Brandon and Katie Moore gave a tour of St. Peter’s which was really good. It was nice being able to go through St. Peter’s and actually learn about it while seeing it.

Wednesday and Thursday went by pretty quick and before I knew it was Friday and we all were headed on a train to Sorrento for the weekend. On Friday there was a little hiccup with transportation and unfortunately the train wasn’t running how we had planned but that was ok with me. Instead we had to take taxis but saw a much better view. Driving through Pompeii up to Sorrento and seeing the cities in the hills and the cliffs was breathtaking. It was gorgeous.  Now I’m not sure about anyone else but I’m a Pinterst junkie and looking at the cliffs and blue ocean water made me feel like I was on pinterst gawking at all the pictures like I usually am;  this time it was different though because seeing those cliffs with houses on the edge it was real life. Being in the city of Sorrento was kind of the same way. Although it was rainy for basically the entire weekend Sorrento was such a pretty place.

                Like I mentioned at the beginning of my blog week six has come and gone and only two weeks left. This week in class we started the book the Talented Mr. Ripley and it has been such a good book so far! It’s funny because in the book Tom Ripley travels to Italy and some of the experiences he has are ones just like I have experienced here; reading the book brings back some of the memories from the beginning of the trip. Talking about the book in class it was funny because someone would bring up part of the book as a memory and then we would all remember it and laugh and then someone else would do the same. I especially thought it was ironic because while we were in Naples this weekend Danilo was constantly telling us to watch our stuff and be careful because Naples isn’t a good city and while we were on the train leaving Naples I was reading this book and I got to a part where Tom an Dickie, two of the characters, went to Naples and Marge was furious because they went and never told her when they changed plans and she knew bad things could happen in Naples. The book just brings recalls so many memories it’s I’m not even half way through yet!

                                     

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

SOC week 5

Oh gee sometimes this healthcare class can make my head hurt. At the beginning of the semester I for sure thought that healthcare should be a privilege and therefore I wasn’t necessarily for universal healthcare. After the readings this week and our first class discussion I’m not quite sure anymore. I mean in reality a type of universal healthcare is already in progress in America so really what I think doesn’t quite matter anymore, the majority voted and they voted universal healthcare. Still though everyone is entitled to their own opinion, yet sadly my opinion has lost its way.

One topic we further discussed in class on Tuesday was the idea of if we have control over our health. In my previous blog I gave the typical “yes, but” answer which seems to be a pretty common answer for healthcare questions but now I a definite answer and that answer is no. In class this week someone mentioned that the things we do like exercising and eating right are all factors that play into our health. I completely agree, everything we do factors into our health but it doesn’t necessarily determine our health. You can be someone who smokes everyday of your life but yet never develops lung cancer or you can be someone who wears sunscreen and a hat each time you go outside and still develops skin cancer. It’s my opinion that what is meant to happen will happen and that applies to our health.  

Before I thought that healthcare was a privilege and as long as you worked hard then you should be rewarded with the privilege of good healthcare end of discussion. However one of the readings this week pointed out a very real and somewhat sad case. In his article Malcolm Gladwell commented on an interview that was dated back several years ago and dealt with uninsured Americans. In his article he quotes the interview writing that Loretta, who worked nights at a university research center in Mississippi, was missing most of her teeth. “They’ll break off after a while, and then you just grab ahold of them, and they work their way out. It hurts so bad, because the tooth aches. Then it’s a relief to just get it out of there.” To me that is such a sad thought. Here is a woman, who has a job, and a respectable one at that, and yet she can’t afford dental healthcare and as a result has to suffer through what I can imagine is intense pain and pull out teeth herself. No way could I ever do something like that. And this is exactly where I get confused which side of the argument I fall on. On one side we have people like Loretta and on the other side we have lazy people who are always just looking for a way to cut corners. It’s a very hard topic to firmly plant your feet on one side.

Tomorrow we go and interview real Italians about their opinion on their universal healthcare system. I think it will be quite interesting because up until now we have only been discussing theoretical scenarios statistics, which can be misleading, and the opinions of authors. I think these interviews will really help us to form our own opinions about universal healthcare and possibility of it working for America. If citizens who have had universal healthcare for years and years don’t like it I imagine many of us will lean towards the opposing side of universal healthcare as well as vice versa.

