6/21 Spoleto Falls!!!

Fair warning: Paula made us dinner.  Which means wine was involved.  Some cheese, but mostly wine.  Very yummy.  Don’t ask what kind.  It was red. So if this in incoherent, blame the wine.

Today started at the perfect hour of 6:00am.  I’m still waking up on my own, so that makes the mornings easy.  Hope that happens again tomorrow...  Lexy and I took off to Caffe San Seisto to meet with the USAC (University Studies Abroad Consortium) students.  Let me just say now that these were some of the neatest people I’ve met.  I mean really, college aged folks that have the courage to study abroad. I'm very impressive with their ability to step out of their comfort zone for such a big adventure.  We all boarded the very fancy bus and took off to Spoleto.

In case you were wondering, no, this isn't a work blog today.  We had today off to take this field trip.  I did get quite a bit out

Church in Spoleto

of it though.  While we were waiting at the caffe Lexy and I were talking to Nate, Paula’s son, about surface tension.  Lexy explained it, David (Nate’s dad) explained it...  Nate was still lost.  Then I stepped in with a really silly metaphor.  Lexy thought it did a very good job of explaining the concept.  Seems like such a simple situation, but it made me start thinking that sometimes in the classroom we really do lose the forest for the trees.  We get so used to our terminology we don’t realize we are speaking a completely different language to our students.  My lame analogy was actually pretty effective, even as simple as it was.

Our first stop was Spoleto.  It was a beautiful town, made of different, lighter colored stone than Viterbo,.  Spoleto is also an ancient walled city.  This wall is pretty interesting because you could see the different layers of stone in the wall from different times it was built upon.  The Romans did not use any mortar, so their stones were easy to pick out.  Then as they built upon the wall you can see the mortar between the stones. We visited one of their churches which used to be a Roman Temple in the past.  Under the church there is this little dark room, where our tour guide told us the Romans used to keep people waiting to be sacrificed to the gods!.  Talk about creepy, to stand where someone once stood contemplating their death.

We traveled around the town, out on an old aqueduct that would carry water from a spring high in the mountains down to the city.  The height was staggering but with the nice breeze it was a beautiful walk.  During our hike I got to know some of the USAC students better, two of them are interested in teaching math and are working towards that.  Another was considering Social Work.  These kids are so impressive, they totally have their acts together.  Nathan is going to back pack around Europe in a few days when his USAC classes are over.  I can’t even imagine having the courage to do that when I was his age.  I think it’s important to help our youth find this strength and do something with it.  These kids won’t be back at home serving fries.  

Falls before 4pm, note the relatively low volume of water

Beautiful Italian vistas!

After wandering around Spoleta for a few hours, we boarded our bus again and took off to the falls.  You may be thinking “Wow, I’m in Italy.  Let’s talk history,” but nothing could compare to the beauty of the falls. In Viterbo, like most of Italy, everything shuts down at lunch time, from about 1pm-4pm all the shops close up and everyone heads home for lunch and maybe a nap.  Well, turns out their waterfall is asleep at this time too!  When we first arrived the flow was very reduced, but they turn it back up at 4pm.  How funny is that!?  

Lots of stairs!

There was quite a hike to the top of the falls, lots and lots of stairs.  Made me think of hiking to the top of Nevada falls  time, just with less humidity there.  The falls were astounding.  These are the third highest falls in Europe, and they are part of the water system that we are studying.  So, maybe a tiny bit of work with our USAC tour!  There isn’t much I can say about the falls, the pictures tell a better story.

Around 7:00pm our bus rolled back to Porta Romana, so it was time for a quick change and a jaunt over to Paula's.  Wonderful dinner, with a fun game of Apples to Apples afterwards.  I know I’m missing a million things in this edition, but I’m sleepy, wined up, and needing to prep for Rome tomorrow...  I’ll try to fill in the holes later.  :)

Falls after 4pm! Woo Hoo!

Another view of the falls. Spectacular!