8th Grade Rome Trip Part 2: The sights and sounds of Rome!

by Maripat Webber

We had great weather after that first cloudburst. All the students said the sun nourished their enthusiasm. On the first day, they were great with our guide. Elizabeta quizzed them on the Forum and the Colosseum, and they did us proud; someone had the answer to every question--and often in Latin, no less.

29 kids makes for a long, long, coiling snake of a group to lead. Ben, Debbie, and/or one of the kids frequently ran back a block or more to get the tail caught up with the head. The Highlight for my group was finding the underground, ancient Roman foundations of two churches open for tours. We got to see the three temples beneath San Nicola in Carcere, dating from the 200s BC, and the Roman house beneath Santa Maria in Cosmedin, better known for housing the Mouth of Truth. We all managed to keep our hands, so we are all certifiably honest.

Ostia was bright and sunny, but there was also a stiff wind coming off the sea; all our photos show kids and adults bundled up with hoods and scarves so that we are barely recognizable.

When negotiating the very narrow and medieval streets between the Tiber and the Piazza Navona, one student said, “Now, this is what I expected all of Rome to look like.” The students played soccer and Frisbee on the Circus Maximus, and the traditional “roll down the hill” was filmed by several student and faculty photographers.

Every student does a project focusing on one particular structure in Rome, and mapping itineraries for visiting each student’s project was a challenge, but most kids did get to see “their” building. Along with such basic identifying elements as dates in the “life” of their buildings and the type and source of materials used to build them, students pondered what was particularly Roman about their structure. Learning about the classical orders of architecture and the use of and variations upon arches and vaults helped define this quality, but students also brought to this question everything they had absorbed about the Romans in almost three years of Latin. Most were astonished at how much more immense their buildings were than they had thought, and each had new insights into the “Roman question”.

They all agreed that actually seeing what they’d been reading about altered their perceptions completely.

Amelia said it was "the best week of my life!", and Grant that it was the best thing that ever happened to him. Five of the boys met a shopkeeper who gave them bargains, lessons Israeli black-ops moves, and guessed with uncanny accuracy their favorite sports and the positions they play. The coolest guy they'd ever met, all of them said. They want to be him when they grow up.

We walked 3-5 miles every day, and this group said it didn't feel at all like that. I told them it took 45 minutes to walk to the Piazza Navona for the Baroque music concert, and they all thought it was a ten-minute trip. They all liked the concert, even though we froze our toes in St Agnese listening to it. Sam said he loved the way the music echoed in the church and then in his head. They're all so well educated musically that they listened rapt to the whole thing, and could discuss it knowledgeably afterward.

More photos and Rome details to come…Thank you to everyone who participated or made this trip possible.