GL Week 5

This week at dinner Mike made a comment about making a bucket list for our remaining time in Rome; he said with a little more than three weeks left making a list would be helpful. I can’t believe I only have three weeks left here! A couple of us were on this train this week and we were saying how it feels like it was just the beginning of August yesterday and now it’s Thanksgiving and Christmastime. It’s amazing; I just don’t know where the time went! By far week five has been my favorite week here! Aubree and I gave a tour of the Borghese Gardens and Via Vento, my family came to Italy and I’ve been able to spend time with them showing them around, and we visited the Gucci Museum, which if I had the choice I would visit daily!

To start off the week on Tuesday Aubree and I gave our walking tour which consisted of showing the other students the Borghese Gardens, Via Vento, Santa Susanna, and Santa Maria Della Vittoria. I know personally for myself I had a lot of fun giving the tour, and the gardens were really beautiful. In our Smiles reading for this week Edith Wharton makes the remark “these gardens have excited so much admiration that little thought has been given to the house, though it is sufficiently interesting to merit attention.” While yes I did enjoy the massive gardens I found the Borghese Gallery, which was at one point a house, more magnificent than the gardens.  In fact the Borghese Gallery has been my favorite museum we have toured as a group so far! It just astounds me that every room we walked through, with the elaborate painting, and marble floors there was someone, at some point, sipping tea or taking a nap in the room.

After visiting the museum I went and found my family and was able to show them around! Wednesday we went on a tour of the Vatican which was amazing. I mean just looking at the massive ceilings and walls I can’t even imagine painting them. As I am in every building I enter I was completely in awe. As memorable as the Vatican and Sistine chapel are by themselves being “escorted” out of the Sistine chapel made it even more so memorable. In the book The Italians in chapter 10 Barzini talks of the pursuit of life and basically what it boils down to is power, personal power to be exact. He states that, “Without power all threats would be risible and bombastic gestures… The choice between one alliance or another, between hostility or peace, resistance to the last breath or immediate surrender, are the result of a realistic estimate of the forces each side can marshal.” In the chapel our tour guide, who was licensed with a badge, was telling us about the artwork in the chapel and pointing out things and all of a sudden she had museum security telling her to be quiet and she wasn’t allowed to speak at all. She showed him her badge and told him we were a tour and she was just explaining the chapel, however, he wouldn’t take her explanation and told her just last week the rules changed and if she wanted to talk we needed to leave. We decided just to be quiet for a little bit until the security guard wandered away then she started talking again. Well I’m not sure where he came from, but, all of a sudden he was back yelling at her and poking her telling her he warned us and now we had to leave, of course we had no idea what was going on because it was all in Italian but later our tour guide translated. Anyway, instead of immediate surrender, Barzini’s words, our tour guide argued back for a while until three more security guards came over and too joined the dispute. It was after that we were escorted out which led to a couple more angry word exchanges; our tour guide said they were purposely picking on her and ganging up on her and just basically being completely unfair. Using Barzini’s theory though it was because our tour guide was seen as a person with less personal power that is why the security guard was able to “pick on her” and in the end essentially escort us out.

Besides that little hiccup it’s been such a fun week being having my family here and being able to show them around Italy.  As it is currently I’m sitting on a train and we are traveling from Florence to Venice. Being able to take my family to Florence and myself being able to go for a second time has been so great. With only three days left with my family before they head back home and with only having three weeks left in Italy myself I can’t wait to see what the rest of this trip will be like!

SOC: Week 4

Being now halfway through the Rome experience means I’m also halfway through my classes here. Specifically I am halfway through Italian, halfway through GL, and of course halfway through Comparative Health. Now being at the midpoint in my classes everything is starting to come together. Italian is getting slightly easier, GL is becoming more interesting as we are experiencing all the things we have been reading about, and understanding both Italian healthcare and American healthcare is becoming less pig Latin and more so something I am able to process, understand, explain, and in some cases refute. Before coming to Rome and taking Comparative Health I really didn’t know much about healthcare let alone the healthcare of other countries outside the U.S. Now though after discussing for weeks healthcare I feel like I have an understanding not only of the healthcare we as Americans have, flaws and all, but also the healthcare system of Italy, flaws and all.

Italy provides its citizens with a universal healthcare system; this is something the U.S. does not do. The system covers all citizens under law with healthcare, therefore it is available to everyone and no one is denied. One of the readings we were assigned this week told of the “famine” the U.S. is in with regards to healthcare. Clark Newhall wrote, “When too many people are fighting to get the scarce stuff to stay alive, whether the scarce stuff is food or healthcare that is a famine.” The U.S. might be in a famine but Italy is not. Italy has no scarcity of healthcare because it is universal and given by the government. With millions of Americans suffering from being uninsured or underinsured this is possibly one approach our government can take from Italy’s healthcare system.

Thinking on this thought of millions Americans being without health insurance though, maybe some of them just don’t want health insurance. Possibly some people live healthy lives and do not go and see the doctor often and therefore don’t want or need to pay for health insurance. I mean our health is, for the most part, something we have control over. If someone takes precautions, like that of exercising daily, eating right, taking vitamins, etc. then very much so their health is being controlled. However, and there always seems to be a however or but when it comes to the topic of health and healthcare, certain aspects of the health cannot be controlled. Diseases like of certain types of cancers, and certain intellectual disorders are all, for lack of a better word, predetermined.  A person can live an incredibly healthy life still and yet still develop breast cancer. In those instances a person’s health is something he/she does not have control over.

This week we were able to go visit the Museum of the Mind, which until quite recently was run as an insane asylum. Going in and touring the museum it was clear and can be connected to my previous paragraph the patients in the asylum had no control over their health. Some of the patients had disorders they were born with and sadly after they were diagnosed by a doctor would be bound to the insane asylum for basically the rest of their life. As interesting as the museum was it was also a little haunting and sad for myself. The procedures and lifestyles these patients had were nothing close to pleasant; in most cases the patients never even went outside. Being in the museum and seeing the rooms redone and partaking in simulations that were close to what the actual patients of the hospital did just made the experience very real-life

 

GL Week 4

So it seems like each time I sit down to start writing my blog the only thing that pops into my head is, “Wow I seriously can’t believe that week (insert week number here) is done!” It just amazes me that week four has come and gone. I mean we are only here for eight weeks and four out of those eight are gone already. Good thing my camera hasn’t left my hand and I have been able to capture a little bit of the reality I am living daily. Anyways, back to week four. Week four in Rome brought days full of traveling and exploring the city of Rome, which you think I would be semi-familiar with by now but every day brings new streets, shops, and bakeries. Also during week four we traveled outside of Rome to Florence but I’ll comment on Florence later on.

Thinking back on this week there really isn’t much I can say. Every day we do something that just blows my mind. Like this week Rachel and Aimee took us on a tour with the usual stunning churches and art and Danielle showed us ancient ruins of various worship places.  Then on Thursday we visited the Museum of the Mind which was an insane asylum until just recently. It makes me wonder if there is anything in Rome that is plain and average; so far my mind is saying no.

For class this week the readings assigned were “My Rome” written by Muriel Spark and “Without Reservations” written by Alice Steinbach. “Without Reservations” was a reading that I really was able to connect with. It was a reading that not only made sense for my journey through Rome but also through life. Steinbach wrote “The unexpectedness of life, waiting round every corner, catches even wise women unawares. To avoid corners altogether is, after all, to refuse to live.” Reading this the only thought going through my mind was this should be every person’s life motto. When I made the decision to come and study in Rome I turned a corner in my life and I just feel like every day I am here it’s just another corner being turned. Each day something new happens; I haven’t had one day where I’ve done the same thing I’ve done another day. If I see something chances are the next day I won’t be passing it again. It’s that unexpectedness Steinbach was writing about; it is exhilarating.

Florence. I don’t even know what to say about Florence right now. As it is currently I am sitting on a train that is taking me from Florence to Rome and I am not happy. The experience of Florence went incredibly too fast for me, and thinking back on it right now all I can recall is leather. Leather EVERYWHERE. Well ok actually that’s a lie I can remember the seven course dinner too, but I mean who doesn’t remember a seven course meal?